If your daughter is having significant problems handling your relationship breakdown, consider finding someone for her to talk to, perhaps a friend of the family or a counsellor. Do keep her school informed of the situation so that her teachers can support her. They will have experience of the potential impact on your daughter and will be able to provide a safe environment for her.
Bereavement
Death is an unavoidable part of life. With death comes loss and grief, anger and disbelief.
Most of us think of bereavement as occurring primarily on the death of a loved one, but there are other kinds of bereavement. These can include difficult situations, such as when parents separate or divorce, when chronic illness becomes a reality in the home, when physical, sexual or emotional abuse is happening to a child, or even when a good friend moves away.
Feelings of bereavement can also happen when seemingly wonderful circumstances cause big changes to children’s lives, such as adoption into a family, the birth of a new sibling, or the arrival of a step-parent.
Be aware that every child will respond to situations of change and loss quite differently. Your daughter may appear to adjust on her own to a significant bereavement such as the loss of a grandparent, or she may be devastated by a seemingly minor loss like the death of a pet.
Although children see loss, death and disaster on television, in films, on the internet and in books and magazines, we tend not to talk to them about the fact of death. Our generation doesn’t ‘do’ death.
The guidance below should help in dealing with bereavement with your daughter. There are some further suggestions for sources of support at the back of this book.
• Never assume that your daughter will react to loss in the same way as you. Don’t think that if she isn’t crying, she isn’t sad. We each have a different way of handling bereavement, and this should be respected. This is particularly important if you are also grieving.
• Don’t feel as though you always need to say something deeply meaningful to her; it’s enough just to be there, simply to listen or to hug her. Laugh with her; give her a chance to rant and rage; sit quietly next to her; let her cry without embarrassment or even cry with her. Ask her what she needs. She will appreciate being asked, even if her response is, ‘I don’t know yet.’ Accept that, and let her know that you’ll still be there when she does.
• Don’t forget to look after yourself while you are looking after your daughter in bereavement, because every carer needs a carer.
• Try to resist saying, ‘I know what you are going through; I understand what you are feeling.’ Although you are trying to sympathise, your daughter is likely to say, ‘No, you don’t understand how I’m feeling. I don’t even understand how I am feeling. And you don’t know what I’m going through.’ And if you get it wrong and say or do something which upsets your daughter, apologise, say sorry and begin again.
A word about pets:
Don’t forget that your daughter’s first brush with deep grief may be the death of a pet. Don’t tell her she can get another kitten, however logical that may seem. Be aware that her bereavement is very similar to the bereavement encountered at the passing of a beloved person.
A word on grieving children attending funerals:
Every family must decide whether to allow a grieving child to attend a funeral. A child may feel real anger if she is prevented from attending a significant funeral ‘for her own good’. Children appreciate ritual; they need a chance to express grief publicly, as well as an opportunity to say goodbye to a loved one. Sit down with your child, tell her what happens at a funeral and what she might see and hear at one. Do try, if at all possible, to include your child in the decision-making process of whether or not she should attend.
It is very important to inform your daughter’s school if she suffers any significant loss. Staff will be experienced in supporting grieving children and can offer both of you support and advice. How and what you would like the school to reveal to your daughter’s classmates needs to be carefully considered and will depend on her age.
There is a wealth of material about loss, grief and bereavement in children and young people, including Good Grief: Exploring Feelings, Loss and Death with Under Elevens by Barbara Ward and associates. Other resources on bereavement care can be had by contacting your NHS Trust and specialist groups like Winston’s Wish. Additional useful leaflets and educational documents on childhood bereavement are also available from many local children’s hospices and county bereavement networks.
Bereavement and the role of schools
Every time we hear about the untimely death of a parent or child – for example, the victim of a fatal car accident, a heart attack or the fight lost to a terminal illness – our thoughts are very much with the surviving parent and the children who have lost a mother or father.
We try to imagine the enormity of the loss, of the disappearance of the source of love, of the need to come to terms with the fact that life will never be the same. Some people have a strong extended family; others have a close network of friends who provide emotional and practical support. But in spite of this, understanding and dealing with loss can be a lonely and bewildering business, even for the best-supported individual.
According to Winston’s Wish (a remarkable charity which exists to support children who have lost a parent or a sibling), every 22 minutes a child in Britain is bereaved of a parent. This equates to 24,000 new children each year learning to live with a powerful range of confusing and conflicting emotions. Bottled up, these emotions can have damaging consequences in later life for the individual, their family and society as a whole.
Schools have an important role to play in supporting children who have been bereaved. The familiar routine of school is in itself a consolation to the bereaved child whose life has ceased to be normal. At the same time, teachers and other staff in caring roles, together with friends, need to accept that bereaved children, especially adolescents, will have mood swings and periods during which they challenge the importance of studying, rules and making much of an effort to look neat. This loss of drive and purpose is completely understandable and may also be accompanied by a sense of anger at the sibling or parent who has gone and resentment that they are now ‘different’ from their peers. The challenge for staff is to judge how much and for how long to tolerate sullen or uncooperative behaviour. Great patience and empathy are required when a child has retreated into herself, and these barriers are hard to penetrate. Time, of course, is a healer, but ensuring that a child has grieved with the support of bereavement counselling is incredibly important. Good communication between staff is vital so that, for example, Religious Studies and English teachers are mindful of the sensitivities associated with studying certain topics or texts while being aware that these may provide a helpful vehicle for expressing emotions. On a more practical level, schools are adept at providing additional coaching, from assisting with catch-up work to writing to the examination boards to seek special consideration for their candidate.
Schools also need to support the friends of someone who has experienced bereavement, and on rare but tragic occasions to cope with the death of a current pupil. Friends can be the mainstay of someone’s emergence from grief, their loyalty being a source of hope, but these friends need the discreet support of the pastoral staff in handling their friend and her mood swings. Friends can sometimes be the ones to alert staff to worrying behaviour – for example, bleak thoughts posted on Facebook – but they must also not feel guilty if they need to detach themselves from the bereaved friend and get on with their own lives. They may be more use to her in this way.
When the whole school is involved in a tragedy, staff and pupils will invariably