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"Helping Children Cope With Grief"
Selected excerpts from Dr. Alan Wolfelt,
Director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition
How adults respond when someone loved dies has a major effect on the way children react to the death. Sometimes, adults don't want to talk about the death, assuming that by doing so children will be spared some of the pain and sadness. However, the reality is simple: children will grieve, anyway.
Adults who are willing to talk openly about the death help children understand that grief is a natural feeling when someone loved has died. Children need adults to confirm that it's all right to be sad and to cry, and that the hurt they feel now won't last forever.
When ignored, children may suffer more from feeling isolated than from the actual death itself. Worse yet, they feel all alone in their grief. Be patient and be available.
Adults sometimes have trouble facing death themselves. So open, honest discussions about death with children can be difficult. Yet adults who are able to confront, explore and learn from their own personal fears about death can help children when someone loved dies. As a result, children can form a healthy attitude toward both life and death.
Encourage questions about death; listen to children, don't just talk to them. Adults shouldn't worry about having all the answers. The answers aren't as important as the fact that they're responding to the questions in a way that shows they care. Children may repeat the same questions about the death again and again. It's natural. Repeating questions and getting answers helps them understand and adjust to the loss of someone loved.
Although children may not completely understand the ceremony surrounding the death, being involved in the planning of the funeral helps establish a sense of comfort. Since the funeral of someone loved is a significant event, children should have the same opportunity to attend as any other member of the family. Explain the purpose of the funeral: as a time to honor the person who has died; as a time to help, comfort and support each other and as a time to affirm that life goes on.
Viewing the body of someone loved who has died can also be a positive experience. It provides an opportunity to say "goodbye" and helps children accept the reality of the death.
"Talking With Young Children About Death"
Selected excerpts from Fred Rogers of "Mister Rogers Neighborhood"
 Each of us also has a different way of expressing our thoughts and feelings with our children - different words and actions that seem to suit us best. There are times, too, when we all feel inadequate. There are no easy answers especially when it comes to death talk.
I was uncertain about how to answer their questions or when I wondered what was the wise way to include them in the funeral rites. How often I wished for magic words that would make them smile again! I think that atmosphere is what helped our children most. This is not to say that those were times without resentment, irritability and even anger. But all the same, no one tried to talk anyone out of his or her feelings, no one denied them. In retrospect I see that it was often my children who were my best teachers. When I was open to them, by sharing some of my feelings and encouraging them to communicate their thoughts, they helped me know what they needed.
It can be difficult to know much about what our children are feeling, especially the younger ones who are not very verbal or the pensive ones who may not be so willing to share their troubles openly. Each child in the family is different and is coping with grief in his or her own unique way.
Sometimes in trying to anticipate their pain and sadness, we tend to want to protect them, even to the point of not wanting to tell them about a death in the family. Jeffrey's only 2-1/2, one mother explained. "He really wouldn't understand what it's all about." Another mother felt that her daughter would be overwhelmed by the news of a grandparents death. "Cheryl I loved her grandmother so much," she told me. "It would crush her to know that she died". Though the decision not to tell a child is understandable, we do have to ask whether it is really in the child's best interests. Childrens sensitivity to "vibes" is extremely keen.
Even if a young child is sent off to stay with a friend or neighbor, the chances are that he or she will know that this sudden visit is because something important has happened at home. Feelings of exclusion can be much harder for children than feelings of sadness. Not only does exclusion bring a sense of rejection but it can also result in children misinterpreting what is going on. Uncertainty can arouse anxiety. We need to remember that when there are unanswered questions (or even unspoken ones), children will find their own fantasy explanations. Often these fantasies are scarier than reality. It may well be, then, that one of the best kinds of "protection" we can give children is to provide them with simple and straightforward answers.
Most children want to know what death is like. They may equate death with stillness, but may ask if you can see when you are dead, if you can get hungry, feel cold, make a "bm" or "pee pee". It's not unusual for a child to ask the same kinds of questions again and again before the answers become real to them. Asking the same questions again and again allows the child to test the answer and gradually understand.
Children tend to take what we say literally. If, in an attempt to explain death, a parent has likened it to sleep, then it is not surprising that a child may assume that death is something from which you can awake. Or if, instead of using the word "died", we say that someone has "gone to sleep forever", a child may begin worrying that he or she may never wake up some morning. Our euphemisms can be troublesome for young children! What, for instance are they supposed to understand when they hear someone has "lost" a father or a daughter?
Children's literalness can also give them difficulties with the concept of Heaven. Many of our words can be frightening or confusing: "If Heaven is up there in the sky"; "Daddy is up in Heaven watching over you" is actually meant to be reassuring, but to a child it may raise the image of a spy who knows everything that you're thinking and doing all the time. "Your sister was so good that God took her to live with Him" is usually meant to be a positive statement, but for a child it could cast doubts on the value of being good and the kindness of God in taking away someone we love. Sometimes we can be more helpful by answering a child's questions with "No one knows for sure but I believe . . .". For some people saying "You know, I wonder about that, too" is a special kind of honesty and a kind that their children can understand.
While Heaven is an important concept for some families, many of children's concerns with death seem to be much more immediate and practical. A major worry for children may be who will look after them if one or both of their parents were to die. How would basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing be provided? In trying to reassure them, we can help them know that we hope we'll be living as long as they need us and that most people live for a long, long time.
Many of us have worried about whether our children should attend the funeral services of someone they loved. Are they too young? Will it be traumatic for them? I have come to believe that even a very young child can benefit significantly by sharing in at least some of the rituals that attend death if we have prepared them for what to expect and have been open to their questions.
Funerals provide a structure for the early days of grieving. They provide a time for the sharing of grief, and they bring a sense of closure and finality that, sooner or later we all have to accept. Funerals are a time for venting emotions and bringing relief, and I believe children need that relief, too. Letting our children view an open casket may be a particular source of worry for us, but even here, it can turn out that the reality of a dead body is less frightening than a child's fantasies about it. Children may startle us by wanting to see "what dead looks like". They may even want to touch the body to see "what dead feels like". They might even ask "What's under the blanket where Grandpap's feet are? What makes it so puffy there?" They might want to know what is inside the hearse. Many funeral directors have become accustomed to children's need to know and can provide helpful answers to such questions.
The decisions aren't always easy, and in addition to considering what may be best for our children, we need to stay responsive to what is best for us. When we are under the stress of bereavement, we may feel overtaxed by the constant need to cope with our young children's questions and fears and upsets, not to mention the demands of their daily routines. Although our seven year old, Amy, was with us through my father's funeral, we decided that four-year-old Laurie should go and stay with her four-year-old cousin at his house. Although she didn't attend the actual funeral and burial, we did take her with us to the funeral home beforehand, we did explain what would happen at the funeral, and I promised to taker her to the cemetery at a later date. I found it easy to postpone that visit, but when I did go together one autumn afternoon, the experience turned out not to be the devastating one I had anticipated. As we walked over to my father's gravesite, I explained to Laurie that this is where we had come after the funerals service to bury the casket. She looked up at me and poignantly asked: "Why wasn't I here then?"
So there are not books that will do it for us and there are no magic "right" words to say. It's the trying, the sharing, and the caring - the wanting to help and the willingness to listen - that says "I care about you." When we know that we do care about each other, then, together, we can talk about even the most difficult things and cope with even the most difficult times.
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