The end of the year holiday season is often a time for families to join together and have a good meal, exchange presents, and simply enjoy one another’s company.
When there has been a death in the family, though, everyone may feel a little different. People may be sad, or need time for themselves in ways that they usually do not during the holidays.
That can be confusing for children, who expect the holidays to be a time of family and fun. Centrica Care Navigators Grief Support staff have some recommendations on ways to help children understand that a loved one has died — whether it’s at the holidays or any other time of the year.
Start the conversation
As a parent or trusted adult, you may be the best person to make sure a child or teen is able to talk about their feelings related to a death. If they’re young, you might need to use simple terms to explain what happened. At any age, you may simply need to listen; they might want to ask questions, or cry, or talk about things they remember from their loved one.
Avoid euphemisms
It’s easy to feel like you’re making death less scary for a young person if you don’t actually use the term “death,” but instead something like “lost” or “gone to heaven.” That may not be the good idea you think it is, though.
For one thing, it can be confusing: if a young child hears that they have “lost” a person, they may decide the person just needs to be “found.”
While you are helping a young person understand death, simply using the word “death” and explaining what it means clearly can help you with your grief, too.
Take your time
Grief can be very hard to live with and talk about. There’s no timeline for anyone, child or adult, to “get over it.” As Centrica Grief Support staff like to say, it’s not that grief shrinks over time, it’s that we grow around our grief — the feelings of grieving are always there, but as the years go on, those feelings are less and less the center of a person’s world.
You may have to explain to a child several times that a person died. Or maybe there are too many other things happening, and it’s simply not the right time at this very moment to discuss the death of a loved one. Check in with the children and teens in your life and you’ll learn to spot a good moment to talk about death or answer their questions.
Don’t do it alone
Though grief can feel very solitary, and everyone’s experience with grief is unique, the act of grieving isn’t one a child or teen should do by themselves (neither should an adult, for that matter).
Assistance in grief for yourself and for children can come from a lot of places. Talk to other family members and friends about a child who is grieving a death. Look for books and websites with helpful stories.
You can always attend a Centrica Journeys meeting; our group for children, teens, and the adults in their lives meets during the holidays and regularly throughout the year. Find out more about Centrica Journeys here on our website.
