Schoolyard - Tips and Advice: Helping a child cope with a loss, more tips

by Wai Chong Mak
(Singapore)

FeedTheVillage.com - Tips and Advice: Helping a child cope with loss

Helping a child cope with loss

Grief is a personal response to the losses. It may be loss of an object. It can be the loss of a person. It can be a loss of relationship with a person. According to Kubler-Ross, there are 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. It is not easy to help children cope with loss, especially the young child who does not have the vocabulary to express himself or herself. The followings are some suggestions to help children cope with loss:

It is advisable for the parents to get some emotional support in handling their own grief. If the parents are able to overcome their own grief in a healthy way, the children will learn how to cope with loss from their parents.

Children need parents or a trusting adult to listen to their feelings and thinking of loss. By being there to provide listening ears and emotional support will be helpful for a child to cope with loss.

Some children are not ready or comfortable to talk about their feeling. The use of writing or drawing will be helpful for them to express their feelings of sadness, anger, shock, hurt, fear, helplessness and so on. Some children like to write a journal, some of them choose to compose a song or poem to express their feelings and thinking. Parents can help children to recognize, express, understand and accept their feelings so they can grief in a healthy way. It helps healing of a child when their emotion has been recognized.

Some children are frightened about the loss or worried about the death of the loved one. Parents need to provide reassurance of love and emotional support and re-establishing a structure and routine to help children cope with loss. Therefore, the children will feel safe and secure.

Parents can provide emotional support, giving listening and reassurance of love to a child. They can try different means to help their child to talk or express their feelings towards loss to promote healing.