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    A Child's View of Grief
    A Child's View of Grief
    A Child's View of Grief
    Ebook62 pages39 minutes

    A Child's View of Grief

    By Alan D. Wolfelt

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    About this ebook

    This concise resource for parents of grieving kids explores several key principles for helping children cope with grief and offers ways to create an emotional environment filled with love and acceptance. It answers common questions such as “What should I say to children when someone they love dies?” and “Should young children attend funerals?” This guide also identifies and explains typical behaviors, thoughts, and feelings of grieving kids and offers adults tips for responding to them.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateApr 1, 2004
    ISBN9781879651708
    A Child's View of Grief

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      Book preview

      A Child's View of Grief - Alan D. Wolfelt

      WOLFELT

      Preface

      A Child’s View of Grief is a practical guide for adults who want to help grieving children. Perhaps no greater helping opportunity exists than helping a child whose life has been touched by the death of someone loved.

      Without a doubt, communicating with children about death is one of the most challenging experiences adults ever face. It is also one of the most important.

      A Child’s View of Grief explores a variety of important topics related to children and grief. This guide will help caring adults increase their understanding of how to talk with children about death and grief. There are special sections on involving children in the funeral and adolescent mourning.

      Introduction

      When someone loved dies, children grieve. The most important factor in how children react to the death is the response of the adults in their lives. Caring adults—whether they are parents, relatives, or friends—can help children during this tragic time. Handled with warmth and understanding, a child’s early experiences with death can be opportunities to learn about life and living as well as death and dying.

      For parents and other adult caregivers, the first step in learning how to help children deal with death is to become educated about grief. Well-intentioned adults sometimes pass on their own anxieties and fears to the children they are trying to help. Studies show that children often suffer more from the loss of parental support during this time than from the death itself.

      Children in our society are referred to as the forgotten mourners. Children grieve, but all too often they don’t get the opportunity to express their feelings openly. This is a situation concerned adults must address. The challenge is to learn how to establish helping-healing relationships with children whose lives have been touched by the death of someone loved. When caring adults meet this challenge, children are capable of reconciling grief in healthy ways.

      Children & Death: An Historical Perspective

      In early America, death was a familiar experience. When several generations of a family lived in the same household, children were surrounded by aging, illness, and death. They watched grandparents grow old. They gathered with other family members when death occurred. Usually funerals were held in the home.

      Under these circumstances, children realized a significant loss had occurred. Along with their parents and siblings, they experienced tears and sorrow. Death was something that happened all around them. As a result, they came to know it gradually. For children in early America, death was not a mystery.

      Today, children live in a grief-avoiding culture. For a variety of reasons, children in the United States often grow up without being exposed to the pain of grief during childhood. Modern medicine, for example, has drastically reduced infant and child mortality and has prolonged life expectancy for the aged.

      Families are now also geographically scattered. Deaths occur thousands of miles from home. Even if different generations remain in the same area, the increased use of hospitals and nursing homes reduces the chances that children will witness the aging and

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