Grief in the Young Child
(The following excerpts on early childhood grief
are from an article which appeared in the March/April 1986
newsletter of the St. Louis, Missouri chapter of The
Compassionate Friends. The article was provided by the
Birmingham, Alabama TCF chapter.)
In a study at Children’s Hospital in Boston in 1972 among 73
children between the ages of 6 and 15, findings indicated that
ideas about death were quite different at various age levels.
It was found that preschool children have very little capacity to
deal with something as abstract as death.
Most have no concept of the permanence of death, but view it
primarily as a separation, the dead sibling has gone away.
This idea can lead to problems because the child may fantasize
that the parent(s) didn’t want the sibling anymore, that the
sibling was sent away, that the sibling was bad and, therefore,
he [or she] went away, or that the child was bad and, therefore,
lost his [or her] sibling.
Some preschool children in the study believed there were ways to
make the dead come back to life.
It is important to keep in mind when trying to help young
children that childhood reasoning may lead to these and other
fantasies regarding the permanence of death.
School age children are able to understand the permanence of
death, but still can deal with it only in a very concrete way.
They understand that the sibling is not coming back, but have
much more difficulty dealing with the abstractions about death
that we may try to offer them. It may be particularly difficult
for them to grasp certain beliefs.
It is important to encourage children to share what has been
understood of an explanation in order to find out what they have
actually grasped of the experience.
Children who have a sibling die feel different from their peers.
They are “older” in that they have had an experience
that most of their friends can’t share.
Parents who have a child die are frequently over-protective of
the surviving children. Because they fear that something may
happen to a surviving child, parents often explode in anger
toward a child whom they think has placed himself [or herself] in
jeopardy.
This anger can be misinterpreted by the child as a lack of love.
A better way to deal with the fear parents quite normally
experience may be to share your concern in a calm, reasonable way
with your surviving children. In this way, children can be helped
to understand that our concern for their well-being and safety
arises from our deep love of them.