Raising Our Children to Be Resilient

A Guide to Helping Children Cope with Trauma in Today's World

Linda Goldman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN:
  9781138415294
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135933043
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Education Counseling
• Index: Social Sciences

In this timely and much-needed book, Linda Goldman addresses the many frightening events that impact our children by providing the reader with a seamless mixture of theory and practice garnered from her extensive experience in the field. Raising Our Children to Be Resilient includes trauma resolution techniques and case studies, discussions of the respective roles played by parents, teachers and the larger community as well as additional resources for those in a position to help children who have been traumatized. The goal of Raising Our Children to Be Resilient is exactly what its title promises: to help children through their pain and confusion and guide them into a flexible and compassionate adulthood.

PART I

Grief and Trauma: The Impact on Children

CHAPTER 1

Children Living In a Complex World

TRAUMA • TERRORISM • CHILDREN’S GRIEF • FEAR DEVELOPMENTAL UNDERSTANDINGS • MAGICAL THINKING • TRAUMA REACTIONS • CHILDREN’S VULNERABILITY • STRATEGIES • RESEARCH

From the moment of birth every human being wants happiness and wants to avoid suffering. In this we are all the same.

The Dalai Lama

Grief, Trauma, and Their Many Complications

We often ask ourselves “What can we do to help our children in today’s world?” It becomes clear our mission is to provide a sense of safety, protection, hope and optimism amidst adversity. We have created a very complex world for children, often leaving them with its fear, its confusion, and its uncertainty. Our youth live in a world that broadcasts sniper attacks, terrorists’ threats, violent school shootings, sexuality, war, and gun-related issues as quickly as it takes to click the remote on their TVs or touch the mouse on their computers. The possibility of war, the risk of violence, the danger of biological harm, and the threat of nuclear destruction have become all too common. Our goal is to hold the vision for our children that they will not only make it through difficult times, but can actually become stronger and more resilient.

GRIEF DEFINED

Grief is not just about death. “Grief is defined as a normal, internalized reaction to the loss of a person, thing, or idea. It is our emotional response to loss” (Goldman 2000, Life and Loss, p. 25). Childhood losses range from the death of a loved one to divorce or abandonment; loss in the environment due to moving or change in family structure; loss of self-esteem from physical, emotional or sexual abuse, neglect or deprivation; or family separation from Dad being sent to military service or Mom being imprisoned.

Children often have secondary losses during a grief experience that may include the loss of their daily routine, the loss of skills and abilities in school and other activities, the loss of the protection of the adult world, and the loss of their perceived future. Everything that existed in the past and present and had been hoped for in the future may suddenly and dramatically have been changed. If not directly, then vicariously, most of our children have experienced many of these losses through an intimate media view of traumatic public events.

Grief work can be messy, and children can be inundated with waves of feelings when they least expect them. Listening to a song on the radio, talking to a friend, or reading a story can evoke sudden thoughts and feelings that may engulf the grieving child. These “grief bullets” can result in a sudden release of tears, anxiety, regression, or withdrawal, with many children unable or unwilling to express their experience.

Children’s Developmental Understandings of Death

Children’s understanding of death changes as they develop, as explained by Piaget’s cognitive stages of development (Ginsberg and Opper, 1969). Gaining insight into children’s developmental stages allows predictability and knowledge of age-appropriate responses.

PRE-OPERATIONAL STAGE (USUALLY 2 TO 7)

At this stage, the child conceptualizes death with magical thinking, egocentricity, reversibility, and causality.

Young children developmentally live in an egocentric world, filled with the notion that they have caused and are responsible for everything. Children’s magical thinking causes them to feel their words and thoughts can magically cause an event. Five-year-old Sam screamed at his older brother, “I hate you and I wish you were dead!” He was haunted with the idea that his words created his brother’s murder the following day. Sam’s egocentric perception sees him at the center of the universe, capable of creating and destroying the world around him at will.

