Question of the Month – August 2024
You are seeing a 10-year-old in the office with one of their parents. When asking about recent changes or concerns the family has, the parent shares with you that the grandmother that was living with them recently died from cancer. The parent shares with you that their child has begun to experience nightmares, difficulty concentrating, and grade changes. You want to offer some ways the parent can help with their child’s grieving process. Based on the presentation, some recommended ways to help this 10-year-old include which of the following sets of activities:
A. Include the child in family rituals around mourning, offer simple truthful and concrete information about the death using books as a resource, reassure the child that they are not the cause of grandma’s death, keep routines, assist the child in creating arts and crafts to memorialize grandma, let the child create storybooks, or give them a special stuffed animal that represents grandma.
B. Offering to have them help plan a memorial, use books to help answer questions truthfully and in concrete terms, encourage the child to express their feelings, attend groups and/or individualized counseling, keep routines, participate in planting of a tree or a garden, ask them to write a story about the grandmother, and continuing to talk about their grandmother.
C. Including the child in family rituals of mourning, provide safe outlets for aggression, support the child’s involvement in planning of activities for anniversaries and birthdays, welcome the child to create art work to memorialize the grandmother such as writing a goodbye letter, journaling, or creating a memory box of important items they want to save.
D. Including the child in family rituals of mourning, making time for 1:1 opportunities with key adults/caregivers, allow the child to fully express their feelings which may at times be contradictory and inconsistent, look for peer support groups, create a playlist of music that the grandmother loved.
