My Life Reflection

Death is apart of our world, we have people being born, and dying each day. When we are personally affected by death this is the point in time where we start to question God an ask him why he has taken someone we loved so dearly way from us and this world. Everyone is affected by death at one point in their lives either it being by losing a grandparent, a mother or father or a sibling, to even a close friend. Death can either be expected or very unexpected. After losing someone if it was prepared or not; there are many emotions that one goes through, they also have to confront death and go through the healing process.

Death at any stage in life is personal and holds different meanings to different people. Society places a great deal of meaning on death based upon age, situation, and their personal experiences and beliefs. The viewpoints of death and dying in early childhood are limited; however, children have a basic understanding of death by the age of two through their own observations of family members (Berger, 2008). Children who are dying often fear death as they do not have a fully developed concept of dying and associate death with abandonment (Berger, 2008). At this life stage, it is important to have guidance from his or her parents to gain a better understanding of death and dying.

Children do not understand death in the same manner as adults. Adults understand death as a natural part of the cyclical nature of life, but children cannot grasp this. There are four subconcepts which create this difference between adult and child: irreversibility, finality or non-functionality, causality, and inevitability (Bonoto 2013, page 48).

Preschool children may not fully understand what death is, but they will notice a difference in the family “routine”. They either may be emotional, through crying or displays of anger, and they can withdraw from other members of the family (The Jason Program, n.d.). By age six, although the child may seem not to be affected by the

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

In a very different vein, Aleksandar Hemon's essay about his infant daughter's terminal illness is a difficult and unnerving reading experience. Most stories about illness package grief up in a retrospective way, but reading Hemon's account, you feel like you're muddling along with him. His inability to understand what's happening and subsequent psychological coping mechanisms are raw and painful but also have a surreal logic to them; left me feeling weirdly inspired about the resiliency of human psychology. A Child’s Isolating

In March 2008 my son Christopher died suddenly from a ruptured brain aneurysm. Chris was an otherwise strapping 19-year-old freshman at Loyola University New Orleans. He had his whole life ahead of him. If you lose your parents, you are an orphan. Lose a spouse and you become a widow or widower. But the English language does not have a word for parents who lose a child; we seldom take the time to contemplate the devastation until it happens. In the awful, bewildering hours after Christopher’s death, my wife and I were asked to consider donating his organs. Thankfully, Chris had answered for us: Just the week before, he had innocently mentioned that he wished to be a donor. Our decision to donate was simply an affirmation of our son’s generosity.

Although the phenomenon of grief is a normal, healthy response to the death of someone loved, for children it is a traumatic ripping away of everything they have known. As a result, everyday life becomes utter chaos while familiarity and comfort vanish, emotionally propelling the griever into uncharted territory with innumerable questions and fears. When those uncertainties are not dealt with appropriately, grieving children tend to imagine circumstances that may be far worse than reality” (Pond, 2013, p. 113).

Death comes in many forms. Along with death comes grief, a very common emotion that friends and family often feel after the death of a loved one. Too often people try to avoid talking about death and how dying works. In my opinion, chapter nineteen does a great job explaining not only the process of death but the process of grief as well. In this paper, we will discuss my three favorite points in this chapter; death across the lifespan and how death differs at each age, confronting death and coming to terms with it, and grief.

Children acquire their understanding of death and means of coping with it from the significant adults in their lives. While adults accept death as a biological process, children view it differently, unless they have experienced the death of a significant person in their lives (Hawener, Phillips., 1975). In a research article by Hawener, the interactions between children and adults are explored in relation to a child’s grieving process. Until the age of nine, children do not see death as a biological process. The critical factor which determines how well children cope with death is the quality of their interactions with adults. The article does a great job of explaining grief in children by introducing readers to the grieving cycle and its impact

The 14th chapter of the textbook discusses the topic of talking to children about death-related issues. My gut reaction is that I believe this is a great chapter, because it is useful and informative, as well as an extremely important topic for CLS to use in our scope of practice.

Life is a collection of experiences, opportunities and tests that shape you and your story. My story is valuable and worth telling, but just not well known. Through life, I’m learning from the failure and gaining from success. Through this journey, I’m discovering who I am by reflecting on my past. I’m examining my present to realize my struggles and strengthens. And I’m figuring out the person I want to be by exploring my hopes and dreams.

Learning is a universal aspect of everyday life; a fundamental development that changes through an individual’s life span. However, every individual learns in different ways throughout their life. I believed learning was standardized, and if someone was not learning at the same pace, they were not trying hard enough or they had some sort of learning disability. I have gone through my life thinking I just did not learn fast enough and/or perhaps I had a learning disability. With that in mind, it is something that impeded me from growing intellectually for many, many years, and is still omnipresent. As I read through my results from the Solomon-Felder Index of Learning Styles questionnaire, I reflected to my early school years and how useful this information would have been.

When starting this project about reflecting on my best self. I thought that I was going to know what my family and others would say about me when question, but I was very surprised and also very pleased with what they had to say. I was able to talk to people I haven’t spoken to in a while.

breathe or function at all and would be an empty shell for one cannot operate or function without it.