Steven Barratt consulted with experienced bereavement counsellor Sharon Rosenbloom to write this post. Rather than write this post as an interview with questions and answers Steven has written it as Sharon explained her counselling process. This allows the post to be shorter and easier to read.
What do you say?, what do you do?
These are questions often asked by bereaved parents, guardians and caregivers of someone bereaved as a child.
Bereavement in childhood should be treated independently from how a death affects an adult. Ongoing support should encourage open talk coupled with creative outlets for a child or young person.
This post aims to educate adults how to better deal with a child who has experienced loss.
Key takeaways
- A bereaved child needs guidance and should be treated differently than a bereaved adult. Adults and guardians need to play a key role to support a child through the immediate and the ongoing feelings of loss.
- Children grieve differently, and often experience denial and anger. Parents and guardians need to be made aware of this so that they can provide better support.
- It’s important for an adult to be honest about a death and not to try and cover it up or make false statements which might confuse a child, such as they have gone to sleep.
- Over a period of time it is wise to build emotional resilience in a child, memory boxes and letter writing can help.
- Encourage routine and stability, this will help the child feel more secure.
- Wherever possible encourage creative outlets and exercise/sport.
- Build up support through family, friends and if necessary support groups.
- Allow open speech about the bereavement, and of the life of the deceased.
In this post
Introduction
Sharon explained that every child who has experienced bereavement in childhood requires tender and thoughtful guidance. In her role as a therapist, she observes and notes that children work through grief much differently from adults. Depending on their age and maturity, they cannot understand precisely what death means. Helping them to work through this emotional time can be hard yet rewarding.
Her aim in working through counselling will be to provide their parents with advice. This advice could then help their children with an opportunity and environment where they could be free to talk their minds and guide them. Depending on age, the parents could use methodologies that could help a child in understanding, healing, and resilience.
How children grieve
Bereavement in childhood is quite different from adults. The understanding that children have of death is so limited, and they usually express their grief with confusion, fear, and behavioural changes. Depending on age, they may show their grief from withdrawal to anger, even to play. Being aware of such a reaction will help in guiding them to express their feelings constructively.
Children also go through the grief process in a series of stages. They frequently can experience a feeling of denial if it is a sudden death. For the most part, children are angry and usually question why it happened to them, or they feel that it is unfair that this happened. Some children feel guilty, as though they have done something to cause the loss.
These feelings lead to withdrawal, an inability to concentrate, and, at times, changes in behaviour. These responses must be understood to enable the counsellor to develop a personalised approach in counselling whereby the feelings can be explored safely and worked through to acceptance.
Children’s grief tends to be intermittent. There are switches from sad moments back to normal activities. Grief’s “puddle-jumping” effect is normal; it’s all part of how kids learn to modulate tough emotions when those feelings get too big. As a counsellor, my role when dealing with bereavement in childhood is to note these patterns and provide ongoing stability and reassurance. Allowing children to grieve in their specific ways empowers them to develop resilience and adaptiveness – skills still required for continuing life struggles.
The importance of open and honest communication
Honesty is the best baseline from which to try and speak with children about death. Things like “they went to sleep” or “they’re in a better place” may confuse or instil fear. It can even make children develop anxieties around sleeping or misunderstand the finality of the loss.
It is always better to explain it in simple words with clear, understandable language, according to the child’s age. When Sharon speaks to parents she models how to speak to their child about death. This in turn, helps the parents or guardians understand appropriately how such a subject is to be approached sensitively yet honestly.
In such a case, as a counsellor, she usually advises the parents to respond to the child’s question directly yet gently. More often than not, children will need to revisit the discussion many times as they develop their understanding. Such repetition suggests that, over some time, the brain will be working on the fact of death and slowly assimilating a way to accept it.
Sharon ensures that answers should not be rushed while encouraging the parent/caregiver to take their cue from the child and respond truthfully but in a comforting manner. This would help children develop a healthier emotional foundation so that the fear of death anxiety created through bereavement in childhood would diminish in the long run.
Building emotional resilience in children
Grieving children need to be equipped with some tools to understand and handle their feelings. As a counsellor, during her sessions, Sharon likes to prepare the parent to deal with their child’s age-specific coping strategies to handle overwhelming sadness, anger, or confusion.
Exercises like deep breathing, drawing, or journal writing sometimes become healthy expressions of feelings. As to preference, she might borrow skills in storytelling, role-playing, and therapeutic play as media for the child to express his or her grief.
Building resiliency is more than the coping mechanisms; another goal is to help the children understand that emotions are transient and it is okay to be sad or miss a loved one. For example, in her work with parents she would advise them to work with their child and make what’s called “memory boxes” or write letters to their loved one who has passed away.
These activities are side-by-side tangible manners in which they pay their respect to their loved one and continue their memory, which may be comforting and serve as an emotional outlet. The reinforcement of these methods helps the children cope more when experiencing bereavement in childhood. It puts them in better stead whenever losses or setbacks come along later.
The role of routine and stability in healing
Feelings of instability often accompany grief. For young children, this depends on the predictability of routine. Continuation of regular schedules helps reinstate the predictability of daily life, something quite crucial during turbulent times of disruption. Sharon informs parents to let daily routines during bereavement in childhood be as consistent as possible and that the surroundings for the child should be predictable and supportive.
While routine does not take the grief away, it affords security for the child and permission to work out their feelings with less disruption. Simple routines, such as morning wake-ups, mealtimes, and nighttime stories, become comforting anchors.
During bereavement in childhood some allowances undoubtedly need to be made for the child’s emotional needs, a degree of structure reassures them and offers them security and the freedom to grieve without fear or added stress. This approach caters to their immediate needs and, at the same time, fortifies their potential for adapting to life’s changes in the years that follow.
Encouraging self-expression through creative outlets
Throughout bereavement in childhood each child has a different expression of his feelings, and at times, words cannot communicate their grief. Art, music, and play are the best modes by which a child can express himself without words. During sessions, Sharon advises to introduces various drawing, painting, and enacting activities that enable children to project their emotions and provide therapeutic ventilation.
They can, for example, paint pictures showing their feelings towards the deceased person or make up stories relating to a death scenario and how to get over the same. This not only allows the children to encounter intense emotions within a secure and predictable environment but can also help the parents be informed of their child’s current standing.
Through creative expression, children often convey those feelings and thoughts they cannot put into words. This, in turn, nurtures their emotional literacy and contributes to overall healing and resilience.
Integrating bereavement in childhood support systems
Grieving is a lonely experience, and children fare so much better with support. In addition to immediate family, contact with peers or support groups may be extremely beneficial. Sharon says that she always refers families to bereavement groups or peer support programs with other children, as these allow them an avenue through which to share feelings and experiences with others, thus understanding their loss. These shared experiences will enable a child to feel that they belong and do not feel isolated.
While the group’s support is fantastic, the involvement of teachers, caregivers, and family friends within a child’s care network can also further solidify this sense of safety. During sessions on bereavement in childhood, I would explain to parents ways to develop these systems using support networks in a natural, non-intrusive manner. It should be enough for most children to recognise there are people to take care of them. It is comforting, yet it may also prepare them with the bravery they need to face their grief and move on with renewed positivity.
Moving forward while honouring the memory of loved ones
Grief is not a journey that can be completed; for children, it is about learning to continue taking the necessary time to learn how to cherish the memories of their loved one who has died. Parents should encourage children in counselling to reflect on how they may wish to continue honouring their loved one’s memory, either at times of importance or specific times of the year – on special days because of things they had done together.
For bereavement in childhood, honouring memories provides a sense of continuity and connection that will help children understand that while their loved one may no longer be physically present in their life, their life itself is an important part of their lives.
Children like adults may find as time goes on that the feeling of grief changes – it may be heavier some days more than others. However, accepting such changes in your life and not judging the feelings – whether sad or happy – that now exist with memories can be reassuring.
Parents can reassure upset children experiencing bereavement in childhood that it’s okay to be happy again; your happiness doesn’t minimise the love you have for a person who has died. With this in mind, it is thus very uplifting for the children to observe the beauty of life in the shadow of the loss and move their loved one’s legacy forward.
Conclusion
Grieving for many does not stop; it is ongoing throughout a lifespan. Bereavement in childhood takes time for the child to experience development and comprehend the loss. Thus, there is a need to create an opportunity for them to be supported and encouraged to express their feelings openly. The bereavement counselling of children involves something more than the management of grief. It further entails instilling hope, resilience, and faith in the future.
As a counsellor, it is Sharon’s job to help parents support children in their grief moments, giving them tools, guidance, and understanding as they learn to carry the memory of their loved ones while pressing forward with strength and resiliency. Indeed, by fostering an atmosphere of care and compassion, we can help the grieving child survive and thrive in emotional and psychological growth. Grief is a part of life; however, so is the assurance of healing and hope with the right support.
You can find additional bereavement counselling help at :
Sharon Rosenbloom is an experienced grief and loss therapist for over sixteen years and operates from the south east of England. She helps bereaved adults to help their children during bereavement in childhood, as well as children over the age of sixteen. Sharon can be contacted through her website Sharon Rosenbloom.
