By Rachel Harned, M.A. Counseling Ministries, Wheaton College
Most people don’t know how to respond to other people’s grief. Even fewer know how to respond to a child’s grief.
My first introduction to grieving was when I was 6 years old and my mom died. As a result, I wanted to post a follow up on interacting with grieving children.
- First, it is important to look at what a child would consider a loss.
When I was in 3rd grade, we moved from North Florida to Central Florida. That seemed like moving across the world to an 8 year old girl who had lived in the same house her whole life. I was losing my home, my friends, and my school in one fell blow. That was a major loss to me.
A small toddler may even need to grieve the loss of a favorite stuffed animal.
When I was 3 or 4, I cried for days when I lost my favorite doll. Almost every kid up until a certain age has a stuffed animal or blanket that they can’t go to sleep without.
To a child, not all losses are equal but all losses are serious.
A loss can be anything that affects how you live your life.
I had to learn how to sleep without my doll and make friends in a new school and live without my mom.
- You also have to be especially careful about your phrasing with children.
You obviously don’t want to be too blunt but you can’t be vague about what’s happening or they won’t understand, particularly about death.
I remember someone told me that my mom was asleep (or something like that) but she wasn’t waking up.
For awhile, I did not want to go to sleep because I was afraid that I wouldn’t wake up either.
Telling a child that someone passed away (probably one of the most common phrases) is better but young children will need to have it explained to them because they need to know what’s going on before they can process it.
I use the word ‘processing,’ but I want to talk about that for a minute because different people will do it differently.
- God created us with different personalities that are very distinct, even in children.
Many (probably most) children will want to talk about it but others won’t. If they want to talk about it, it’s important for them to have a listening adult ear.
Hopefully, that can be in the form of a parent or other family member, but sometimes that’s not possible. Especially in the case of death, family members can be so focused on their own grief that they emotionally can’t handle the child’s as well. It’s OK to admit that, but there needs to be someone available for the grieving child to talk to.
The most obvious choices would be a pastor or a counselor but it could also be a close family friend (with a Christian understanding of death and eternal life).
I was able to talk to mentors and friends’ parents about my feelings and that had a significant impact on how I was able to deal with my mom’s death and some other things that were happening in my life shortly afterwards.
- If a child does not want to talk, that is OK too.
Don’t push them into it. Sometimes they need to think about it on their own or just wait and see what changes occur before they talk about it.
As I mentioned in my previous post, it is important to acknowledge that grieving is normal and OK with adults, but it is doubly important to tell this to children.
In a society where it is a virtue to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” I have seen many children taught that crying is a sign of weakness and that only babies cry. This is especially common with boys.
The problem with that is that some things are worth crying over. One of my parenting pet peeves is when parents tell their sobbing children “it’s OK” but clearly, something is not OK or they wouldn’t be crying.
A better phrasing might be “I know it hurts right now but you WILL BE OK” or something along those lines.
That applies to grief as well. When a child is caught in the middle of a divorce or has just lost a parent, sibling, pet, etc., they need to be told that it’s OK to cry about it now but, eventually, it won’t hurt as much.
Also, if you don’t let out your feelings of sadness, they will inevitably manifest themselves in another way, usually in depression, anxiety, or anger. I have no research to back this up but I am convinced that the rise in teens that need anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medications is at least partially due to the increasing stigma against proper grieving in our culture.
Feel free to comment below with any other questions, tips, or stories about your experiences with grief.
And please SHARE our discussions on How to Respond to Grief with any who are grieving.
