Support guide
Children & death
Barbara Monroe, The Child Bereavement Trust Death is inevitable in the world in which children live and grief is a normal and deeply felt human emotion. However, death can be a subject that children receive very little information on and if directly affected by it, can leave them with painful and confusing thoughts and feelings. Sometimes children fail to receive help because adults think they will not understand death, and want to protect them as much as they can. The way in which we help children to deal with a death will have a profound impact, both on their future development and their ability to cope with this and other losses throughout their lives. If children are excluded from grief on the grounds that it is too distressing for them to be told the truth, they may become puzzled by what is going on, and form a taboo subject attitude towards death, which could carry on into adulthood.
Young children see themselves as the centre of their own world and in the event of a death close to them, it’s common for them to believe they’re at fault. How do we prevent such ideas forming? How on earth does one begin to explain to a child what death is? How can they be helped through the grief they will be feeling if the death was of a parent or someone else close to them? The key to addressing these difficult issues, if at all possible, is to acknowledge the shared loss and to grieve together, dealing honestly and gently with the child concerned.
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