Supporting Young Children Experiencing Loss and Grief

A Practical Guide

Deborah Price, Clair Barnard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000286069
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Supporting Young Children Experiencing Loss and Grief provides early years practitioners and Key Stage 1 teachers with practical advice to support children experiencing feelings related to change and loss.

Using key case studies and interviews with children and adults, this important text uncovers best-practice techniques to help children talk about their feelings. Covering more than bereavement, it considers the loss children feel when they move home, undergo a change in routine, experience their parents' or carers' separation, move settings or lose contact with a close friend, nursery practitioner or teacher.

Providing answers to the key question of how to support children who have feelings of loss and grief, Supporting Young Children Experiencing Loss and Grief is a must-read text for all those working with young children in caring environments who are looking to provide children with the tools they need to talk about their emotions.

1 Introduction

Welcome to the introductory chapter to this book. In this chapter we outline some of the main themes of the book, explain how to use the book most effectively and look at why we think considering young children’s feelings of grief and loss is important. You do not have to read this book from front to back, beginning to end, in sequence, but it could be useful to start with this chapter as it provides an overview and can also direct you to different parts of the book that may be of specific interest to you.

The early experiences of childhood determine how the child will feel about self and the world, and because coping with loss affects future capacity for intimate relationships early experiences are the foundation on which the child builds a healthy orientation toward life and living.

(Wolfelt, 1983, p. 1)

Our interest in this important topic began when we were commissioned by the local authority to deliver one-day training sessions in managing feelings of grief and loss with young children for local early years practitioners. We found that many of the people who attended the training had signed up because of a recent or an upcoming crisis in their setting, and many of them were managers. There were myriad reasons why they were in the middle of a crisis, or just about to be in one. It might have been bereavement – for example, a parent or relative of the child dying. In some cases it was a member of staff dying or a child in the setting with a terminal illness. It could be that there was a child in trauma at the setting because of other forms of loss – for example a pet dying, parents separating or moving home. There are innumerable reasons why a child might feel loss. Whatever the reason, they were at our session hoping to find ways and means of supporting the children, parents/carers and staff teams in their setting. They were mainly managers hoping to be able to cascade our training down to their colleagues. Because of staffing issues we rarely had more than one person per setting attending the training, and we thought it was unfortunate that the ideas we introduced and the discussions that we had could not be more widely integrated into settings. We were always concerned that it was a lot to ask one member of staff to remember and reproduce a whole day’s training to the rest of the team.

The reason we have written this book is because we want people to have this information to hand so that they can prepare for a crisis, support themselves through a crisis or – and this is our number one priority – include this work within the day-to-day activities in the setting. By collecting all of the information that we delivered during the training in one book we hope that practitioners, parents and carers working with young children will feel supported in this important work. We also feel strongly that including grief and loss in the normal activities of a setting or a home will normalise those feelings and assist children and adults to move towards accepting them as part of everyday life.

We are not saying that settings should include a gloomy or sad focus to their days in order to make sure that they are prepared for children’s strong feelings of grief and loss. We are simply suggesting that sadness and expressions of sadness are not feelings to shy away from or to be considered inappropriate for very young children. Whether we like it or not, children will have these feelings and will express them in a multitude of ways. The adults around them will also have those feelings, and children will sense this. Ignoring this dynamic is problematic and can lead to the feelings being expressed in difficult ways and at later times; this is something we explore in this book.

Children continue processing a major loss over time. As they grow older and more mature they will have new questions to ask. They may become interested in other aspects of the loss: ‘Was it because Daddy didn’t love me that he didn’t want to live here any more?’ ‘Do you think Mummy died because I didn’t tidy my room?’ Adults need to listen out for changes in the child’s way of thinking and to be willing to follow them in their philosophical thoughts about how things are.

(Dyregrov, 2008, p. 67)

Case study 1.1

Billy (three years old) is very upset because his uncle is ill and he has heard his mother say that his uncle is going to die. He often spends time with Maria (three years old) as their mothers are friends and socialise together. Billy is sitting in the book corner crying and as you walk towards them to comfort Billy you overhear Maria laughing at him and saying ‘Well when Uncle Jonny dies his eyes are going to pop out’; this results in Billy screaming and hitting her.

Reflections

This is a very sensitive situation as Maria is now also crying because Billy hit her, but he is completely overwrought as a result of her words. At this point you need to briefly comfort Maria and then hand her on to someone else to take away from the book corner or direct her to another activity or area. You then need to spend some time with Billy and reassure him. You can talk about his uncle and how much Billy loves him and also how much his uncle loves him back. You cannot make any assurances here that his uncle won’t die, as you don’t know this. You can be with Billy in his sadness that this might happen and also his fear. If Billy wants to talk about the eyes popping out you could say that Maria doesn’t know what will happen and you will find out why she said that. You can’t say anything else until you have spoken to the parents, as at this point you don’t know any details about the uncle. The important thing here is to let Billy cry about his sadness over his uncle and reflect on the love between them.

You then have to talk to Maria and spend some time with her. You do this by sitting next to her when she is playing with Duplo; you start playing with her and help her to make a house. You then explain that Billy is very upset at the moment and just needs people to be gentle with him and not laugh if he is crying. You ask her why she made that comment about the eyes. She starts laughing again and finally tells you that her older brother was watching a zombie film and when she went into his room in the middle of it and asked to watch the film with him he shouted at her and told her that when you die your eyes pop out and laughed at her when she cried.

You then reassure her that zombies don’t exist and that this was just a silly film. You ask her what films she has seen and whether any of them are real or not and you have a discussion about this. You also say that her brother was trying to frighten her and that it’s best if she watches her own films. You talk about what a good friend she is to Billy and how she can show him that.

These are just possibilities; there are a range of ways that you could approach this situation and here we have suggested just a few. You probably would want to discuss this with your manager, and also with Billy’s and Maria’s parents, so that they are aware of what has happened. This also opens communication regarding the unwell uncle as the mother might not be aware that this is something that the nursery might need to be kept informed about in order to support Billy. This might be because she is not aware that Billy knows anything about the situation, or the effect that this news has had on him. This would be a good time for her to talk honestly to Billy about his uncle.

In this book we look at how, as adults, we want young children’s lives to be a time of happiness and joy. This is admirable, and we support this. However, we also note that this cannot be the case all the time, and we have to allow this and acknowledge it. It can be heartbreaking for an adult to see a child’s tears and feel helpless to comfort them – we make this point many times in this book and talk about some of the ways that we can be with a child in their sadness rather than trying to suppress it because it upsets us. Case study 1.1 illustrates this clearly. Billy’s mother might be very upset about her brother’s illness, but may think that she is successfully concealing this from Billy in order not to upset him and because he is so young. In fact, he does know that she’s upset and has overheard something of what this is about. Because he doesn’t know all of the details and hasn’t been properly informed, he is alone and confused in his sadness. Billy’s mother thinks that she is helping him by keeping him away from the situation, so she thinks she has his best interests at heart.

We are not saying that, at three years old, Billy needs to know all of the details of his uncle’s illness. The sharing of information always has to be age appropriate and needs to be led by the child.

We make some practical suggestions throughout the book for how to include this work about talking about feelings within a setting or a home. It could be something very small, like asking children to make a face or hold up a picture showing how they feel and giving equal credence to sad or upset feelings as well as happy ones. In this way children feel that they have permission to be sad if that’s what they feel. If we are too quick to distract and mop up tears then we are telling children that these are not valid feelings and that the adults around them don’t want to see them. How often do we tell children ‘Don’t cry?’ This might be said with very good intentions, but the message is the same: sad faces are not welcomed here. As adults we have to ask the difficult question: is this for the children’s benefit or for ours? Do we want to spare their pain or our own? We examine this crucial and challenging question further in Chapter 3, which focuses on examining feelings.

When examining loss and grief we look at the wider world around the child and our expectations of them. In Chapter 3 we also ask you to think about culture, gender and class and how they affect the ways that we interrelate with children in this field. As well as that, we examine how your own experiences of grief and loss will impact on your interactions, and how this is all woven together.

Underpinning all of this are theories of grief and loss, and these are examined in Chapter 2 as we feel that it is useful for you to be able to contextualise your reactions to children’s feelings and put them into a theoretical framework.

One of the issues we highlight in this book is that a child’s feelings of loss could be around something that an adult would consider minor and hence they fail to understand why the child has such a depth of feeling over an issue that they might think is trivial. We also note that this expression of grief could be linked to an earlier experience of loss that the child hadn’t been able to fully express at the time. For example, a child might have experienced a grandparent dying in a limited way because their parents may have attempted to shield them from their own feelings of grief and loss and had thought that the child was unaware of the sadness in the home. That child then loses a precious teddy bear and their reaction to this is deep and profound, which to an adult might seem disproportionate to that loss. In fact, the child is continuing their grieving process for the grandparent. As adults we should have an awareness of unexpected sadness we experience ourselves that is not about that particular incident but relates to a bigger sadness: an example of this is the tears we might shed at a romantic film when in fact our sadness is because we are missing a love that is in our past.

Our purpose in writing this book, and our hope for you, the reader, is that you will be able to access ideas, resources and support that you can cascade down to your colleagues in your workplace before the point when you or your setting is in crisis. Another way of using the book is to discuss some of the ideas in group training; we have included some ideas for such training sessions in Appendix C. You might use this book as a resource to give to parents, or you may suggest it as reading for staff members.

Because of the practical emphasis of this book, Chapters 4, 5 and 6 are very much practice based. In Chapters 4 and 5 we look at case studies of situations that may happen in a setting and reflective points of how practitioners might react to these occurrences. Additionally, case studies are included in each chapter in order to ensure that the reader has a concrete and early-years related idea of how grief and loss may impact on a setting. Chapter 6 focuses on resources and how best to use these within a setting to support this work. Appendix A provides suggestions for resources.

Although in Chapter 7, and in the case studies throughout the book, we look at situations where children and adults are in crisis, we also note that not everything is a crisis situation. It is much more effective if a setting is prepared for this kind of work and if it is a cornerstone of their practice.

Our wish is that every setting is ready and able to support children who are experiencing grief and loss, and that this is part of their everyday practice. It is important to recognise the healing quality of tears and to allow feelings of grief and loss to be part of the day-to-day life of the setting rather than trying to deny them. Stopping the outward expressions of children’s feelings of loss does not make those feelings go away. It simply suppresses them, and we think this means that they will come out in other ways. Perhaps this will be at another time in the child’s life (often during adolescence), or in aggressive or overly timid behaviours. Children might regress to comforting behaviours that they had previously left behind, such as thumb sucking, rubbing material or not...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Theories of grief and loss
• 3 Feelings
• 4 Case studies with children
• 5 Case studies with adults
• 6 Resources and settings
• 7 Crises and disasters in terms of loss and grief
• 8 Ways forward and conclusion
• Appendix A: Book list
• Appendix B: Online resources
• Appendix C: Delivering training sessions on loss and grief in early years to staff teams
• Index