Lecture
Grief in children, as in adults, can pass through several phases or stages. These phases help us better understand the process of experiencing grief in children. Here are the general phases of childhood grief:
Shock and denial: At first, children may experience shock and denial of the event that caused the grief. They may not believe what has happened, and may look for confirmation that it is only a dream or a mistake.
Confusion and aggression: In this phase, children may display confusion and aggression. They may ask many questions and express displeasure or anger about the loss or the traumatic event.
Sorrow and sadness: Gradually, children begin to become aware of the loss and to experience sorrow and sadness. This phase may last for varying lengths of time depending on individual characteristics.
Acceptance and adaptation: Over time, children begin to accept the loss and find ways of adapting to the new situation. They may develop coping strategies and return to a more ordinary life.
Integration and recovery: This is the final stage, in which children integrate the loss into their life and begin to recover. They may retain the memory of the lost or traumatic event, but it ceases to have such a strong effect on their behaviour and emotions.
It is important to note that children may go through these phases in a different order or skip some of them. The duration of each phase may also vary depending on individual characteristics and the specific situation. It should be remembered that support and understanding from adults play an important role in helping children cope with grief.
John Bowlby, a well-known psychiatrist and specialist in
loss and separation in children, describes 3 phases of childhood grief,
similar to the 3 phases of mourning in adults. He calls the 1st phase
the phase of protest, when the child rejects and resists the idea of
death and loss. The 2nd phase is the phase of disorganisation, during
which the child gradually comes to realise that the lost
loved one will never return. The 3rd phase for children, as for
adults, is the phase of reorganisation, when the process of
accepting the loss and the final farewell takes place. During this time,
children return to life again, although they still sometimes
become upset when they encounter something that reminds them of
their grief. Children grieve for a shorter time than adults, if
their grief is not hindered or obstructed.
The physician George E. Williams identifies 5 phases of childhood grief,
which correspond to the 5 stages of grief according to Kübler-Ross.
The first phase of grief is denial, or isolation, the 2nd phase is anger,
and unlike adults, children express
anger more openly after a loss. For example, children may suddenly
and unexpectedly become angry at the surviving parent or sibling, or they may openly express
hostility towards the deceased. The 3rd phase is the bargaining phase, when children
try to change reality, for example by promising “I will
be good”. The 4th phase is depression, when children's anger turns on
themselves. During mourning, children, like adults, may experience such
symptoms as nightmares or other sleep disturbances, weight loss,
or loss of appetite, physical pains or ailments. The 5th phase is resolution,
the final phase of mourning, which occurs when the child finally accepts
the death.
Signs of regression may appear in the behaviour of a grieving
child. After a loss, children may develop behavioural reactions
typical of an earlier age — enuresis, thumb-sucking, whining,
clinging to adults. Such regression is usually a temporary phenomenon. Again,
allowing expression will prevent these symptoms from becoming fixed for a
long period of time.
Unsuccessful grief in children is characterised by clear denial,
painful reflections on the loss months after
the event, and personality changes. A child who is
obsessively preoccupied with fantasies of reunion, or a child who,
months later, refuses to accept that a loved one has really
died, has not managed to cope successfully with grief. Depression must
be taken very seriously when it comes to children. Symptoms
of depression in children may be expressed as withdrawal, apathy,
episodic psychosomatic stomach or head
aches, nightmares, or the loss of friends as a result of
aggressiveness or withdrawal into oneself.
Children heal much faster than adults. A single open,
honest conversation with a child about death can often help them
cope with their grief.
The phrase "Children forget quickly" can often be heard in family
conversations. In fact, adults tend to resort to this saying when they
are afraid to face children who have lost loved ones, and to support them. But in
reality, a child's experience of grief practically, exactly repeats
the experience of grief in adults. However, children's reactions manifest themselves differently and often
differ from what adults expect of them. Therefore, believing that children
do not grieve as intensely as adults, we often proceed from our own,
adult, experience. The thought that children who have lost loved ones experience
exactly the same emotional shocks as we adults do leads us to
helplessness and inadequacy in our relationships with children, and becomes for us
a heavy burden.
Another important factor that may contribute to
the mistaken notion that children lack the experience of grief
and emotional pain is the confusion, on the one hand, of experiencing feelings
and thoughts, and, on the other hand, the ability to express them. Because young children
are unable to express their feelings the way adults can, we
think that children are not capable of such strong feelings and thoughts as are
characteristic of adults.
Children who have lost a family member experience strong and
often new-to-them feelings; children are frightened by the fact that they cannot
explain their reactions to experiencing grief, and so they need
adults to help them make sense of what is happening.
The whole world becomes alien to a child when he experiences intense grief
over the loss of someone significant to him. The self-concept collapses, and this sometimes
leads to a loss of strength. Adult help is needed so that the little
person can regain their footing, so that their faith in life returns.
A shattered self-concept needs to be restored. The child should
be helped to clearly grasp the significance of what happened before and after
the trauma they experienced, and what is new, different from their previous
life. Images of the past and the present are two parts of the self, and they must
be united, to restore the integrity of the self-concept.
For both adults and children, grief is an individual
experience, but there are several expressions of grief common to all
age groups. How a child reacts to a misfortune that has occurred is explained not
only by their personal characteristics, but also by their age. Grief itself is a
lengthy process, and the child gradually works through it, developing
psychologically and cognitively.
A girl who lost her mother at the age of four will
conceal her most varied thoughts until she
turns about 9; the shock of the loss will gradually pass, as
the child grows older. The factor of rapid intellectual
(cognitive) and psychological development, which distinguishes children from
adults, is often underestimated. For instance, a 12-year-old girl who had lost
her father several years earlier said that when she was little, she often
dreamed that her father would come back to her, but now that she has grown older,
she already knows that her father has died and will never come. Yes, she still misses him,
longs for her father, but she is also sad without those pleasant fantasies that did not
come true. These dreams cannot protect against difficult thoughts for long, and
the girl must find new ways of coping with them.
How children experience misfortune depends on their personality and age.
Contrary to what some people believe, there is no lower
age limit to a child's experience of grief. For a child who does not yet
have sufficient command of speech, but has already lost one of their loved ones, grief
takes on an exclusively physical and emotional character, becoming
a preverbal experience. The child cannot overcome their misfortune by
talking it out: they have neither their own words nor "other people's". Loss and grief at an early
age destroy the soul from within, for example, through physical experience, without
touching the intellect — even when the child later, having grown older, learns
to use logic and speech to overcome their problems. A very
young child, experiencing grief, as it were becomes detached from the outside world.
The physical absence of a person significant to the child leaves in them
a psychological void. If a child suffers the loss of a loved one
at an older age, thoughts and feelings appropriate to that stage of development
arise in them, but the urge to isolate oneself from the world becomes, after
some time, a characteristic trait for all people with a similar experience.
Psychologically traumatised children will always subsequently be more
sensitive to separation than others.
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