Impact Of Grief In Childhood. Although The Phenomenon Of

Throughout his childhood, John Wade was verbally and emotionally abused by his father, who was an alcoholic. His father would often make fun of his weight as he would call him names such as “Jiggling John”, and “blubby little pansy” (O’Brien, pg 67) and this would cause John to be insecure about his body. Despite being hurt from his father’s words, John still loved his father and thought that he was joking, but John was too young to understand that his father was an alcoholic. When his father died, John was devastated that he decided to imagine that his father was still alive through his mirror. John would often speak to his father through a mirror about anything. In a 2005 research, Prigereson and Maciejewski called for the studies of symptoms of complicated grief Criteria B, which is trouble with accepting death. This was the same situation with John as he struggles to accept his father’s death. Study show that older children (teens and pre-teens) are more likely to express post-traumatic stress symptoms when they deal with the death of a loved one (family member). They show symptoms such as inability to accept death, revenge fantasies and mistrust. (Egan, Pg 204). This would relate to John as his father’s death occurred when he was just fourteen. When he couldn’t accept his father’s

The purpose of this study is to review literature related to the effects of parental death on children. Children who experience the death of a parent is considered an at risk population for psychological, behavioral, and social problems. There are many factors relating to the way children adjust to parental death. Some of these factors include the age of the child,

Marked difficulty accepting the death. In children, this is dependent on the child’s capacity to comprehend the meaning

Children suffering from the anxieties of loss or bereavement may try to hide their feelings for fear of upsetting those around them, whilst others show their feelings freely.

Bereavement and loss - The loss of a loved one such as a parent, sibling, grandparent or friend can turn a child’s world upside down. Grief can bring all sorts of emotions, upset, sadness, hurt and anger because they are gone and, fear because the child may be afraid of other loved ones dying too. A child can be affected by grief for a long period of time, and this may impact on their emotional and physical

Death at any stage in life is personal and holds different meanings to different people. Society places a great deal of meaning on death based upon age, situation, and their personal experiences and beliefs. The viewpoints of death and dying in early childhood are limited; however, children have a basic understanding of death by the age of two through their own observations of family members (Berger, 2008). Children who are dying often fear death as they do not have a fully developed concept of dying and associate death with abandonment (Berger, 2008). At this life stage, it is important to have guidance from his or her parents to gain a better understanding of death and dying.

Unplanned transition is the hardest for the children to cope with. As discussed by Stokes et al. (1999), a sensitive, responsive support needed more than ever when it was recognized that children and young people had experienced an unplanned transition such as bereavement. Whenever a child or adult is faced with traumatic life events, particularly the loss of a loved one, the ability to survive the emotional and physical pain associated with the event will be influenced by the individual’s level of personal resilience. Focusing entirely on their needs enables children to express their feelings, acknowledge their loss and develop skills to cope with their changed lives.

Each year thousands of teenagers experience the death of someone they love. When a parent, sibling, friend, or relative dies, teens feel the overwhelming loss of someone who helped shape their -fragile self-identities. Caring adults, whether parents, teachers, counselors or friends, can help teens during this time. If adults are open, honest and loving, experiencing the loss of someone loved can be a chance for young people to learn about both the joy and pain that comes from caring deeply for others. There are many common reactions to trauma, grief, and bereavement among teens. First of all, shock and denial. Feeling numb, stunned and dazed are healthy and normal reactions. Often, it is difficult to “take in” information. The grieved may

It is believed that children do not experience grief until one has been through adolescents and can distinguish thoughts and feeling from emotions. According to Glass (1991), a child can grasp the notion of death during early childhood; and can begin to grief as early as six months (Willis, 2002). Willis (2002) believes from a moderate perspective that children begin to understand death and grieve approximately at three to four years old. Many times, small children are affected by loss and their grief is often underestimated. Children between the ages of three to five years old fall into stage one. During stage one; children view death as a going away from one place to another. It is believed that the deceased person has just relocated and is living in a new location. Stage two consists of children between the ages of five to nine years of old. In this phase, death can be fixed. It is thought that if one

When a loved one dies, children handle their grief differently than adults, but they still often grieve very deeply in their own way. Much of the grief children experience comes from the fact that children often lose friends to a sudden death such as a traffic accident. The loss of older loved ones may be more anticipated, such as

This essay explores several models and theories that discuss the complexities of loss and grief. A discussion of the tasks, reactions and understanding of grief through the different stages from infants to the elderly, will also be attempted.

This paper examines the implications of grief, bereavement and disenfranchised grief. Grief in response to a loss is a unique experience and is expressed distinctively by every individual. It is helpful to have models that outline the stages of grief that need to be experienced in order to achieve acceptance. However, their utility is limited by the reality that grief is immeasurably complex and individualized. Veterans and children are two groups at risk of developing disenfranchised grief. Therefore, it will be important for nurses to be able to identify those suffering with disenfranchised grief or other forms of maladaptive grief so appropriate intervention may be employed.

In 1981, Palombo systematically reviewed psychoanalytic literature and Investigated the long-term pathological effects of the loss of a parent. This research considered trauma in detail, finding that trauma did not necessarily result in permanent regression or pathological manifestation, as traumatic experiences may adopt differing meanings for each child. Despite evidence of individual differences, a unitary, coherent, conceptual approach was still recommended to help researchers identify the circumstances of parental loss which may result in psychic lesion and produce pathological outcomes. Using standardized instrumentation, research by Worden & Silverman, (1996), examined differences between controls and parentally bereaved children and

Nader and Salloum (2011) made clear that, at different ages, children differ in their understanding of the universality, inevitability, unpredictability, irreversibility, and causality of death. They believed, despite the increasing understanding with age of the physical aspects of death, a child may simultaneously hold more than one idea about the characteristics of death. However, factors that complete the determining nature of childhood grieving across different age groups may be a difficult task for a number of reasons including their environment in means of the support they have available, the child’s nature in terms of their personality, genetics, and gender, coping skills and previous experiences, the developmental age, grieving style, whether or not therapy was received, and the relationship to the deceased (Nader & Salloum, 2011). Crenshaw (2005) found that according to our current understanding of childhood traumatic grief and normal grief, thoughts and images of a traumatic nature are so terrifying, horrific, and anxiety provoking that they cause the child to avoid and shut out these thoughts and images that would be comforting reminders of the person who died. The distressing and intrusive images, reminders, and thoughts of the traumatic circumstances of the death, along with the physiological hyper-arousal associated with such re-experiencing, prevent the child from proceeding in a healthy way with the grieving process (Crenshaw, 2005). McClatchy, Vonk, and

Manifestation of grief at this age can be both physiological and physical, including headaches, bed-wetting, nightmares, and developmental regression