Memories That May Hurt Their Friends More

The child who died is considered a gift to the parents and family, and they are forced to give up that gift. Yet, as parents, they also strive to let their child's life, no matter how short, be seen as a gift to others. These parents seek to find ways to continue to love, honor, and value the lives of their children and continue to make the child's presence known and felt in the lives of family and friends. Bereaved parents often try to live their lives more fully and generously because of this painful experience.

If a child’s close friend moves away they may feel upset that their friend has left, and maybe anxious about making new friends. As an adult you can encourage them to play with other children and get them to take part in activities with other children so they can try and make new friends, and as for them feeling upset you can comfort them and try get them to have fun so it c slip their mind.

“What has changed is our way of coping and dealing with death and dying and our dying patients.”(Kubler-Ross 109) In “On the Fear of Death” by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, she discusses the changes that have happened over the past few decades. The author believes that these changes are responsible for the increased fear of death, the rising number of emotional problems, and the greater need for understanding of and coping with the problems of death and dying. The author says, “The fact that the children are allowed to stay at home where a fatality has stricken and are in included in the talk, discussion, and fears give them the feeling that hey are not alone in the grief and give them the comfort of shared responsibility and shared mourning.” (Kubler-Ross 110) She believes that allowing the children to stay and be involved in the grieving stage prepares them gradually and

A loss of a loved one, especially a child, is a painful event, and devastating to any parent, therefore, it is important to have a strong support system to obtain strength, peace, and comfort. Grief is a process that could not be hurried, and must be permitted to happen ("Grief of Parents," 2005). Grief could be experienced not just through a loss of a loved one, but also in a diagnosis of debilitating disease, or even the loss of a limb. During these difficult times, Swanson’s Caring Theory could be applied.

The purpose of this study is to review literature related to the effects of parental death on children. Children who experience the death of a parent is considered an at risk population for psychological, behavioral, and social problems. There are many factors relating to the way children adjust to parental death. Some of these factors include the age of the child,

Beth, the mother from the movie Ordinary People, represents many of the complexities of parental bereavement. In the movie, Beth presents as distant from her surviving family members and appears to manage her grief ineffectively. However, Beth’s experience of losing a child is one of the most profound losses an individual may experience. The literature describes parental bereavement as “more intense, prolonged, and complex than other patterns [of bereavement]” (Whiting, n.d., slide 7). Thus, contextualizing Beth’s loss (i.e., the unexpected death of a child) is an important part of understanding Beth’s expression of grief. This discussion will explore unique to bereavement within the parent/child relationship. Specifically, this discussion

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

Throughout the world, many would argue that one of the hardest challenges people face is losing someone in their life. The loss of a loved one can leave you in an intense and immensely depressing state and everyone reacts different with how they cope with it. However, they still go through the same process of losing someone which is denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Even though there are people who can endure loss and be able to move on, there are others like Edward Taylor and Anne Bradstreet who struggle for a long period of time. When Taylor's and Bradstreet’s grandchildren or children died, it caused them to become extremely sad, have a hard time in carrying out their daily activities, and they began to doubt their beliefs.

Everyone faces hard times when loosing a loved one; I personally had to deal with such a situation recently, with the passing of my mother from lung cancer only a few short years ago. What I encountered during the process was that support can make a world of difference. When individuals have social and family support during such hard times, they often can reach a healthy balance with tragedies much faster and with less time spent in agony.

In my experience, my best friend lost her mother about 2 years ago. That was a very tragic for her, with the fact that her twin babies were just one year old and were starting to bond with their grandmother.

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

Mothers are, as put by Scheper-Hughes, “victims of social and institutional neglect”. Figures of religious prominence encourage mothers to remain indifferent and resigned to infant mortality. It is even seen as wrong or dangerous to cry over the death of a child, as weeping keeps the child from reaching heaven. Funerals for infants are hasty and unceremonious at best, and oftentimes, there is no funeral and no prayers are recited for the deceased child. On death certificates, cause of death is left blank and unexamined. With a new philosophy of “hope and joy”, mothers are distanced from their dying children more. Dying children are not baptized, and the mothers of the deceased are not comforted. (However, the church maintains its stance on contraceptives and abortion.) Consequently, the routine of child mortality continues.

An “off-time” family life cycle transition is a non-normative event that happens outside the expected life cycle and may cause trauma or a conflict to the family of the child with the disability. These events that happen are known as unexpected transitions which are experienced at an unanticipated or unusual time during the life cycle transition of a family who have a child with disabilities (Turnbull, Turnbull, Erwin, Soodak, & Shogren, 2011). For example the demise of an older person may be considered a natural part of the life cycle because as one grows old, it is expected that the individual will die eventually. Though, death at whatever age may cause families to struggle emotionally as the passing of a loved one is still hard to bear and accept. But though in grief, the family celebrates the life of a person who has lived to a ripe old age as they leave behind numerous memories which are shared among the family members. These memories have the effect of comforting the family and relieving stress. But the passing of a child is hard to accept, causing a lot of stress to the parents and the family Turnbull (2011), as such a death is generally regarded as cruel twists of fate. Meaning, this was not expected in the family cycle. The parents of the deceased child will be in denial, face heartbreak and loneliness. Society might look at the passing of such a child with disabilities as a relief to the

According to Foundation for a Mindful Society (2015), we can come to appreciate the necessity of sadness, how it grounds us and keeps us from becoming superficially cheerful and glossing over real pain. I believe it is a great idea to let a person grieve, and be there when they are ready to talk and acknowledge the pain.

It would be very difficult for a parent to lose a child in a sudden accident. The family may experience traumatic grief or complicated mourning which may require counseling or professional help. The grief response following sudden loss is often intensified since there is little to no opportunity to prepare for the loss, say good-bye, finish unfinished business or prepare for bereavement (Dyer 2003). When a death occurs following a chronic illness family members have a chance to prepare themselves for the loss and except the change that will result from the death.