Helping Kids Cope With Grief

• Be available.
• Listen with your ears, eyes and heart
• Touch to show that you care and that you are there if they need you.
• Face your own feelings of loss and grief and share them if you like.
• Be open and honest with feelings. Create an atmosphere of open acceptance that invites questions and fosters confidence and love.
• Encourage expressions of grief (talking, writing, painting etc.) Provide appropriate places to express grief.
• Acknowledge the reality that grief HURTS! Do not attempt to rescue the child (or yourself) from the hurt. Work through the grief.
• Provide a quiet, private place to come to whenever the child needs to be alone.
• Respect a child’s need to grieve. Almost anything can trigger grief.
• Understand that priorities change. What you think is important may NOT be considered by the child as such.
• Realize that grief causes difficulty in concentrating. Children often experience a shortened attention span.
• Do not isolate or insulate children from grief. Grief is a normal and natural reaction to loss of any kind.
• Understand that other losses often accompany the identified loss. A change in residence, caretaker, school or peer group all add to the grief experienced. Loss of trust often compounds grief.
• Try not to single out the grieving child for special privileges or compensations. He still needs to feel a part of his peer group and should be expected to function accordingly.
• Temper your expectations with kindness and understanding. Continue to expect him to function.
• Set realistic goals with the child concerning his behavior, school performance and homework. Help the child create his own routines if necessary.
• Understand that grieving children are often “busy” with the tasks of establishing a new identity. WHO AM I NOW? Becomes a major concern. Family roles may change as well as identities. This self-search often overshadows all other concerns for many weeks and months.
• Know that grief lasts far longer than anyone expects. It may take months or even years before a child displays signs of the full impact of a family change.
• Maintain a daily routine if at all possible. Continuity becomes a safety net for grieving children. They continuity of attending school daily, being required to perform certain tasks in and out of school and having a social routine provides children with some security and sense of stability in a topsy-turvey world.
• Understand that children and young people will continue to deal with the losses/changes they experience as they grow and mature. They will NOT GET OVER IT, but they can learn to GROW THROUGH the grief and discover that LOVER NEVER GOES AWAY.