Grief

Tips when supporting grieving children:

1. Help your child understand what has happened: When speaking to your children about the death, it is encouraged to use words such as ‘dead’ or ‘died.’ Other terms may confuse the child and or make it harder to understand what has happened.

2. Allow children to express themselves: With younger children, it is more important to just listen more and talk less.

3. Give them a place to express themselves. Remember there is no ‘right’ way to deal with grief, everyone handles it in their own way.

4. Provide lots of resources, read stories, etc.

5. The 4 C’s : Children need to be reassured:

They did not CAUSE the illness or death

They cannot CATCH the illness

They Cannot CURE the illness

Someone will take CARE for them