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Experiencing death as a child essay
The effects of loss on children
The effects of loss on children
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Recommended: Experiencing death as a child essay
How Children Deal with Death Death is hard to deal with for everyone, but for children especially; they view death in various ways at different ages. At these ages children need help and guidance from their parents. The first step is to help them feel a part of the whole experience, doing this will allow them to deal with the death. The rest is counciling and (quick step number two;) the parent’s main part should be to listen while the child talks, doing this is very helpful for understanding the child. This is also very benneficial because it gives the child a chance to get his/her feelings off, this relieves certain tensions. So in order to help children get through the grieving process age and maturity level of the child must be concidered, and council should be centered around the limitations of those statistics. Infants are one group, with no real understanding of death but they can react to the way their parent/s react/s to loss. When the physical love that a parent can provide is suddenly missing, the child does have fears of separation. Infants are also very tuned in to their parents’ feelings of stress and sadness. In relation to these feelings there might be noted physical expressions such as: crying, crankiness, rashes and clinging. How one can handle this is to talk with others about one’s concerns with family members, or even the funeral director; he/she has a good chance of knowing what to do. Seek support and help from family and friends. Parent/s should try spending more time each day with the child to ensure a secure feeling for the child. (Wolfelt) I have learned on the Discovery channel that children who are physically touched develop better and more fully, so loving them patting them and holding them often does worlds of help. (experiment covered by the Discovery channel) For children ages two and a half to five; this is the stage at which the child is likely to confuse death as a reversible event like sleeping. Or the death of someone close to them could be viewed as punishment for something they have done; make sure they know this is not so. Children of this age are egocentric and believe everything that happens to be caused by them or that they will “catch” death and die as well. A child might also believe death to always be result of violence, this belief might have come from what they see on TV. Behaviors to look for are: the child showing little concern for favorite TV shows, going
D1: I have decided to look at a 6 year old going through bereavement. Bereavement means to lose an individual very close to you. When children go through bereavement they are most likely to feel sad and upset about the person’s death. Children at a young age may not understand when a family member dies. Children may not understand bereavement. For example a 6 year old’s father been in a car crash and has died from that incident. Death is unpredictable and children can’t be prepared for a death of a family member as no one knows when someone is going to die or not. Unfortunately every child can experience bereavement even when a pet dies. It is important that we are aware that effects on the child so we can support them in the aftermath.
In the fictional story of The Dead Child the teacher is informed by the children that one of her pupils passed away the night before, in the children’s minds this is something that occurs frequently. We can assume from the story that it takes place when Tuberculosis was rampant in Canada, isolation had a large impact on the mortality rate because of the lack of access to medical services. Isolation also had a large impact on how the teacher and classmates dealt with the death. The
Kids are more afair of death than adults are. Kids do not underdstand death like adults. In one of our class discussions , Dr. Bradshaw told our class a story about how he went to Yale New Haven hospital (I think) and Dr. Bradshaw stated that a young boy who was a terminal cancer patient drew him a picture of a tank going after him. When Dr. Bradshaw told our class this , it was then clear to me that a child does not understand death as well as adults. But there are also ways a parent can help a child with breavement like buying the child a pet and when that pet dies, explain to the kid whay the pet died and that it can not be replaced. “childeren are capeable of experiencing greif” (DeSpilder 359). Childeren tend to be more quiet when dealing with a death of someone close. Childeren like to forget the sight of a dead one and try and move on without talking to anyone.
It is not easy to cope after a loved one dies. There will be lots of mourning and grieving. Mourning is the natural process you go through to accept a major loss. Mourning may include religious traditions honoring the dead or gathering with friends and family to share your loss. (Mallon, 2008) Mourning is personal and may last months or years.
Death and Grieving Imagine that the person you love most in the world dies. How would you cope with the loss? Death and grieving is an agonizing and inevitable part of life. No one is immune from death’s insidious and frigid grip. Individuals vary in their emotional reactions to loss.
children faced with the trauma of loss, they are also faced with a myriad of other
Active listening, this is not just listening with your ears. You need to show appropriate feedback repeating some of what has been said, maybe in the form of a question. Engage with the child you are talking to and answer/respond when required. Children copy behaviour of others so you need to be the best role model you possibly can be. Children need clear boundaries and limits within the school. They need to know that certain behaviour/actions are unacceptable and will not be tolerated. These boundaries are often outlined in a Home-School agreement that sets out what the school will accept/do. What the parents/careers are expected to follow and also how the child is expected to
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
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.
Dealing with a grieving adolescent is hard, but as with most human beings, the loss is
Let us first look at adults and grieving. Here the relationship with the decedent is a primary factor in the grieving process. When parents experience the loss of a child, it is considered the “most difficult of deaths” (Leming & Dickinson, 2011, p. 492). The cycle of life dictates that the older shall die first. When this cycle is broken with the death of a child, adults are not prepared for the death. The hope for the future is threaten within the family, and thoughts of what should have been, what will be missed linger. Mothers will talk more about the death while Fathers will keep busy with tasks in an attempt to avoid expressing their feelings (Leming & Dickinson, 2011, p. 492). There may be marital discord as w...
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
The death of a child is the most devastating loss a parent can ever experience. When a parent losses a child, something in the parents die too. The loss not only destroys the parents’, but also leaves an emptiness that can never be filled. The expectations and hopes of a future together are all just a dream now. Burying your child defies the natural order of life events: parents are not supposed to bury their children, children are supposed to bury their parents. Their life is forever changed and will never be the same. The parent not only mourns the loss of the child, but also mourns the loss of their child’s future. Parents will often visualize what their child could have been when they grew up or think about all the potential they had.
Seeking medical help can be a great help, counseling, and doll play therapy is also helpful. Providing constant love and support to the child and reassuring them that it was not their fault.
Young children, up to age five or six, are the most confused and the most disoriented by their parents’ separation. They often fear they are going to be abandoned by their parents, which causes great anxiety. The loss of a parent is extremely sad to a child of this age because they feel that their needs are not going to be attended to as well as they had before, when their needs are not going to be attended to as well as they had before, when their family was together. Many of the children in this group are worried that they will be left without a family or their parents might have money troubles and they will be deprived of food and toys. These thoughts that children of this age have cause them to have feelings of guilt, being unloved and fear of being alone. Some children will be extremely sad and show signs of depression and even sleeplessness. They might feel rejected by the parent who left and think that it is all their fault, that they weren’t good children and their parents stopped loving them. They also sometimes have increased tantrums, or may cry more easily than usual. Children at this age may develop physical complaints, like headaches, or stomachaches due to this depressing situation and time they are going thr...