Accompanying children in their grief
By Anja Gehrke-Huy
As a social educator and companion for dying and grieving people, she is less concerned with whether to speak with children about death than with how to do so in a child-sensitive way.
Children encounter death in daily life, in nature, in community, fairy tales and media. When adults leave death unspoken and unseen, children often develop frightening fantasies. The author supports children, parents and educational teams in developing an open approach that reduces fear and connects children with the natural cycle of transience.
Small rituals of farewell in everyday life form the basis for later coping with larger losses. Transitions from kindergarten to school, seasonal projects, parting rituals and farewells to familiar people can help children gain security in handling change.
Children often have spontaneous and very concrete questions. Adults may explain rockets, storms or how grain becomes flour, but often evade children’s ideas about dying and death. The first comfort adults can give is permission to be sad.
Children and adolescents in grief have rights: the right to honest information connected with the death of the person they mourn, the right to ask questions, and the right to companions who do not hide behind false certainty. When adults do not know an answer, honesty can itself become a form of trust.
