Welcome to the fourth post in my Counsellor's Casebook series, which explores the subject of children and bereavement - an issue that affects many of the children I see for counselling.
'Over a quarter of a million of those aged between five and fifteen will have experienced the death of a parent – that’s three percent of all those of that age. Five per cent will have experienced the death of a parent or sibling. Around ten per cent will have lost a parent, carer, close friend or relative – almost a million of our young people touched by bereavement’ (CIE Journal, 2004)
Winston’s Wish, a charity offering a wide range of services to bereaved children, their families and professionals who may support them, state on their website that one young person in the UK is bereaved of a parent every 22 minutes. If one takes into account children who have lost either a parent or a sibling, it equates to one child in every classroom in the country.
A Child’s Response to Bereavement
It is now much more widely accepted that although children’s response to bereavement is different from adults: they do grieve as painfully and for at least as long. Until relatively recently, many misunderstood their unconscious attempts to mask their feelings, and their defensive behaviour, and misinterpreted these as an indication that children did not feel loss so deeply as adults. ‘Children may react defensively to the news of a death by denial, blandness, brazenness, even joking, any of which may dismay or anger the adults around them’ (Tatelbaum, 1980).
Children who have experienced parental death can exhibit
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