Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/helping-children-grieve/5015920/
Amy is four years old. She came to school today angry at her mother who told her that her daddy has gone to sleep and will never wake up. Amy knows she is wrong, because everyone who goes to sleep wakes up. Robert is three years old. Suddenly, he is having accidents during rest time. Keeshon is four years old. She constantly plays like she is going on a trip to visit her grandfather in heaven. All three of these children are experiencing the grieving process.It is important for directors to provide support, for both the child’s teacher and the child’s family during the grieving process. In order to provide this support it is imperative that the relationship between grief and development be understood. The director also needs to know how to assist the child’s teacher in working with a grieving child.
There are four components relative to a child’s understanding of death: the irreversibility factor (what happened cannot be undone or redone), the finality of the situation (it is permanent), inevitability (all living things die), and causality (causes are unrelated to the child or his/her behavior). How a child understands these components is directly related to the developmental ...