According to a book called: When Children Grieve: For Adults to Help Children Deal with Death, Divorce, Pet Loss, Moving, and Other Losses which was written by John W. James, Russell Friedman, and Dr. Leslie Landon Matthews, grief can be defined as a series of conflicting emotions due to a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior (James, J. W., Friedman, R., & Matthews, L. L., 2002). The purpose of the book is to help people understand what grief is and to also teach the readers on how to assist grieving children. Also, this particular book sets out to guide the readers to create a lifelong healthy response pattern to grief for children by providing effective methods for dealing with loss. The author discusses myths and common practices …show more content…
The authors explicitly state that parents should never compare losses. A parole provided in the book states that: “I cried because I had no shoes until I met the man who had no feet (pg 8).” This parole teaches children that they must be grateful for what they have. However, this does not mean that the child should ignore their loss because there is someone in the world meant be dealing with a greater loss. No loss should be undermined because everyone deals with losses differently and there is no meter that can measure the amount of pain that one deals with in a particular situation. Thus, regardless of how small the loss meant seem it should be recognized. It should be noted that grief is a highly individualized experience and is extremely personal. How someone grieves depends on many factors that include: personality, coping style, as well as the nature of the loss. The process of grieving does take time, however, parents need to take action to ensure that their children are dealing with the loss in a healthy manner. For instance, parents should try to guide children to deal with their grief actively, instead of ignoring their emotions. Ignoring their emotions will not make the grieving process faster. In reality, the grieving process will be hindered when children are encouraged to ignore their …show more content…
This idea creates tremendous conflict within the child, such as introducing the idea of disposability about valued relationships, dismiss the importance of original relationship, and creates the illusion that the child will have the same relationship with the new person/pet as the child had with the previous person/pet. Also, it is as if replacing the loss could somehow dismiss the pain resulted from the death of a pet. Instead of soothing the children experiencing the loss of a cherished pet, the combination of “don’t feel bad” and the replacement of loss ultimately confuses the child because they will start believing that the being upset is emotionally unacceptable. The combination of these two myths will also teach children that they are able to forget the relationship in which they had with the loved one by developing a new relationship. It should be noted that all relationships are unique and no relationship can be replaced. I am strongly against the idea of replacing the loss, because I recently experienced a lost of a pet and soon after my family got a new bird to replace the previous bird. My younger sister was utterly confused why the new bird was not similar to the old bird, and because she was constantly remembering our previous bird when looking at the new bird. In the end she could not form an attachment to the new bird. Most likely due to the inability of being able to resolve her feelings for
The teacher responds by helping the children in the grieving process. I think the reason why the characters respond in such different manners is the geographical setting. In the short story “The Dead Child” Gabrielle Roy develops the idea that the physical setting has a massive impact on the psychology of the characters. This is shown initially by how the teacher responds to the death of Yolande, which in turn affects how the children respond to Yolande’s death, this reason consequently leads to the fact that isolation is dealt with differently by individuals.
If you take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair. But one time in ten, despair rises as an indomitable force. You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley of Elah, and your eye is drawn to the man with sword and shield and the glittering armor. But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagined” (Gladwell 346). Remote misses are what makes our society full of teachers who through their pain create a better thought-out world; a world of remote misses.
In Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, this is evident through children and their heartlessness, children’s grief at the absence of the relationship with their parents, and their incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them. Children should not be confident in their faith in a mother’s love if it is only seen as something to nobly return for when needed. They have not learnt to establish the appreciation of love with fear of loss. Children do not feel loyal to many things and are always ready to abandon their loved
What is Grief? Merriam-Webster ‘s online dictionary defines grief as, “deep sadness caused by someone’s death; a deep sadness; and/or a trouble or annoyance”(n.d.). This term may have a different way of impacting one’s life depending on geographical location; culture plays an important role in how those that experiences a loss or hardship, cope with grief. After further research, a closer look will be taken at the five stages associated with grief and loss, how Hindu and Islamic Muslim culture deal with death, and how cultural differences may impact the stages of grief.
