1. Recognize your own feelings. Think about your own experiences with loss, separation and death. They may have an impact on your ability to help young people with their grief.
2. Share the fact of death. Provide age appropriate information about what happened and what rituals will occur. Be aware of the four psychological tasks.
3. Be aware of issues that make a specific child vulnerable. These include such things as too many recent losses, being the best friend or worst enemy of the person who has died, or having had some actual responsibility for the death. A prompt referral to a mental health center may be a good idea.
4. Address the child’s fears and fantasies. Be particularly aware of those that grow out of magical thinking and reflect an inappropriate sense of responsibility for the death.
5. Discuss issues specific to the situation. Children may want to talk about illness, about violence or suicide, about alcohol and drug use, or about troubled adults who hurt children. They may want to know about wakes and funerals, about cremation and burial, or about ethnic and cultural diversity in death rituals.
6. Support young people as they grieve. Provide an environment where grieving is safe and accepted. Talk specifically about the appropriateness of sadness and anger. Share your own grief, being sure they know they have not caused your tears or anger.
7. Remember the person who died and help young people participate. Commemorative activities may go on over a period of time.
8. Use teachable moments to begin or continue a program to help young people learn about death and dying. Daily activities and more dramatic life events provide many opportunities to talk about death and dying and about grief and loss.
