and “When will Grandma come play with me again?” may surprise adults. No matter how ap- propriate the news of the death, young children will continue to ask questions and make obser- vations that may startle adults. Regardless, they deserve a response. Sometimes those questions can be hurtful to hear and can be difficult to respond to. You can try to anticipate what some of the questions may be by thinking through what the situation might look like to your child and have a response ready so that you are prepared, and it may provide less of a shock.
Children in this age group may engage in com- pulsive retelling of the traumatic event in an effort to gain some mastery over it. They may unexpectedly blurt out some aspect of the trauma like, “My Aunt Karen was killed in a car crash” and “My mommy cries sometimes.” Although unexpected, these statements offer good opportunities to gently probe into the child’s feelings and discern the purpose of such an announcement. It may be that the child only needed the sense of mastery that comes with verbalizing it, or that there is some underlying feeling or question that needs to be addressed.
5
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease