Helping Bereaved Children Understand, Grieve and Deal with Death

Childrens vari adequate personalities and attitudes determine their respective cognitive or psychological ground of close, sort of grief, and coping mechanism. For the purpose of ascertaining these three stages that bereaved kidskinren undergo, this paper identified and discussed the polar perceptions of infantren almost such loss, their endorseations of sorrow and how p bents, teachers and counselors mint help. The specific situational examples and experiences of bereaved children were presented in order to have a cle atomic number 18r and acceptable picture of how such tragical pull downt affects the lives of helpless(prenominal) yet unpretentious children.Helping Bereaved Children Understand, Grieve and necessitate with Death Accepting the wipeout of a loved one is elusive yet telling, explaining and making a child understand the loss is a more challenging task. Just as the adults or parents of the children are transaction with their own grief, it is perceived that the younger ones should be spared from the homogeneous agony. This is for the reason that children, with their flimsy minds and emotions, find it more difficult to cope with death. However, non allowing a child to understand, grieve and cope with the trauma of death is risky.Children should be supported and not be left alone when they deal with death. It is during their search for answers about a lost life that children most destiny the help of others. It is too during this sentence that they should be allowed to express their emotions and be reassured by the family that death is a natural aspect of life. Children will be inevitably affected by a death of a family member, friend, or manyone within the community. Childrens impression age, psychological understanding, emotional expressions, and coping mechanisms chamberpot be protected by love from people around them.Children, generally, have the distinct trait of keeping back their true feelings, while many of them are mor e turn over to express their emotions. However, adults must take note that irrespective of this positive or negative quality, children who suffer even more profoundly also need to understand and cope with death. Childrens Cognitive correspondence of Death Death is a very hard experience for the younger ones to accept or corroborate. fit to Doka (2000), children fight with a mixture of thoughts such as inevitability, universality, nonfunctionality, and irreversibility of death. Following the death, children would even-tempered be dealing with apprehending what their immature minds can exclusively think and handle. They outgo through the stages of cognitive, spiritual, emotional and social development (Doka, 2000). Doka (2000) explained that younger children are tend to perceive death based on their own limited view. Thereafter, developing children tend to show sympathy. It is also during this stage that they are more subject of accepting and understanding the situation and collect themselves. However, Doka (2000) noted that younger children manifest a short feeling span. This is because they can prolong their intense emotions provided for a limited period (Doka, 2000). Fighting with death is not only confined to children who are in dangerous circumstances or to those who are psychologically or emotionally unstable. Nowadays, it is a proven fact that volume of children have directly or indirectly experienced death or death-related events even at their archeozoic lives. An article from the Encyclopedia of Death and dying(p) give tongue to that curiosity regarding death is a portion of childrens average compass point of development and search for information about the world.The same article undertake an example about a dead fish floating in the water. This scenario can grab a childs interest but at the same time can be a troubling experience. If analyzed, the childs inquisitive inherent aptitude automatically desires to learn more. However, the sa me child is likewise conscious of the manageable danger of the situation. That is, if a living animal can die whence other living things such as humans can also die. Childrens exposure to death is usually not only attached with some degree of anxiousness but also of elation.This is because of the idea that the discovery of something warm such as death has rattling led them to lifes many mysteries (Children and Adolescents Understanding of Death, 2007). The same article proved that there are a herd of affirmed studies of death consciousness among children. The article utilise cases involving a fuck off and son as an example to show that even with a child as young as sixteen-month- mature can be aware about the concept of death. The childs awareness about death came as soon as he saw that the caterpillar, which he has been admiring, was crushed by a passerby.The bambino anxiously reacted about the death and eventually refused to return to the attitude. After less than two yea rs of being born unto this world, the same child can already and clearly connect life with death (Children and Adolescents Understanding of Death, 2007). With an early introduction to education, preschool children are inclined to view death as safe short-lived and correctable. Crenshaw (1999) said that children believe that their deceased loved ones are hardly somewhere and it is still possible to earn or speak with them.Confusion sets in among preschool children especially regarding the details of death. This is because of the childrens innate nature of thinking about things in an exact or factual manner. Crenshaw (1999) added that children ask questions such as can a dead person still breathe even if interred in a coffin and how can a dead sure-enough(a) man who is buried be with God in a place like heaven at the same time. These queries manifest the preschoolers difficulty in relating intangible philosophical and religious ideas into their very limited realization of death ( Crenshaw, 1999).Younger grade-school children between the age of six and eight usually perceive death in a personalized and imputable manner that oftentimes connotes fright (Crenshaw, 1999). Their fear is reflected in the things they call up or invent, such as when they imagine that a dreadful ghost in a skeleton habilitate is following them. Childrens fear of death causes them to protect themselves. They use a defensive measure mechanism that death is limited and only happens to physically weak people, the elderly, gamey people, and people who are slow in running and are uneffective to escape the ghost or spirit that hunts them (Crenshaw, 1999).During this stage, children dream a chaw of such frightening depictions of death. As they get older by the year, they wee a significant mark in their psychological growth that allows them to realize and accept that death is a true happening of life (Crenshaw, 1999). At age nine, they buzz off to acknowledge death as a prescript act ivity that happens to all living things and that it is permanent and unavoidable (Crenshaw, 1999). Crenshaw (1999) noted that this is the start of such realization of death but it is until children reach their adolescence that they are able to strengthen this understanding.The National Association of School Psychologists or NASP (2001) affirmed the Crenshaw bill and stated that children pass through developmental stages in understanding death. It is initially significant to acknowledge that every child has his or her distinct understanding of death. This cognitive ability is based on a childs developmental degree, psychological ability, quality or attribute, spiritual inclination, acquired instruction from parents and others around, information from the media, and death-related events in the past.The association, however, said that there are general circumstances that can be used to understand how children feel and cope with death. These considerations are seen during the stages fr om being infants and toddlers, preschoolers, early master(a) school, middle school and high school (NASP, 2001, p. 2). NASP (2001) further explained that when someone is dead, infants and toddlers get wind that adults are in sorrow yet they do not actually understand what death is and its impact and importance for them.Young children in preschool manifest defence mechanism of death by perceiving it only as a temporary withdrawal and a reversible situation. Nevertheless, children between five to nine years old begin to understand that death is permanent. They also recognize that some events may lead to death (NASP, 2001). Preschoolers and even early grade-schoolers connect the causes of death with some supernatural imaginations and real life events such as the September 11 bombing of the World Trade Center (NASP, 2001).Because of the 9/11 tragedy, they are able to grasp the idea that if an airplane hits a twist, its passengers and those in the building will possibly die. Thus, these children envision that being in tall facilities is fatally dangerous. It is during this stage, however, that children are unable to draw the difference between what they visually see and the actual happenings around them (NASP, 2001). Moreover, they view that death occurs to others, not to themselves or even their immediate family members (NASP, 2001).