Death & Grief: Tips for Parents

Put your oxygen mask on first!
➢ Ponder your own feelings about your mortality
➢ Examine your own issues, beliefs
➢ Consider how you deal with grief or intense emotions

Telling a child that a loved one has died
➢ Consider these questions:
• What is the age and maturity level of the child?
• Does the child understand the meaning of the words died and dead?
• Has the child experienced a death prior to now (pet, grandparent, classmate, friend, parent, teacher)?
• How was the child related to the deceased? How well did they know each other?
• What are the family’s religious beliefs about death?
• What were the circumstances surrounding the death?
• What is the child’s usual pattern of coping?

Establish rapport
➢ Open communication
➢ Be sensitive to child’s readiness to communicate
➢ Avoid any barriers which may inhibit the child’s attempt to communicate

What do you say?
➢ Answer truthfully and completely (but don't share traumatic details)
➢ Answer only what is being asked
➢ Ask questions to check for understanding
➢ Keep your answers short and simple

Avoid euphemisms and confusing explanations of death
➢ Use simple terms
➢ Euphemisms tend to confuse rather than comfort
➢ Avoid making statements that will have to be retracted later
➢ Be careful with religious phrases

What do you do?
➢ Ok for the children to see you upset
➢ Encourage the expression of feelings
➢ Accept the feelings and reactions expressed by the child

Provide reassurance
➢ Be specific about rarity of death
➢ Talk about the “what ifs”
➢ May go through some fear of death and/or separation anxiety

Integrate personal religious beliefs into the explanations

Remember you will have to revisit/repeat this conversation often
➢ It takes at least 6 months for most children to work their way through the grieving process

Help the child complete the tasks of grieving
➢ Celebrate and remember the relationship
➢ Commemorate the relationship

The basic tasks of grieving are:
• Understanding
• Grieving
• Commemorating

Successful grieving helps person to:
• Accept the reality of the loss
• Experience the pain of grief
• Adjust to an environment in which the deceased is missing
• Withdraw emotional energy and reinvest it in another relationship

Source: Karen Gannon Griffith, GSCA Fall Conference 2006