This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
This Thursday is National Children's Grief Awareness Day.
Death and dying and grief. These words and topics stop people in their tracks. When I'm at a public event promoting awareness of children's grief, people turn and walk the other way to avoid talking about death and bereavement.
We all experience grief, dying and death. It's time to talk about them. Especially with children, who have no clue how to talk about a loved one's death, let alone how to process and live with their feelings.
In the not so distant past, people believed that children didn't grieve, that "kids are moldable and resilient" and "if it's not in front of their faces, it won't affect them." But children do grieve and, too often, alone, with harmful results.
By the time children in America turn 18, one in seven has experienced the death of a parent. Even more, by age 15, one in four has experienced the death of a loved one. They need support and direction.
For kids, grief is a new, unpredictable emotion. As they try to deal with what they are feeling, their grief may not look like grief many adults are accustomed to. Children's grief could look like big energy or seething anger or dropping grades or no longer eating. Younger children may quit potty training or return to baby talk.
I've worked with kids who didn't understand that "Mom lives with Jesus now" meant that Mom died and wasn't coming home ever again. Young kids might not even understand what dead means, let alone abstract concepts like heaven.
Death is scary. We avoid topics of "death and dying" in public or at social events, but to ignore a friend's or family member's sorrow is hurtful. Some assume that saying nothing is better than saying the wrong thing, yet silence says you don't care. Especially with children, ignoring their grief, even from a well-intentioned desire to return to normal, reinforces the idea that their loved one didn't matter and that their sad feelings are not OK.
Children need to know that it's OK to feel sad that their loved one is gone, even years later. They need to be able to share a memory without seeing a horrified or even concerned look on another's face.
Ignoring these big feelings can later have major repercussions; 86 percent of kids in the Boston detention system suffer from unresolved grief.
I often hear, "My husband died 10 years ago, why are my kids doing this now?" Or "Each of my kids is dealing with this so different!" There is no normal timeline for grief, and grief is different for everyone.
As they grow and develop, children often "regrieve." When a child begins a new development stage, they understand death in a deeper, more complex way, and in the process they may regrieve an earlier death.
Death is scary and hard, but the facts are clear. Kids do grieve, and they need to be heard. They need to understand what happened to their family and what their feelings are. Only then can they process the pain and learn to live with their lifelong grief.
Although the pain of a loved one's death eases over time, the grief remains. We owe it to children to help them learn how to live with it. How can we help? Listen without judgment. Help them understand the death in words they can understand. Don't put timelines on their grief; let them grieve, when they need to, how they need to and for as long as they need to.
Jill Macfarlane has spent the past 14 years helping grieving children at The Sharing Place in Salt Lake City.