PSY GRF Unique Features of Children's Grief

What are some general considerations concerning children’s grief?

• Children of all ages grieve.

  • Understanding death is not a prerequisite for grief

• Cognitive development affects how children grieve.

• Grief often continues throughout childhood after an early loss.

• A child’s world is primarily one of play.

  • Grief will manifest behaviorally rather than verbally

• Children are at others’ mercy for help or hindrance.

• Children don’t want to be different than their peers.

• Children often hide emotions to protect adults they love.

How does grief manifest among children?

1. Apparent lack of feeling

2. Appetite and sleep disturbances (behavioral)

3. Regression

4. Hyper-maturity

5. Care-eliciting behavior

6. Fear/anxiety/panic

7. Anger

8. Guilt

Describe the grief manifestation of apparent lack of feeling

• Natural shock/numbness/denial

• “Short sadness span”

• Children are very good at dosing grief

Describe the grief manifestation of appetite and sleep disturbances (behavioral) in children

• Their routine is disturbed and so if their appetite and sleep

• Bedtime often affected

  • lots of anxiety and fear around bed time

Define regression

Engaging in behaviors characteristic of an earlier stage of development; usually normal and temporary

• Very common defense mechanism

Give some examples of regression

• Older child might regress by becoming more clingy, not wanting to go to school or daycare

• Child might have temper tantrums full of sadness/anger/just a burst of emotion

• Child might want to sleep with the surviving parent

• Child doesn’t want to do things they could previously do for themselves

• A very young child might regress back to the thumb sucking habit

• A very young child (2/3 yr old) might “forget” toilet training

What regression behaviors normal?

Yes

Describe regression behaviors

Normal and usually transient (temporary), these are manifestations of grief.

How should regression behaviors be handled?

Adults shouldn’t act in either extreme, these should not be punished because these are not intentional and these should not be coddled or be fed into this too much.

• Use this behavior as a signal that the child needs more time with caregivers, when a child gets more care and support these behaviors go away by themselves.

what time period do children typically regress to?

The time period before the person died

Regression is a very common ________________

Defense mechanism

Why is regression psychologically valuable?

• It allows the child to go back to the time when the person was alive

• It’s a way for the child to elicit more care from others

Define hyper maturity

opposite of regression; acting older than age

What does wolfelt call hyper-maturity?

“Big man/Big woman” syndrome

When may hyper-maturity be more pronounced?

When a parent of the same sex dies

Hyper maturity is another reason that grief gets carried throughout _____________

Childhood

Why is hyper-maturity psychologically valuable?

• The child has a desire to protect their parent

• It elicits a lot of praise from adults

• The child can feel close to that lost parent by doing the things they did

Describe the grief manifestation of care-eliciting behavior (acting out behavior) in children

• Thinking more about children a bit older even into their teen years in this manifestation

• Historically people would say children are acting out as if it were a conscious choice, it typically isn’t just like how regression isn’t a conscious choice for younger children

Give some examples of care-eliciting behavior

• Falling grades

• absenteeism

• tardiness

• truancy

• not getting along with others (adults, other kids, this can turn into fighting)

• might at its extreme be deliquent behavior

Why is care eliciting behavior psychologically valuable?

• Getting in trouble with your parent or adult is preferable to feeling ignored

• Children often do things that elicit care and attention from adults because they want care while they’re grieving

  • These behaviors are a way to exert control

• Very normal part of grief response that we should offer compassion, often transient or temporary. This is a cue that the child needs more care and attention.

• If these behaviors persist it needs clinical help as it may be clinical depression

Describe the grief manifestation of fear/anxiety/panic in children

What specifically creates fear among children? Grief exacerbates these normal fears

• Personification

• Magical thinking

• Bedtime reality (dark room, alone, boogeyman, going to sleep and not waking up)

• When people say to young children everyone dies and then not explaining any further (making it too simple, not explaining who it typically happens to)

• Don’t forget that sometimes children lose friends and siblings and this loss can be the first realization that children can die.

Describe the grief manifestation of anger in children

• Specifically in age 5-9 this can relate to personification

  • Boogeyman

  • Jesus as death

  • Death as a person chasing people around

• Thoughts that the person could’ve avoid the personified death, why didnt you out run th boogeyman? Why didn’t you outsmart him?

• Anger comes from this that the person wasn’t good enough to get away from death

Describe the grief manifestation of guilt in children

• Specifically from ages 5-9 this can relate to magical thinking

• Children begin to think “something I said, did, or didnt do caused this person to die”

• Creates feelings of guilt