Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
And when children face loss, the right words and actions can make all the difference. Dr Clare Crowe, member of the Psychological Society of Ireland, is with me now. And Clare, this is a really difficult one to grapple with. We have to change our response, I would imagine, depending on the age of the child. And for some, it might be their first realisation and understanding that things end.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think parents get caught in what are the words I should say?
Chapter 2: What are the best ways for parents to talk to children about death?
What are those perfect words? And actually, that doesn't matter. All that matters is that you have care and compassion and that you say it in a loving way. So whatever way you say that someone has died, that is OK, because we are giving that model of I'm here with you. I'm sharing that information with you and I care about your reaction.
And of course, the thing is, kids will react so differently to adults. So adults, we tend to sit in grief. So we have a sustained period of it. But children do what we call puddles of grief. So they jump into a puddle and they're in grief, but then they immediately jump back out of it. So you might tell them, you know, granddad has died and they might reply saying, OK, can I go back and play now?
And you're thinking, gosh, do they even react? But actually, that's what children do. They don't process immediately. They'll let you know when they're ready to jump back into that puddle.
OK, because that can be quite unnerving as an adult to see that.
Yeah, it is just a completely different way of grieving than we do. And actually, it's a gorgeous way. They go up and down in grief. never sustained, which means you get this gorgeous windows of, oh, you're just yourself now, even though I can see you're still sad. But you mentioned that there, Clare, there are different stages of grief depending on their age.
So when we think, you know, parents will often say to me, oh, they're only an infant. They don't experience this. But actually infants do experience grief because like our, you know, our little toddlers, our babies, they're body talkers and body readers. So what they will read is, you're more tense, right? So it's really good if you can put that into words.
So from a neuroscience point of view, if we put words in our experiences for children, that takes away the trauma, helps them make sense of the world again. So I had a mom who said to me, gosh, my one-year-old is a devious. She keeps on saying to me, granddad's dead. And then that immediately makes me cry.
And I was saying to her, gosh, your kid is so clever because, you know, what the one year old was learning is I say granddad dead, mom cries. So dead means sad. So she's making sense of the world. So it's a gorgeous, normal way to do it. And like I say, and you're a scientifically sound way to do it. So that's what they, that baby needed and that's what she needed. what they were doing.
So that's just her trying to make sense of what has happened.
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Chapter 3: How do children's reactions to grief differ from adults?
And what she needs is mom to say, it's not you that's made me sad. I'm sad because granddad died. So that's the gorgeous story we do for our children. And that's what helps them realize, oh, it's not me because kids are so egocentric. They'll think it's all about me.
So what we're doing with our language of words is we're helping them realize this is something outside of you, but also, and I feel it and that's okay. Mommy's sad. Right. Yeah. But that's OK.
And I'm sure you get asked a lot. Should I bring my child to the funeral? Should I bring my child to the wake?
Is there a right answer to that question? Yes, there is and there isn't in terms of I never have a definite. I have three pointers that I give to parents. The first is your age of your child. So if If your child is, we kind of say seven is the age of reasoning. So above seven, you know, they can really logically make sense of what's happening. The second part, I think, is their personality style.
So if they're quite sensitive or very emotional and you feel, gosh, I'm not sure if they are going to cope with this. It's OK to have a like a reassessment of that situation. And the third is their closeness to the person that died. So it can be really helpful if the first funeral they're going to, it's someone who's a little bit more distant, actually.
Because they learn funeral etiquette and the world of an open casket in a kind of like safer way. I had a seven-year-old who, again, didn't want to go to his grandmother's funeral. And the mom kind of raised it with me. And actually for that seven-year-old, it wasn't that he didn't want to go. It's that he didn't want his granny to be dead.
So his thought process was, if I don't go, it's not happening. Because, of course, at that age, seeing is believing.
That's probably a reason to sort of push that a little bit.
I know. And that's exactly what these parents wanted. And, of course, in some circumstances, we have to bring the child to the funeral because it's someone in the immediate family. There's no one else, you know, to mind our child. For practical reasons. Yeah. So there's... In those situations, what we did with this seven-year-old is we gave him a purpose.
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Chapter 4: What stages of grief should parents consider based on a child's age?
Now you want to do something. How about and have kind of a list of things. Would we light a candle? What would you like to do today to market?
So you're making them part of the process. Like if you go back to what you were saying about giving the little boy a job or putting the picture in, you are part of this. You're included in it.
Yeah, absolutely. Grief becomes quite active then. It's like participating. And it also means we're OK to talk about it. We're OK to talk about the person who died. We have words for this. We have actions to go with it. Kids always learn through play. So we do want to bring in that kind of doing element to it.
Now, it is different when you get to the teenage years because, of course, they have a real adult understanding of death, but they don't have the emotionality of an adult. So it can be derailing. And often what we see with our teenagers is that kind of sense of anxiety or anxiety frustration, injustice that goes with it. Anger. Anger, absolutely.
I worked with a teen and her dad had died and I remember for her it was guilt. So she had been doing that very developmentally appropriate thing of acting out, you know, like fighting back a little bit and also hanging out with her friends, like really normal things. But she had so much guilt around, gosh, I was so mean to my dad. Now he's dead.
But actually we did like again for this teen, the message was your dad knew you loved him and he loved you. So it's OK to have spent time away from the house. It's OK to have, you know, not been your best self. That's part of normal, you know, growing up.
and kind of forgiveness giving yourself permission to forgive the other thing I would say for teenagers is it can be very triggering to hear words you know often we'll say they would have been so proud of you or something like that and actually that can be really triggering for a teenager when something comes up and you're putting words on the person that died because it'll often come back with you don't know exactly what they would say so avoid that
Avoid it. So what I generally say to parents is stick with the mantra, the really clear mantra, which is they loved you and you loved them. And that's the secure place. You don't need to put other kind of maybe nuances or words onto the other occasions that get missed.
What about showing your grief then as a parent and going back to the younger children as well? Because that can be, while it's really honest, it probably is upsetting for a young child to see mammy or daddy crying because they've lost their parent. What do you do?
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Chapter 5: How can parents help children process grief effectively?
And I always think that's a gorgeous resource for children when we're looking at those kind of more complicated grief books.
So that's Holly's Journey and The Invisible String. Thank you so much. That is Clare Crowe, a member of the Psychological Society of Ireland.
The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance. Weekday mornings at 9. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts.