Grief in Small Packages
A young father has died, leaving behind children ranging from eighteen months to six years. The mother wants to know: How much do the kids really know what's going on? Do these youngest kids really grieve?
These questions, and many others related to pre-school-age children, come up frequently at the Highmark Caring Place. How do young kids experience grief and loss?
Emily, two-and-a-half, was playing with the dollhouse in the Pre-School Room at The Caring Place. She and her family had recently experienced her father's death from cancer, accompanying him as he spent his last six months at home under hospice care. The parents were honest with the two kids about what was going on; they knew their father was going to die.
Emily arranged the furniture-couch, chairs, television-in the living room of the doll house. Then she added a bed, and laid a little doll on it. "This is the Daddy," she explained. Still playing, not looking up, she added, "My Daddy died." The adult with her said, "Yes, I know."
A few heartbeats later Emily said, "We didn't want him to die yet." She went on with her playing.
"We didn't want him to die yet." Emily, only two, was telling her story.
Stanley was four. He came into the Pre-School Room and went straight to the sand table. He grabbed a dinosaur and, clearing a space, buried it. Completely out of sight, he then dug it up. He got another dinosaur. Again, he buried it, and then he dug it up. Another dinosaur, another burying and digging up. Another dinosaur and another and another. For forty minutes, Stanley buried and unburied dinosaurs.
In his own way, Stanley was doing grief work as much as anyone else at the Caring Place . His play-like the play of all kids-was a kind of work. He was working to understand, and therefore to gain control over, this strange concept called "burying."
Three-year-old George was also playing, and working, again at the dollhouse. He arranged the furniture throughout the house, filling most of the floors with beds and chairs and refrigerators and stoves and couches and tables. One of the adults in the room showed him a box of people figures. "Do you want to add any people?"
"No," George said. "They're all dead."
George was telling his story too. Not a "true" story-his father had died, but his mother and sisters were still alive. But, after all, if one person can die, a bunch of people can die as well. A scary thought.
Whatever the meanings of George's story, he had the space to tell it at the Caring Place . The Caring Place provides a safe place where children and adults can tell their stories. Even a scary story like George's.
Do young children grieve? Even very young children have their own stories of the deaths that have exploded their worlds. Anyone old enough to love is old enough to grieve. Certainly, young children grieve as much as adults do. Often, though, their grief is masked because it looks different than what we're used to seeing in adults and older kids.
Kids grieve in small pieces at a time. They can't take the full force of the loss all at once. Their grieving is very inefficient. They approach it, feel it, take it in, and then go off and go off and play something totally different. They'll come back again for another dose of grieving when they're ready.
But just because they're playing doesn't mean that they're not grieving. Kids' play is their work. Often, adults will see kids at play and think, "That death must not have made much impact because they're just going right on playing." They're grieving, but in their own way.
At the Caring Place, we provide children with a safe environment with safe people-people who listen, in the broadest sense of that word, to what the kids are saying, people who respect the kids, and their feelings, and who can help them put their feelings into words. Or who give them the space to work out their understanding of concepts, like burying and digging up.
The Caring Place offers a place where kids can tell their stories, in big words, or little words, or in no words at all. No matter how old they are. A place where they feel safe enough let out what's inside.
Even the scary stuff.
