4 Effective Ways to Help Children Cope with Loss

Years ago our family took a trip. Four of us left for Toronto. Three of us returned. My son Nicholas’ (age 2 at the time) favourite stuffy – Tbear – unexpectedly found a new home after he was accidentally left behind in the twisted bedding of our hotel room.

So began Nicholas’ relationship with loss. He was devastated. Flowing tears accompanied desperate pleas to reroute the aircraft and return to the Radisson to rescue his sure-to-be-terrified best little buddy. But after the initial heartbreak and through some tearful conversations, Nicholas slowly came to understand things differently. Over time, Nick embraced a story that he created for himself to help cope with the loss.

Loss is an important part of life. Helping our children face it is an important aspect of parenting.

TBear had a new home and was being a good friend to someone else who really needed him. Nicholas regularly shared stories with us about TBear’s adventures with his many new friends. And, although no longer physically present, TBear continued to be a part of Nick’s life through his imagination for years. We can learn from this.

Loss is an important part of life. Helping our children face it is an important aspect of parenting.

What to do When Your Child Faces a Loss

1. Talk about it.

Conversations about death, loss and grief are right up there with those awkward rites of passage for all parents like the “sex and drugs talk”. But how many of us have the “grief and loss” talk with our kids? Aren’t these issues just as inevitable as sex?

Don’t leave these conversations up to the children. Model and initiate. Share appropriately about your own losses, both big and small. Share how they make you feel and how you want to approach the loss and grief. Keep these conversations brief but descriptive. Demonstrate that grief is normal. As we share our experiences, it teaches our children how to connect. A big part of working through loss is about building connections and reconnections.

2. Explore opportunities for identification and expression of emotions.

Loss creates a roller coaster of emotions: sadness, anger, guilt, fear, joy, etc. How we deal with emotions is primarily influenced by these early years within the home. Once again, it is up to us as parents and caregivers to model a range of emotions. Normalize these, yet teach that feelings don’t need to always drive behavior.

A child’s expression of grief may range from appearing indifferent, to laughter, to anger, to sadness, then switch to joy, happiness and play – all within a short time period.

Children are in the process of becoming emotionally literate. Rather than using words to explore feelings, use creative mediums such as art, activities, play, music and stories. For example, read stories aloud and together wonder what the characters may be feeling.

Note: A child’s expression of grief may range from appearing indifferent, to laughter (which could be apprehension or nervousness related), to anger, to sadness, then switch to joy, happiness and play – all within a short time period. This is normal. Realizing this and helping others to normalize this as well can help balance support for the child.

3. Anticipate and normalize the losses they will encounter.

Children will experience many different kinds of losses in their young lives: schools or neighborhoods may change, friends may come and go, disappointments will occur with school or on their sports teams, etc. Exploring these smaller losses may be helpful in developing their “grief muscles”, setting them up well for resilience in the face of more significant losses, such as the death of a loved one or the break-up of a significant relationship.

4. Be prepared to learn from children about grief.

Children learn about grief from us as parents and caregivers. Our actions speak louder then our words. At the same time, we can gain significant learnings from our children. Children are not limited by the filters, pressures and assumptions that often accompany adult grief, such as patterns of avoidance, minimization or outright denial. Children have the freedom and permission to embrace grief in its rawest, unmasked form. Often, this means that they are better able to embrace grief and continue to move forward.

Children have the freedom and permission to embrace grief in its rawest, unmasked form.

As loss also forces us into a relationship with something that may no longer be physically present, imagination and creativity can help us to continue to embrace the relationship that once was. Imagination, creativity and remembering go together in continuing this influence into the future.

We can’t shield our children from loss (although many of us do our best to try). In fact, I believe we do a disservice to them when we try. Love and loss go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the potential of the other. Helping children to deal with and prepare for the inevitability of loss is an important gift we can give.

Notes from CTRI:

There are many layers of feelings that can occur as a result of grief, and it is normal for children to express these feelings in many different ways. That’s why we decided to publish Once a Wizard – a wordless children’s book by Curtis Wiebe with beautiful imagery and the potential to create many imaginative storylines. It empowers children to tell their own stories and explore the meaning of their own experiences of loss.

From a helping and counselling perspective, having no words allows young readers to help tell the story. Children can fill in details of the story that reflect their own experiences and imagination. They will often see very different things in the story than adults do. This allows for different kinds of conversations that are useful for supporting children at various stages of grieving.

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