Similarities Between Grieving Children And Adult Griefs

Bereavement and loss - The loss of a loved one such as a parent, sibling, grandparent or friend can turn a child’s world upside down. Grief can bring all sorts of emotions, upset, sadness, hurt and anger because they are gone and, fear because the child may be afraid of other loved ones dying too. A child can be affected by grief for a long period of time, and this may impact on their emotional and physical

Loss is a phenomenon that is experienced by all. Death is experienced by family members as a unique and elevated form of loss which is modulated by potent stages of grief. Inevitably, everyone will lose someone with whom they had a personal relationship and emotional connection and thus experience an aftermath that can generally be described as grief. Although bereavement, which is defined as a state of sorrow over the death or departure of a loved one, is a universal experience it varies widely across gender, age, and circumstance (definitions.net, 2015). Indeed the formalities and phases associated with bereavement have been recounted and theorized in literature for years. These philosophies are quite diverse but

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

When a loved one dies, children handle their grief differently than adults, but they still often grieve very deeply in their own way. Much of the grief children experience comes from the fact that children often lose friends to a sudden death such as a traffic accident. The loss of older loved ones may be more anticipated, such as

Young children are often impacted by the experiences that they have at that time. When the misfortune of losing their father occurs, the children are hit the hardest. Between the complex understanding of death and religion at the same time, they seem to be, at the very least, confused. Their mother being the strict Catholic she is, trying too hard to kill two birds with one stone, she tries to tie religion and death in one lesson, which neither of them understand, “...when you get old, you can be sick and not get well again. And if you can’t get well again, then God lets you go to sleep and you can’t see people any more” (54).

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.

When a parent dies, it’s always painful for a child. And a parent’s death by suicide—especially, research shows, a mother’s suicide—has an even more painful and potentially disturbing effect. Those who lost a parent to suicide as children were three time more likely to commit suicide than that of children with living parents. Bereavement is one of a range of difficult life events that children and young people may face. Among a nationally representative sample of children aged 5 to 16, 3.8% had experienced the death of a parent or sibling (Fauth et al., 2009).

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

The loss of an adult child is devastating just as is the death of a younger child. However, there are differences as to how both the parents react to such losses. In this case the paper focuses on loss of an adult child and how the parent copes with the situation. The paper will give insight on the situation that precedes the demise of the child such as trajectory of illnesses which is more recent. A review on how the parents deal with the loss after it occurs will be discussed as well as the various issues the parent faces. The impact on the parent after the child’s loss is also featured. There will be a summary of the findings then finally a section that will give the implications of the research and its importance to the field of psychology and an improvement in human beings

Unfortunately I have heard many of these myths presented to those I love at a time when they were experiencing a great loss. I do not believe any of these statements. A myth is defined as a widely held but false belief or idea explaining a natural phenomenon. "Children grieve like adults" is a myth I have never heard before. As a child I was told that I was unable to grieve because I could not comprehend the situation. This was a very upsetting occurrence based on ignorance. I am now able to understand that one does not need to express sadness to miss someone who has passed. A myth I noticed missing was " You can have another baby". While this is often true it is not something an individual wishes to hear while grieving.I believe these myths

This essay explores several models and theories that discuss the complexities of loss and grief. A discussion of the tasks, reactions and understanding of grief through the different stages from infants to the elderly, will also be attempted.