Helping Children Live with Death and Loss

Synopsis

Helping Children Live with Death and Loss is a practical guide for parents, caregivers, teachers, clergy, funeral directors, and other adults who may interact with young children between the ages of two and ten. Utilizing a developmental approach that is critical for understanding the unique characteristics and needs among children under ten, the volume is enhanced by an accessible style and format, numerous illustrations, and the positive attitude that make it possible for any reader to comprehend and apply the concepts when discussing death and loss with young children.

The scope of concepts ranges from adult self-assessment to knowledge of children's developmental stages in learning. Building on that foundation, the book provides four basic content areas for teaching, supplies sample questions and answers, and suggests strategies for teaching general death education as well as strategies for responding to a current death or loss. The resource concludes with print and internet sources for adults and children. Helping Children Live with Death and Loss also aids adults and children in improving their communication and coping skills, which are critical for managing loss and preparing for a healthier future.

Excerpt

People who face the challenge of dealing directly with death and loss often find strengths within themselves that they never knew existed. They may discover that they are truly up to the challenge. They may realize that personal growth can change their perspectives about death and add meaning to their lives. Having witnessed this personal growth in ourselves, friends, loved ones, and students, we developed a commitment to education about death and loss. Our combined history and professional experiences convinced us that this topic is so important it must be shared and explored.

As you read, you'll find that the foundation of our research comes from classic sources because they withstand the test of time very well. Our references and additional readings, however, are updated to include resources with more current examples, applications, and illustrations.

Because we know that children can learn to understand death, because we have respect for their capacity to be resilient and face difficult experiences, and because we know that children can experience the benefits of personal growth, we believe that death education should be shared with children as well as adults. Indeed, in this time of increased mass media reporting of school violence and terrorism close to home, all children potentially are at risk for feeling a major loss in their sense of safety and security. Even when events reported by the media don't affect children directly, indirectly they are affected by being forced into a new reality that “it could happen here” and “it could happen to me. ” Caring adults must be prepared to provide the education and support children need as they attempt to incorporate this new view into their world.

Since our professional approaches always have emphasized practical applications of concepts through teaching and writing, this book was a natural and exciting step. As we thought about the purpose of this book, we decided on these goals:

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Loss and Bereavement

Synopsis

"This book aims to provide students with an understanding of important theoretical perspectives and specific models of adaptation to loss. It is assumed that loss and change are normal processes that occur within a social and cultural context, and the reader is introduced to historical and cultural perspectives which illustrate the diversity of approaches to loss. Major theoretical perspectives are explored to enable students to understand their origins and influence. This is a comprehensive text describing the variety of approaches available to understand the process of loss and bereavement." Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Excerpt

It is evident that death and grief are too multisplendoured and

complex to be trussed up in the conceptual straitjacket of any

one discipline.

(Feifel 1998: 4)

This book is about loss, and specifically about how we investigate and attempt to understand the impact of loss by death on individuals, families and larger social groups on the one hand, and how individual and group factors shape our experience of loss on the other.

In past times, in many cultures, dying, death and bereavement were the province of the family, neighbours and priests or their equivalent. In some cultures, tasks such as laying out the corpse or keening over the body were undertaken by certain specialists who were usually paid for their services this is still true in many countries of the world - but they were typically members of the community and known to the family. Today, in much of the western world, death and the issues surrounding it have become professionalized and may incorporate the services of nurses, doctors, undertakers, psychologists and counsellors among others. The implications of these changes are among the issues we will consider in this book. Perhaps it is to the institutionalization of dying and death that we owe the development of the science of thanatology, whose scholars seek to explore and describe the issues in order to enhance our understanding and, it is to be hoped, our management of them.

That the study of bereavement and its associated phenomena is now an established subdiscipline of the psychosocial and clinical sciences is fitting for a topic which is both universal and deeply significant in human experience. The impact of significant loss by death results in the need for adaptation at both individual and group levels, and the process of such adaptation may be prolonged and painful. The means by which individuals and groups manage and contain the impact of bereavement, and the social and individual constructions of the 'right' and 'wrong' ways to accomplish the necessary adaptation are proving to be complex and demanding areas of study.

In the field of health, researchers and clinicians have noted the morbidity and mortality and the physical and psychosocial disturbances that accompany . . .

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Grief Unseen: Healing Pregnancy Loss through the Arts

Synopsis

"There is a growing awareness in the counselling and pastoral care professions that the appropriate use of imagery and symbolism in counselling can be a useful tool in helping clients to resolve inner conflicts which they would otherwise find hard to confront. This comprehensive book explores the therapeutic use of imagination and how the use of myths, legends and spontaneous images can clothe feelings with images, and thereby make them easier to work with and control." "The book is intended as a working model which takes the reader through the various stages of imagery and symbolism, and is illustrated by many case studies that highlight various principles and topics, and create a bridge between theory and practice. A companion volume Dictionary of Images and Symbols in Counselling provides an 'A-Z' of images and symbols." Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Excerpt

Grief Unseen: Healing Pregnancy Loss Through the Arts is a genuine gift – one that can be especially understood and appreciated because the author, Laura Seftel, has personally lived through the loss of her own baby in miscarriage and over time has discovered some of the resulting gifts. Thankfully, she shares them with all of us through this new book.

The club that no one wants to join: The Secret Club. These are words I have used for years when speaking to families who have had a baby die in miscarriage, stillbirth or other infant death. I joined this club unwillingly in 1979 after our miscarriage and again in 1981 after the full-term stillbirth of our son. Sadly, the silence following each was deafening. The world, my family, my friends, and colleagues felt terrible for us but they had no words or experience to know how to talk with my husband David and me. Nor did we, at the time.

Our little treasures were gone. Poof. Outwardly we looked much the same; inwardly we were a mess, a disaster with no sense of how to cope or even begin to heal. First we had to feel it and grieve it: something foreign to both of us.

Over the many months that followed, I did discover the need to remember both Brennan, our stillborn son and Marama, our newly named miscarried baby. The process of remembering, expressing my feelings, and reaching out to others came out in the art form of writing. I had not found a book to read at the time, nor did I find one piece of expressive artwork that gave voice to my feelings. So I wrote my own.

As I look back, it is now clear that the early 1980s were the transition period from the “dark ages of perinatal bereavement” when little or no words were spoken beyond, “I’m so very sorry,” if one was lucky enough to hear that. Miscarriage, stillbirth, and even the death of a baby who lived briefly were considered by most people as “non-events.”

Thankfully, things began to change around that time and I was fortunate to be one of the handful of people who were inspired to be a part of that change. With Susan Erling and six other bereaved parents, we created a national nonprofit organization – the Pregnancy and Infant Loss Center in 

Minneapolis.

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