Alice, at age four, displayed her egocentricity when she relayed to me that she killed her mother. When I asked how she did that she responded, “My mom picked me up on the night she had her heart attack. If she hadn’t picked me up she wouldn’t have died, so I killed her.” She felt she was the central cause of the death. Talking about the medical facts of how Mom died—her heart condition, smoking, and failure to take proper medicine—helped reduce the common mindset of a young child that she magically caused the death to happen.

Angela, a six-year-old first grader, was very sad after her dad died in a plane crash. She age-appropriately perceived death as reversible and told her friends and family her dad was coming back. She even wrote him a letter and waited patiently for the mailman to bring back a response. Angela’s mom explained to her the following definition of death for young children: “Death is when a person’s body stops working. Usually someone dies when they are very, very old, or very, very, very sick, or their bodies are so injured that the doctors and nurses can’t make their bodies work again” (Goldman, 2000).

CONCRETE OPERATIONS STAGE (USUALLY 7 TO 12)

During this stage the child is very curious about the concept of death, and he or she seeks realistic new information.

Ten-year-old Mary wanted to know everything about her mother’s death. She said she had heard so many stories about her mom’s fatal car crash and she wanted to look up the story in the newspaper to find out the facts. Eleven-year-old Margaret wondered about her friend who got killed in a sudden plane crash: “What was she thinking before the crash, was she scared, and did she suffer?” Tom age-appropriately wondered if there was an afterlife and exactly where his dad was.

At this stage of development kids commonly express logical thoughts and fears about death, can conceptualize that all body functions stop, and begin to internalize the universality and permanence of death. They may ponder the facts about how the terrorists got the plane to crash, wanting to know every detail. When working with this age group, it is important to ask, “What are the facts you would like to know?” and help to find answers through family, friends, media, and experts.

PREPOSITIONAL OPERATIONS, IMPLICATIONS, AND LOGIC STAGE (AGE 13 AND OLDER)

This stage is usually characterized by the adolescent’s concept of death.

Many are self-absorbed at this age, seeing mortality and death as a natural process that is very remote from their day-to-day life and something they can’t control. Teens are often absorbed with shaping their own lives and denying the possibility of their own deaths.

Sixteen-year-old Malcolm expressed the following age-appropriate thoughts when he proclaimed, “I won’t let those terrorists control my life. I’ll visit the mall in Washington, D.C. whenever I want. They can’t hurt me!” One of the best techniques for adolescents is peer support and discussion groups, because they are much more comfortable at this age talking with peers about death and trauma than with adults. Many teen survivors of trauma feel comforted and free to share their thoughts when they are placed in support groups only for other teens who are survivors of similar experiences. Their fear of judgement is reduced and self disclosure increased with a connecting bond to others with comparable experiences to similar events.

The Nature of Children’s Grief

The bereaved child reconstructs the person who died through an ongoing cognitive process of establishing memories, feelings, and actions connected to the child’s development level. This inner representation leads to a continuing bond to the loved one, creating a relationship that changes as the child matures and his or her grief lessens. Silverman, Nickman, and Worden (1992) maintain in their research article, “Detachment Revisited: The Child’s Reconstruction of a Dead Parent,” that it is normal for children “to maintain a presence and connection with the deceased and that this presence is not static” (p. 495). They provide the following categories of connection with a loved one.

CHILDREN’S CONNECTION WITH THE DECEASED

• Making an effort to locate the deceased

• Actually experiencing the deceased in some way

• Reaching out to initiate a connection

• Remembering

• Keeping something that belonged to the deceased.

Roger was 14 years old when he experienced the death of his dad in the World Trade Center. Grief stricken and angry, he suffered over the shocking death of a parent he loved so much. He longed to know exactly what happened to his father, and found the concept of not knowing all the facts and having no remains of his dad extremely difficult. As time went by, Roger realized he n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Grief and Trauma: The Impact on Children
• PART II Working With Kids and Trauma: Home, School, Community
• PART III Coming Together to Create Change
• PART IV Resources and Information
• References
• About the Author
• Index