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Dealing With Death
Helping Your Child Handle a Death in the Family By Shel Franco
I was reminded that funerals with a young child wouldn't be easy the minute the casket came into view. My son caught a glimpse of Grandma, dressed in her Sunday best, as still as a peaceful sea. "Where's Grandma?" he asked.
"Doesn't he know?" a woman whispered. "You can always say she's just sleeping."
But he did know. My husband and I had already explained that Grandma died. Maybe his reaction was what we were all thinking; the woman in the casket didn't look quite the way we remembered Grandma. Then again, maybe he was just uncomfortable.
Death is always unnerving, but while an adult can understand and even rationalize the situation, a child may not know how to cope with the flood of emotions. How a child handles the death of a loved one depends on his personality and his experiences. Some children will become withdrawn; others will cry; still others will act out in anger.
"A child is extremely sensitive to what his parents feel," says John Welshons, a grief counselor and author of Awakening from Grief: Finding the Road Back to Joy. Children understand death according to what their parents show them.
As a result, there are a few things you can do to ease the emotional impact that death has on your family.
Most parents want to protect their children from pain. The revelation of death is no different. For some people, concealing the truth or telling lies seems like the best way to shield their child from suffering.
"From the time we are children, most of us are taught not to think about [death]," Welshons says. He stresses that it is important that the child never be lied to and that parents should not associate death with going to sleep or going away.
Instead, Welshons suggests preparing children for death in small increments, using nature as the tool. Events such as the leaves dying in the fall can be excellent transitions to talks about death.