Individually, everyone has their own methods of dealing with situations and emotions regardless of any positive or negative connotation affixed to them. One prime example of this comes with grief. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying” suggests that there are five stages of mourning and grief that are universal and, at one point or another, experienced by people from all walks of life. These stages, in no particular order, are as follows: Denial and Isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally Acceptance. Each individual person works through these stages in different orders for varying levels of time and intensity, but most if not all are necessary to “move on.” In order for positive change to occur following a loss, one must come to terms with not only the event but also themselves.
children faced with the trauma of loss, they are also faced with a myriad of other
Dealing with a grieving adolescent is hard, but as with most human beings, the loss is
At a stage like this, and feeling this way can be dangerous for a young child’s development. For example, On the ABC show called “The Family”, young Adam was kidnapped during his mother’s rally to promote becoming the mayor. In this situation, his kidnapping affected the whole family in traumatic ways. It effected Adam tremendously because he was only 8-years-old during the kidnapping. Adam would hope that his family would find him. But, as time went on he realized he would never be found (“Sweet Jane” The Family, ABC, Television). Adam was never found because he got sick and passed while he was being held captive. There was another child with him, named Ben, which was also being held captive. Ben was finally able to escape from his captor. When a child loses hope, as Adam did, they never develop a healthy level of hopeful thinking (Wilner, 2011). Another example of a child feeling helpless after a traumatic event is myself. After my aunt passed away, I felt like there was no one to explain or help me with the pain I had and saw (Julien, 2016). My mother, sister, and I would always go to my aunt’s house, in Miami, for the summer. My mother, sister, and I always had a fantastic time with her. Then when I found out she passed, I could not help but to think what her children were going through. When your own mother dies, and you are at a young
Most people do NOT experience the pain and devastation of the death of a child. And I truly hope no parent will ever feel the death of their child because they do not deserve it.
When first receiving news about the death of a loved one, the normal reaction is shock and denial. No one wants to hear that their father, grandmother, or uncle had just died, and according to Kübler-Ross, one way people cope with grief and loss of a loved one is denial. This means that a person may try and hide from the facts and block out what others are trying to say. That person might deny the reality of the situation and have thoughts like, “He not dead, that’s impossible. He was doing fine just yesterday” or “This must be some kind of mistake.” Denial is a defense mechanism that buffers the immediate shock that comes after hearing such news. It is difficult for the person to accept the fact that someone dear to them is no longer with them, so they rebuke the truth and instead choose to avoid any type of encounter that forces them to face the truth and reality. This even extends to avoiding thinking about the situation. Gibran sta...
People cope with the loss of a loved one in many ways. For some, the experience may lead to personal growth, even though it is a difficult and trying time. There is no right way of coping with death. The way a person grieves depends on the personality of that person and the relationship with the person who has died. How a person copes with grief is affected by the person's cultural and religious background, coping skills, mental history, support systems, and the person's social and financial status.
Losing a child is one of the most traumatic events a person can ever experience. This life changing experience is very difficult for parents to cope with. Grief is something we all experience as human beings; we will all lose someone that we love in our lifetime. We all go through the five stages of grief denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and last being acceptance (Bolden, 2007). However, this is arguably not the case for parents who experience the death of a child. Although, parents who have experienced...
The children couldn’t accept what they thought was so horrible. There was a lot of ignorance and carelessness portrayed throughout this short story. The theme of ungratefulness was revealed in this story; The author depicted how disrespecting someone can inturn feed you with information you may wish you never knew and how someone can do one wrong thing and it immediately erases all the good things a person did throughout their
Isolation becomes a key component in that process. Growing up the child will isolate themselves from their family. Families are a constant reminder of the grief that is inside of the child due to the loss of their parent. That heartache is the very thing that the child wants to forget. Therefore, the child will evade all costs to bring up the deceased parent. Whenever I visited my family, I would deter from the conversation whenever my father was brought up into the conversation. Simultaneously, the fear of losing another family member will always be prevalent in the child’s life. Every medical scare will impact the child even deeper, because of this fear. It takes a lot of courage and strength to overcome the grief and the fear of being vulnerable again. With time comes acceptance. Gradually opening oneself up to others will not just make the child face their emotions, but learn to accept the death of their parent. Surrounding oneself with the family that the child once distanced themselves from will make more sense of the emotions coursing through their mind. Sharing stories, looking at old photographs, and even watching old home videos will assist the child to become more comfortable with the topic of the parent and even aid the child to appreciate the time spent with
As a child we lost things as a family like our house. I had to grow up quickly with some of the hardships that arose and I think I lost trust in the adults around me. I then as an adult have lost boyfriends and jobs. If I were to dig deeper into my psyche I would say my reactions were always the same. I experienced emotional pain, more distrust, and a harder exterior. Things seem unfair like everything was out of my control. But when I examine my situations a little differently now that I have gain more life experience, I think it was my outlook. Or how those thought were shaped as a child. Also in my adult years I lost two friends to death. One was an ex boyfriend who had immigrated to Canada after I immigrated to New York. Even thought we were no longer romantically involved we still stayed in touch as friends. He was announced as missing in the news reports and three weeks later he was found and the cause of death was determined a suicide. This was upsetting. I felt sadness and a loss. More importantly I felt I was entitled to my loss as it was a personal relationship I had to him, unlike my grandmother’s which removed me from the situation