It's Okay to Cry A Parent's Guide to Helping Children Through the Losses of Life

Introduction When Loss Comes Calling "I got an empty spot in my tummy. Food doesn't fill it up." Susan, age 4 "There's a big hurt in my insides." Geniene, age 3 "I don't feel nothing. And I don't want to." Jimmy, age 8 "I don't like to play anymore. I have bad thoughts." Tom, age 6 "My food doesn't taste good. I don't like to eat." Sonya, age 6 "I'm sad all the time. It's like I don't live in my house anymore, but I do." Phil, age 7 All of these children have experienced a loss. The particular missing entity may not seem like much of a loss to an adult. But in the life of each child, it was a momentous event. For a child, grief is always about losing something 100 percent; present or future, it's completely taken away. Will you be able to help a childyour childthrough that kind of loss? I know youwantto. And I believe you'll have the skills to do it after reading this book. But it won't be easy, primarily because it's not an easy thing to move into our painful feelings rather than flee them. In fact, just talking about the topic raises our anxiety levels significantly. I recall several parents discussing their difficulties in talking about death, not just with children, but with anyone. Listen to their comments: "It makes me anxious. I'd rather avoid it. And I don't want to make others anxious or sad either." "When I talk about it, I start to cry. I don't like that. Crying can make others cry, and then I feel responsible as well." "You know, as I think about it, why should any of us know what to say about death? No one I know talks about it." "I don't want my children to get all morbid. I want them to think about life, not death." One of our difficulties resides in the fact that children today are sheltered from the normal transitions of life. Death is a stranger, an intruder, not a normal part of living as it was a century or two ago. It used to be that several generations lived in the same house or at least close by. The youngest children learned about birth, illness, old age, and death because these things all happened in their home. Other generations included children who saw their siblings, cousins, and friends die from diseases such as diphtheria, smallpox, polio, and even the flu. They were around their grandparents so much that they watched them age day by dayand perhaps helped in their care until they died. And everyone in the family mourned. Together. Often the local pastor conducted the viewing and funeral in the home. If the body was there for a viewing, it probably stayed overnight. Can you imagine your child (or even yourself, for that matter) sleeping in the same house with a dead body? What used to be so normal would probably be considered "dysfunctional" today. Many children have never seen chicks born, or puppies or kittens, not to mention a horse or calf. They don't know that some animals are stillborn and never make it. They eat their chicken, turkey, and beef, giving no thought to the fact thatsomething had to die. For other generations, though, death was as much a part of their existence as life. Death happened all around them, so a child grew into the knowledge of death in his own way and his own time. There was less mystery about it. Yet today our children have become a grief-fWright, H. Norman is the author of 'It's Okay to Cry A Parent's Guide to Helping Children Through the Losses of Life', published 2004 under ISBN 9781578567607 and ISBN 1578567602.