The Child Going Through Bereavement Age 5-6 Of Losing A Sibling

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

Unplanned transition is the hardest for the children to cope with. As discussed by Stokes et al. (1999), a sensitive, responsive support needed more than ever when it was recognized that children and young people had experienced an unplanned transition such as bereavement. Whenever a child or adult is faced with traumatic life events, particularly the loss of a loved one, the ability to survive the emotional and physical pain associated with the event will be influenced by the individual’s level of personal resilience. Focusing entirely on their needs enables children to express their feelings, acknowledge their loss and develop skills to cope with their changed lives.

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

Each year thousands of teenagers experience the death of someone they love. When a parent, sibling, friend, or relative dies, teens feel the overwhelming loss of someone who helped shape their -fragile self-identities. Caring adults, whether parents, teachers, counselors or friends, can help teens during this time. If adults are open, honest and loving, experiencing the loss of someone loved can be a chance for young people to learn about both the joy and pain that comes from caring deeply for others. There are many common reactions to trauma, grief, and bereavement among teens. First of all, shock and denial. Feeling numb, stunned and dazed are healthy and normal reactions. Often, it is difficult to “take in” information. The grieved may

Death is a universally experienced phenomenon. In the United States alone, over 2.6 million people die each year (Center for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2015). For practitioners, it is of utmost importance to better understand the process of grief to develop better interventions for bereaved individuals.

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.

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

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.

Death and dying is a natural and unavoidable process that all living creatures will experience at some point in life, whether it is one’s own person death or the death of a close friend or family member. Along with the experience of death comes the process of grieving which is the dealing and coping with the loss of the loved one. Any living thing can grieve and relate to a loss, even children (Shortle, Young, & Williams, 1993). “Childhood grief and mourning of family and friends may have immediate and long-lasting consequences including depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, behavioral disturbances, and school underachievement” (Kaufman & Kaufman, 2006, p. 61). American children today grow up in cultures that attempt to avoid grief and

Grief is the act following the loss of a loved one. While grief and bereavement are normal occurrences, the grief process is a social construct of how someone should behave. The acceptable ways that people grieve change because of this construct. For a time it was not acceptable to grieve; today, however, it is seen as a necessary way to move on from death (Scheid, 2011).The grief process has been described as a multistage event, with each stage lasting for a suggested amount of time to be considered “normal” and reach resolution. The beginning stage of grief is the immediate shock, disbelief, and denial lasting from hours to weeks (Wambach, 1985). The middle stage is the acute mourning phase that can include somatic and emotional turmoil. This stage includes acknowledging the event and processing it on various levels, both mentally and physically. The final stage is a period of

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

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.

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

It is a fact of life that people die, and when they die, those left behind can have a hard time reconciling the fact that they are gone. The process of dealing with the grief that accompanies the loss of someone important is especially hard for children and teenagers to deal with. If parents don’t communicate with, or support, their children throughout the grieving process and help them manage their grief in a healthy manner, there can be significant repercussions. The importance of explaining, and helping children cope with grief is highlighted in the novel “Love Letters to the Dead” by Ava Dellaira and through my own experiences of dealing with loss. In “Love Letters to the Dead” we see how Laurel’s mother abandoning her and, not helping Laurel deal with her grief, causes Laurel to believe her mother blames her for her sister's death. We are shown by the author this miscommunication between Laurel and her mother around her sister's death and Laurel’s subsequent grief negatively impacts Laurel as she tries to overcome the loss of her sister. Furthermore, Laurel’s father inability to help her deal with the loss of her sister causes Laurel to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms that lead Laurel into a multitude of dangerous situations. In my own life, my parents did not help me understand the grief that accompanied the loss of my aunt, and as a result, I was unable to overcome the grief that I was dealing with fully. Additionally, when I faced loss for the second time, I was unprepared and did not know how to ask for help. Consequently, after not being given the tools to handle the grief correctly, I developed mental illnesses that impacted my everyday life, and I could not ask my parents for support, which is destructive in its own way.