How Does Death Affect Children

Studies have shown that parental loss effects the adolescence stage in negative ways. Feelings of loneliness, despair, guilt, and anger are common amongst those that are bereaved adolescents. There has been extensive research on grief and mourning within adults, but very little for adolescents, especially those that are parentally bereaved. This literature review will cover some of the topics of depression amongst adolescents, as well as other subjects.

Grieving parents say that their grief is a lifelong process, a long and painful process..."a process in which [they] try to take and keep some meaning from the loss and life without the [child]" (Arnold and Gemma 1983, 57). After a child's death, parents embark on a long, sad journey that can be very frightening and extremely lonely- a journey that never really ends. The hope and desire that healing will come eventually is an intense and persistent one for grieving parents.

One of the main factors is age. A child is going to grieve a lot differently than a grown adult. Children tend to think that they caused certain events to happen. They might believe that their father or mother died because of something they may or may not have done. As a health care professional, is important to not only be honest with the people involved but also comfort them. A child needs to know that it was not their fault, but they also need to be aware that whoever passed away is not coming back. Another factor that effects the way people grieve is their relationship to the deceased. Personal beliefs also influence how people grieve. Knowing about the factors that might impact the way a person grieves is important so that a health care professional is able to help people through the bereavement

The last step is reorganization and restoration. This phase does not occur quickly. Here people begin to sort out suspicions and attempt to identify what was lost. There is a sense of release, renewed energy, more socialization, better judgments and more stable eating and sleeping habits. Readaptation to the loss does not mean forgetting. Adults can begin to restore emotional well being by acknowledging feelings, asking for support, reestablishing routines and reaching out to others. They can care for the needs of children by listening to their feelings and fears, providing information to clarify what occurred and whether it can affect their lives and by reestablishing routines that will comfort and reassure. There are many factors that influence the reaction of a child when death is announced to them. Factors include, the way the news is

Marked difficulty accepting the death. In children, this is dependent on the child’s capacity to comprehend the meaning

After interviewing the social workers Hope and Hodge (2006) found that they had observed similar patterns regarding the factors that affect the adjustment of children who lost a parent to death. Boys tend to show externalizing behaviors whereas girls tend to show internalizing behaviors due to the lost of a parent. They found that the cognitive level rather than the age of the child affects their adjustment more. Therefore younger children and preadolescents seem to have more difficulty adjusting to the death of a parent than adolescents. The results did not support earlier findings that sudden death present more difficulty adjusting than expected death. Most of the participants reported that sudden and expected death is equally traumatic to children. The participants also said that the adjustment of the caretaker is important for a positive adjustment for the children. The caretaker must be able to grieve while supporting the child’s need to grieve. This study shows that children of different ages and genders react different to the death of a parent.

It is believed that children do not experience grief until one has been through adolescents and can distinguish thoughts and feeling from emotions. According to Glass (1991), a child can grasp the notion of death during early childhood; and can begin to grief as early as six months (Willis, 2002). Willis (2002) believes from a moderate perspective that children begin to understand death and grieve approximately at three to four years old. Many times, small children are affected by loss and their grief is often underestimated. Children between the ages of three to five years old fall into stage one. During stage one; children view death as a going away from one place to another. It is believed that the deceased person has just relocated and is living in a new location. Stage two consists of children between the ages of five to nine years of old. In this phase, death can be fixed. It is thought that if one

Nader and Salloum (2011) made clear that, at different ages, children differ in their understanding of the universality, inevitability, unpredictability, irreversibility, and causality of death. They believed, despite the increasing understanding with age of the physical aspects of death, a child may simultaneously hold more than one idea about the characteristics of death. However, factors that complete the determining nature of childhood grieving across different age groups may be a difficult task for a number of reasons including their environment in means of the support they have available, the child’s nature in terms of their personality, genetics, and gender, coping skills and previous experiences, the developmental age, grieving style, whether or not therapy was received, and the relationship to the deceased (Nader & Salloum, 2011). Crenshaw (2005) found that according to our current understanding of childhood traumatic grief and normal grief, thoughts and images of a traumatic nature are so terrifying, horrific, and anxiety provoking that they cause the child to avoid and shut out these thoughts and images that would be comforting reminders of the person who died. The distressing and intrusive images, reminders, and thoughts of the traumatic circumstances of the death, along with the physiological hyper-arousal associated with such re-experiencing, prevent the child from proceeding in a healthy way with the grieving process (Crenshaw, 2005). McClatchy, Vonk, and

Grief is more than emotions it’s a feeling of loss and have physical components as well. These feelings may be frightening to a grieving child.

Each individual sees death differently, but what is more fascinating is that most of us have experience the feeling of loss when we were young and the way we think now than back at that age is different. When I was a preschooler, I remember that I was not fazed by the loss of a grandfather, but when my dog died, I cried

Grief is experience in five stages denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Denial is the way to tell them that this grief being felt is not even happening now. Anger is another factor of grief that cause people to lash out at others for their own emotional state. Bargaining is when a person states what if things were down differently to possible yield a different outcome. Depression is when people are sad, regretful, quiet and needing a hug. Finally, acceptance allowing the grief to take over and coming to grips with reality. Experiencing grief is not what we plan on, but we will all experience it eventually. Especially when it comes to losing a parent. All these stages are present, with the question of why lord, why now, take someone else who is not deserving, cry, mad, isolation and then acceptance. This person is needed and love by so many to be taken at the moment when they are needed, but it is Gods will.

The passing of a loved one is a universal experience and every person will experience loss or heartache, at some point in their life. Some people obviously appear upset, some do not, grief is individual, dependent on; age, gender, development stage, personality, their normal stress reactions, the support available, their relationships or attachments, other death experiences, how others react to their own grief around them (Thompson & Hendry, 2012).

The age at which a child reaches an adult understanding of death is roughly around eight

The thing that I will be researching the most is death and how people cope with it. Especially, the death of a child. This is a very sensitive subject and different people react different ways. I want to get an accurate picture as to the best way to grieve and to heal from this so that I can make my character as realistic as possible. It is one thing to lose a child but, it is something totally different when you’re the reason why your child is dead. The question that I need to answer is, how does the death affect her mentally and what steps must she take to ensure that she forgives herself and move on with her life.

As a child, everyone remembers having to get shots. My first memorable experience with shots came at age four. I didn’t understand why I needed shots. All I knew was this sharp thing was going to be stuck in my arm and it was going to hurt. Before I got my four year old shots I received my first set of vaccines, vaccines that people are now claiming are dangerous. Research shows that child death rates have been reduced by more than half since 1990 due to vaccinations (Asia News Monitor).