Children's Health Children's Health Basics

Helping Grieving Families

Summary & Participants

When someone-- a sibling, parent or grandparent-- passes away, it's often hard to know what the youngest members of the family are going through. Children may seem oblivious or indifferent, but they are probably going through intense and confusing emotions for which they need support. Join our panel of experts as they discuss the psychology of children in times of grief.

Medically Reviewed On: July 10, 2008

Webcast Transcript

LISA CLARK: Thank you for joining us for this webcast. I'm Lisa Clark. When there is a death in the family, everyone takes an emotional hit. But the impact can be especially intense on children, who not only have to deal with the immediate loss of someone they love, but they are also vulnerable to many fears which may never occur to an adult. For the next few minutes we'll take a look at how you can help a child who has been devastated by loss, whether it is your own child or someone that you care about.

Joining our discussion this evening is Benyamin Cirlin. He is a clinical social worker and the executive director for the Center of Loss and Renewal in New York City. He is also the coordinator of bereavement services at Jacob Perlo Hospice of the Beth Israel Medical Center. Welcome, Benyamin. Also joining us is Patty Donovan-Duff. She is a registered nurse, and she is the director of the Bereavement Center of Westchester, where she has also done a lot of hospice care. Thank you so much for being with us as well, Patty.

I have a hypothetical question. If you are not a family member or not an immediate family member to a child who has experienced loss, and you see that their surviving parent is so overcome by grief-- or perhaps both of their parents, they've lost a grandparent-- that they are really not aware of or addressing the child's feelings, how is it appropriate to step in so it's not an overwhelming thing, to the parent or to the child, to help them start to tap into what their grief means?

PATTY DONOVAN-DUFF, RN: They say that there are two things for good grieving for children. One is a safe environment-- physical, emotional, psychological. The second is the presence of a caring adult other than maybe the real immediate family-- an aunt or an uncle, a coach, a teacher-- and the presence of that person in their life when they need to talk is very important for children. In our work with children, we will very often say, at the end of the eight weeks of the group, "Who's out there that you can talk to? Ask that person to be that special person." Adults don't know how to help children, very often. They don't know how. Sometimes we say to the kids, "Maybe you should go and pick a person and ask that person to be the person that you'll call when you're having a tough time, or you want to remember your mom or your dad or your grandmother." I think it's very important. I think the presence of adults in children's lives when they're grieving is very important.

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