Raising Grieving Children

Dr. Silverman has summarized several very important concepts in a succinct fashion. Grief needs to be perceived as a natural—rather than pathological—process, a part of living and dying that defines what it means to be alive and have a life. I agree with Silverman's assertion that we do a disservice to children when we protect them from the realities of life instead of helping to equip them to deal with these realities, inclusive of the loss of loved ones. With care, connection, and continuity, children can manage the rigors of grief to maintain an ongoing connection with those they have lost. This not only affirms their ability to survive their present loss, it equips them to be able to successfully navigate the troubled waters of subsequent losses. A key lies in matching support to the child's level of development. A useful guide is to simply validate the child's experience while responding to questions directly and honestly, but only to the point of inquiry; the child will provide the clue as to when he or she has processed what has been shared and is ready to entertain more information.

I would like to see you address the loss of motivation and purpose that develops in an adolescent, resulting from the loss of a parent, thus part of the child's family identity. Please give some guidance for me to guide my son through this process in his life. We lost my son's father suddenly over three years ago, and life has not been any kind of "normal" since then. The biggest struggle comes with the awareness that the rest of the world continues on in a seemingly normal way, while our lives are turned inside out and we feel quite unable to function properly at times. My son is now 15 and the struggle continues, as teachers and friends cannot grasp the effects of the loss of his dad, as son & dad were very close. The void in my son's life would be hard to fill by anyone else, and I am stretched to make up the lost parent in all sorts of ways, from love to discipline, from income to household structure. We are finding our new "normal", and it doesn't look anything like we thought it would, so lesson learned is to keep a very open heart and flexible mind through the healing process. I found it was helpful at times to press my son into expression when he was withholding and showing signs of depression. The release of his talking and emoting freed his mind and allowed him to focus better and be happier for some time. We attended numerous meetings with a wonderful grief counseling group here, the more we talked the better we felt. We have had supportive friends and family as well. We are fortunate he has a God Father that has always been a part of his life in our extended family, who has really stepped up to help out in a number of ways. And my son still struggles to focus himself in school and pull past the urge to give up, as it just doesn't seem important relative to other things he has experienced. This on top of movement into the teen years by a very bright boy, becoming a young man in the glaring absence of his father.

I appreciate Dr. Silverman's comments on the grieving process in children. I was searching for good articles to give a family who lost their dad this weekend. The grief is just overwhelming and helping children cope seems like a daunting task that will never come to a conclusion. As I read the previous post, I also thought of how we often forget that this one event shapes young lives like no others. We want them to get to that "new normal" but we have to realize it may look very different than we had always hoped it would. School success may be redefined. Peer relationships may be formed differently. Hopes and goals may shift as this catastrophic event shapes the future into something never before imagined. Giving kids permission to incorporate this loss into who they become, can give them new meaning and purpose. It is part of what Dr. Silverman suggests of being very overt about the process, continual growth and meaning making that takes place through the healing process in all of us, but especially youth who loose an especially significant person.