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Grappling With Grief
Excerpted from Helping Children Cope with Separation and Loss
By Claudia Jewett Jarratt
Helping Children Trust Themselves
Because young children get their understanding of life primarily through their senses, tying news to a sensory or physical connection often helps them grasp it. Such an approach can also reinforce their trust in their own powers of observation. Talk with children about what they might have seen or heard: "When you heard us fighting, you may have wondered what was happening and felt worried and scared... Today when Aunt Ruth came to get you at school, did you guess that something bad had happened?"
Beginning this way also encourages the child to think, "I am the sort of person who can figure out what is happening." Corroborating what the child has noticed sends one more reassuring signal that the child is a thinking person, able to make sense of the world and therefore able to understand significant happenings. In fact, acknowledging that they have been aware of the adult actions or situations that led up to the loss may help reassure them that it was not their fault.
Allow Children to Question
In some families, children are discouraged from observing, commenting or questioning what is going on with adults, especially their parents. Such children may now need assurance that it is all right for them to have noticed that things were not going well. Consequently, when talking about a loss, you should deliberately relax any unwritten rules that children should not be "nosy" about the affairs of their elders and encourage your children to voice their questions and to confirm their observations.