8 min
Help Your Struggling Child Grieve His Pre-Coronavirus Life | Ep. 31 Connected Families Podcast
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- Parenting
Like many of us, your child might be grieving his pre-coronavirus life. This challenging time can bring strong emotions to the surface in our kids (and in us as parents). These emotions can be signs of a child’s underlying grief. And difficulty in expressing that grief.
Read on to learn why it’s important to allow your children to grieve, and healthy ways to help them process their grief. This article is also available as a video or audio download.
Why is it important for our children to grieve?
We’re hearing from a lot of parents whose kids still aren’t adjusting well to the new challenges of “Stay-at-Home” orders and social distancing guidelines.
Resistance to homework. Power struggles. Tantrums. Withdrawn children.
These are just some of the challenges parents are facing. Add to this list the responsibility of managing school work while trying to work from home and you’ve got a recipe for stress and discouragement.
Parents tell us they’re trying to help their kids adjust but making little progress. It’s a tough load!
Grief is real! Our kids, right along with the rest of us, are dealing with grief right now. It feels unnatural and even overwhelming to lose our normal life rhythms.
Our kids are likely grieving the loss of school friends and other activities. Their lives have been turned upside-down and they are probably limited in their ability to process those feelings.
Many of us can probably relate to this struggling mom:
“Dear Connected Families, I need help figuring out how to help my four year old manage his grief over the loss of his wonderful life at preschool. His teachers at his preschool are so loving and he has wonderful friends there. He misses his teachers and friends and wants to hug them and play with them. I’m doing what I can, I bought new puzzles and books. I’m trying to fill his love tank but he has such intense needs and I have a two year old as well. Please help.”
Are we distracting our children from their grief?
As your child struggles, your first inclination may be to distract him with “happy things.” But you don’t want to teach your child to sweep their feelings aside and pretend they don’t exist. Instead, view this as an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson in dealing with disappointment.
You probably don’t blatantly order your child to toughen up. However, that might be the message your child hears. If you put more energy into trying to relieve your child’s disappointment than you do into validating it, you may drive the mourning inward.
Kids need permission to feel sad. Sometimes kids have big feelings of grief. But when invalidated, those feelings get locked up inside and come out in twisted ways. They can only intensify an already difficult situation.
Kids need to feel safe and be given permission to express their grief.
Like many of us, your child might be grieving his pre-coronavirus life. This challenging time can bring strong emotions to the surface in our kids (and in us as parents). These emotions can be signs of a child’s underlying grief. And difficulty in expressing that grief.
Read on to learn why it’s important to allow your children to grieve, and healthy ways to help them process their grief. This article is also available as a video or audio download.
Why is it important for our children to grieve?
We’re hearing from a lot of parents whose kids still aren’t adjusting well to the new challenges of “Stay-at-Home” orders and social distancing guidelines.
Resistance to homework. Power struggles. Tantrums. Withdrawn children.
These are just some of the challenges parents are facing. Add to this list the responsibility of managing school work while trying to work from home and you’ve got a recipe for stress and discouragement.
Parents tell us they’re trying to help their kids adjust but making little progress. It’s a tough load!
Grief is real! Our kids, right along with the rest of us, are dealing with grief right now. It feels unnatural and even overwhelming to lose our normal life rhythms.
Our kids are likely grieving the loss of school friends and other activities. Their lives have been turned upside-down and they are probably limited in their ability to process those feelings.
Many of us can probably relate to this struggling mom:
“Dear Connected Families, I need help figuring out how to help my four year old manage his grief over the loss of his wonderful life at preschool. His teachers at his preschool are so loving and he has wonderful friends there. He misses his teachers and friends and wants to hug them and play with them. I’m doing what I can, I bought new puzzles and books. I’m trying to fill his love tank but he has such intense needs and I have a two year old as well. Please help.”
Are we distracting our children from their grief?
As your child struggles, your first inclination may be to distract him with “happy things.” But you don’t want to teach your child to sweep their feelings aside and pretend they don’t exist. Instead, view this as an opportunity to teach a valuable lesson in dealing with disappointment.
You probably don’t blatantly order your child to toughen up. However, that might be the message your child hears. If you put more energy into trying to relieve your child’s disappointment than you do into validating it, you may drive the mourning inward.
Kids need permission to feel sad. Sometimes kids have big feelings of grief. But when invalidated, those feelings get locked up inside and come out in twisted ways. They can only intensify an already difficult situation.
Kids need to feel safe and be given permission to express their grief.
8 min