Death Is a Family and Community Issue

When death hits a family, each person suffers the loss. The individuals are comforted but society fails to recognize that this also affects the family as a ‘unit.’ How the children are affected by the death, for example, and the manner in which they are supported, can determine not only how the child reconciles with the death in the long-term, but also, how the family relationships function as well.

Children approach issues of grief with the same skills they use to understand other problems. Children try to establish a sense of familiarity and ‘normalcy’ in their lives. "Their sense of understanding is influenced by previous experiences and by their current stage of cognitive development. They are in the process of developing their sense of self, as well as a sense of how that self exists in relation to others (in terms of level of independence and dependence). Thus, loss-related experiences in childhood have the potential to shape future meanings, relationships and sense of trust or vulnerability at a significant level," says Dr. Iileen Murray of Counseling for Loss. There are some dangerous misunderstandings about children who experience death:

1. Children don’t grieve. Dr. Alan Wolfelt said that if a child is old enough to love, then he is old enough to feel grief. While children are capable of appearing to be "fine," it may simply be a coping mechanism. Children have shorter attention spans and may display strange behavior patterns like crying one minute and laughing the next. It may seem like they really don’t care. This is a natural reaction to an overwhelming emotion which many children have not yet felt. That kind of ‘break’ in the mourning is necessary to help them handle the grief they feel. Children do seem to possess a natural resilience, however, adults should never dismiss the fact that a child is grieving.

2. Children cannot understand death or dying. While it isn’t true that children cannot understand what death is, they will need to be told the story repeatedly in simple and honest terms. Younger ones may want to talk frequently, asking irrational questions and reliving the event repeatedly. When a death occurs in a family, the surviving adults are in such deep grief that they are often unable to provide the honest dialogue and support necessary to help the surviving children. For the family to emerge from grief in a healthy direction, the parents and surviving children must have support from the community.

3. Children forget loss quickly if we "replace." We begin to teach these very dangerous "grief habits" at a very early age. The dog dies and we replace it with a new puppy. While it may seem to assuage the child’s grief, we must realize that some losses are irreplaceable. The mere replacement of a pet fails to prepare them for the more significant losses they will suffer which cannot be comforted by a trip to the pet store. In presuming that a child’s grief can be handled by helping them forget their love object and replacing it with a distraction, we surrender the opportunity to teach them invaluable coping skills.

4. Children grieve the same way adults do. Often unable to articulate emotions into words, they may express their grief in behavior changes if not afforded the opportunity to express it in other healthy ways. Their cognitive developmental stage guides their thought process. Their recollection of events may be distorted, however, the grief remains the same. Trepidation in children can be heightened by the drastic change in their parent’s personality (due to grief) that seem out of character (not their "normal" selves). Children under stress often regress to an earlier stage of cognitive development. A four year old may experience enuresis (bed-wetting) and adolescents may become more emotional than usual. Recent work by J. William Worden and Phyllis Silverman, authors of Children Mourning, Mourning Children, studied 125 children at 4 months, 1 year and 2 years post-parental death, interviewed surviving parents, and used a matched controlled sample. Their work revealed that children often stayed attached to the deceased parent through conversations with them, dreams, keeping special items of memorial, and a spiritual sense that their parent remained with them. This coping strategy worked. It helped children make sense out of the death. Children who did best experienced fewer additional changes and disruptions in their lives. The authors did caution that for some children, problems didn’t manifest for years after the death, so the first year is not an absolute indicator. Factors that appeared to influence healthy family mourning included good relationships between the child and both parents, & plenty of nurturing.

The family in grief needs a lot of community intervention. They need to be supported by their family, friends, co-workers and peers, and the professionals in their lives. The child family members need to be included in the death experience, the funeral and memorial services; long term mourning needs to be facilitated for the entire family, as a unit and individually. What do children and their parents need to help them?

• Honest dialogue and open communication in simple terms
• Minimal change of lifestyle, traditions, residence etc. The golden rule of grief is to avoid major decisions for the first 18 months
• Provide access to resources and information about support groups
• Children need to see the adults in their lives modeling a grieving process; acknowledging how one feels and talking about feelings
• Respect of individual differences (such as child’s age, decedent’s age, relationship to the decedent, etc.)
• The parents must be community supported so that the child family member is not be expected to become the caretaker of the parent/adult
• Children should be also be offered an alternate adult for talking and sharing. Children are sometimes hesitant to express their true grief with their parents.
• The family’s cultures and traditions should be respected
• The community should help the family move toward the grief, instead of away from the grief, while being supported
• Family, friends, and co-workers should realize that grief over the death of a loved one is not a transitory experience. The family will experience grief episodes for years after the event. It is important they know they have someone to talk to when a ‘bad day’ happens, whether at school, work, or home.
• Encourage art therapy for children and writing therapy for adults in grief. These are highly effective self-help strategies that provide a healthy outlet for expression
• Offer practical things that help- take the children to the park for a day as a break in the grief and to give the parents some time- or take turns making or arranging meals for the family. That type of practical assistance is often the most appreciated.
• Never ignore the grieving family. Don’t be reluctant to open discussion about the decedent with the children.

While children don’t necessarily grieve the way that adults do, often that grief can manifest itself in physical ways, indiscriminate of the age of the griever. Children and adults in grief experience a parade of physical symptoms ranging from insomnia or excessive sleeping, over-eating, anxiety, irritability, anger, hostility, apathy or too depressed to take any action at all, nervous tics, muscle tension, emotional outbursts, rage-like episodes, isolation from friends and family. Others may ‘stuff’ even the physical symptoms during the crisis and wait to fall apart for years. Protracted grief can result in many crises for a family. It is very important to help the children and their parents face their grief and participate, actively, in the process of mourning.

Remember that the reality of the death does not go away but the manner in which a family experiences death will change with time, hopefully maturing in ways that make it easier to bear. The traumatic loss of child family member will always be with these children. With time, love and understanding from the community the family can learn to carry the burdens of traumatic loss in ways that will make the family stronger.