How to help grieving children?

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Permalink Reply by Magee77 on July 30, 2012 at 9:33pm

I have two kids -daughter is 4 and my son is 9. My daughter is very happy going lucky, talks about her daddy, and in weird way seems to a peace that her daddy is in heaven. My son is having more of a difficult time. Just came home from our first vacation without my husband and he had a few meltdowns. My son is so heartbroken...him and his daddy were best buds! I try to talk to him about his feelings. I think the summer has been tough because there is less structured activities and more time to think about life. I do have both of my kids in a kids' grief group that was formed at the local college. Graduate students that are in the counseling program are working with kids. I am just not sure what to do for the kids, it is so hard. I often wish there was a manual to follow to help in the grief process. I think the most important thing to do is talk about there dad and to be open about how much I miss him and it is okay to be sad and cry.
I also had the kids make a memory box that they each keep under their beds. If they find a picture, or something that reminds them of daddy they keep in there. My daughter is always in her memory box, my son is more private about it, but I know that he does add things to it and looks in it. This new life is tough!!

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Permalink Reply by kimkirt (KK) on July 31, 2012 at 10:16am

If you are able, look up Camp Comfort Zone for your kids, it is free and maybe you will be able to get them into a session nearby you, there are various locations throughout the states. I haven't been able to get my son into the one we registered for because it was already full, but I've heard nothing but wonderful about these camps.

My son is now 11 (just turned 11 last week), he was 10 when his dad died. I was glad that I went to a counselor myself because the first thing my counselor said was "Don't expect your son to grieve like YOU think he should be grieving." That was an eye opener. I was lucky that my son's school embraced him after my husband died. My husband died unexpectedly in our bed in the middle of then night on November 5th, my son woke up to the chaos and police and EMT in the house and hid in his room, and eventually came out crying. He wanted to go back to school just less than a week later so I let him. The teachers and school embraced him and he started seeing the school counselor who did grief work with him. It was very hard for me to realize I had to let go and let him go deal with his grief on his own accord and that I could not fix it for him, I had the "Mommy can fix anything." syndrome. But I told him that he could tell the counselor anything he wanted and he didn't have to tell me anything he talked about. That was hard as well because I wanted to know what was going through his head! He went to counseling through May and stopped when school let out. The counselor said he can start again in August if he wants to, so we shall see what happens when school starts.

Perhaps when school starts your children can see the school counselor, at least as a start, and go from there. 

But I do recommend at least looking into Camp Comfort Zone, I've heard so many tremendous things about it. 

http://www.comfortzonecamp.org/

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