Most parents want to do whatever they can to protect their children from painful moments and events that may touch their lives. In trying to “protect” them however, we often do not realize that we are inadvertently passing on to them the same bits of “misinformation” on how to deal with grief that we learned as children.
Grief is emotional, not logical
Stop and think for a moment about what you learned about how to cope with emotionally painful events when you were a child. The chances are that your parents gave you a list of logical-sounding reasons why you should not feel sad. Did any of those reasons honestly make you feel any better? Probably not! The problem is that grief is emotional, not logical.
More likely than not, you simply learned to hide those painful feelings deep inside, rather than express them, because no matter what anyone said, you never really felt any better! This is not because your parents or elders were trying to pass on misinformation to you. They were simply passing on to you the same things they were told as children! Up until now, there was really no useful information that parents could learn on how to effectively help their children successfully deal with the pain of a broken heart!
“There isn’t anyone in life who hasn’t experienced some kind of loss. It’s comforting to know that we are not alone in our sadness and that practical, easy-to-read, thoughtful help is available by way of Russell Friedman, John James, and Leslie Landon Matthews’s gentle insights on the pages of When Children Grieve. Thank you, Neighbors, for your obvious care.”
~ Fred Rogers, producer/host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and formerly the honorary chairman of Caring Place, a center for grieving children, adolescents, and their families.
Helping Children With Loss
The creation of the Helping Children With Loss Program, by the Grief Recovery Institute, has changed that. Now you can learn tools that will not only help them today, but for the rest of their lives as well. They will also have the proper tools to cope with whatever grief may impact their lives and later to pass on to their children as well. Your participation in this program can make a real difference for generations to come!
This program is not only designed to help parents, but teachers, school counselors, and everyone else who has contact with children. These skills can be of enormous value no matter what loss a child has experienced, including, but not limited to the loss of a parent, grandparent, sibling, a divorce in the family, or even the loss of a pet.
What this program offers:
Unlike the other programs offered by the Grief Recovery Institute, which focus on taking specific personal loss actions, this is an educational program, designed to give you the tools to help children.
This approach allows you to work with a Grief Recovery Method® Specialist, certified and trained by The Grief Recovery Institute, in a group educational setting with other parents and people working regularly with children.
Each of these four meetings will last roughly two and a half hours.
Your Specialist will take you through the materials spelled out in “When Children Grieve,” as well as how to actually utilize this information in helping each child with their individual loss issues.
As part of this process, you will work with sample situations you will face in listening to a child and being able to offer effective assistance in dealing with their emotional feelings.
While you may come into this program with a specific loss that has impacted your child in mind, your Specialist will lead you through the process of looking at all of the emotional losses that could touch a child’s heart, and how to help them work through these issues.
Even though you are working in a group setting, your personal focus will be on learning how to work with your own child on an individual basis.
These groups include a weekly commitment to total honesty and absolute confidentiality so that you can comfortably share your feelings.
As part of this process, we may sometimes break into small groups the cover the weekly assignments. If more than one family member attends this program, they will be in separate smaller groups, to ensure a greater sense of privacy and the chance to better process what they are learning.
Ready to Learn More?
I facilitate an online program to educate adults on Helping Children With Loss.
If you’re interested in working through this program, contact me and I will get back to you. Your information will be kept private and only used to contact you for upcoming educational programs.
Recommended reading:
To learn more about how to help children with the conflicting emotions of loss, this is the book we use for the program, and also the best resource I know of:
To watch a child grieve and not know what to do is a profoundly difficult experience for parents, teachers, and caregivers. Yet, there are guidelines for helping children develop a lifelong healthy response to loss.
In When Children Grieve, the authors offer a cutting-edge volume to free children from the false idea of “not feeling bad” and to empower them with positive, effective methods of dealing with loss.
Many life experiences can produce feelings of grief in a child, from the death of a relative or a divorce in the family to more everyday experiences such as moving to a new neighborhood or losing a prized possession. No matter the reason or degree of severity, if a child you love is grieving, the guidelines examined in this thoughtful book can make a difference.
John W. James and Russell Friedman have been working with grievers for more than thirty years. They have served as consultants to thousands of bereavement professionals and provide Grief Recovery Seminars and Certification Programs throughout the United States and Canada. They are the founders of the Grief Recovery Institute®.
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