Spreading The Word About How Children Cope With Grief

On April 2 I was invited to NYC to talk with Katie Couric, the anchor for CBS news. She wanted to talk with me for an April 11 segment she was doing for CBS News Sunday Morning about my work with the MGH/Harvard Child Bereavement Study. The focus was on children's reactions to the death of a parent. Couric knew about bereavemnt from personal experience, having lost her husband to cancer. Her children at the time were 2 and 6 years old. I was very excited and proud to be able to share what I knew. Katie Couric spoke with me for over an hour. It was clear that we had similar perspectives on the subject of children's grief, she from her lived experience and I from my research.

I knew this was to be a very short segment on the CBS Sunday Morning program. They interviewed me and Joan Owens who is clinical director for the Wendt Center for Grieving children in Washington, DC. As I watched the final program I realized the creative process involved in putting this together so that in a very short time we heard from Elmo of Sesame Street fame, from a number of children telling their stories, and from several professionals, and we learned a great deal about how children grieve. What follows is the link to the web page of CBS News that takes you to the segment:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/04/11/sunday/main6385745.shtml?tag=…

Madelyn Kelly with whom I wrote A Parent's Guide to Raising Grieving Children copied the transcript of the program onto her blog:

http://raisinggrievingchildren.wordpress.com/

This segment served as an announcement, for an hour program Katie Couric did on PBS on April 14. This program featured Elmo, who was dealing with his uncle's death, This was a remarkably sensitive and informative program. The link that follows will tell you more about the Sesame Street program.

http://www.pbs.org/parents/whenfamiliesgrieve/

This is an important initiative to help extend our understanding of the needs of grieving children and the need to create supportive environments to help them deal with their feelings and all the changes in their lives.