How you can help your children cope
Summary
- Talking to children about grief and loss is always difficult.
- It’s important to talk to them about the loss of a baby or a young child to help them process their feelings.
- Letting the child choose the pace of the discussion, setting boundaries, and allowing space for flexibility can help Solo Moms and others talk about fetal/infant death.
What happened to my second son
In the winter of 2005, my second son was stillborn well into my third trimester. I had, at that time, a living son who was almost three years old. When I recall that winter, I remember that the hardest thing my husband and I did was explain to our toddler that the baby he had been promised would not be coming to live with us.
We have an understandable impulse to shield children from painful realities. Infant death is unimaginable, and pregnancy loss can be both abstract and utterly devastating. Children in a family facing this trauma tend to be quite young, and that may compound the impulse to obscure the loss. However, a lack of constructive dialogue from parent to child may come at a cost, no matter how well intended the silence. Talking about pregnancy and infant loss remains a social taboo even though 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, and an additional 50,000 children are stillborn or die in the first 30 days of life in the United States annually.
The loss of a pregnancy or an infant touches on the idea of ambiguous loss, which impacts children as well as adults. “Ambiguous loss refers to the physical or psychological experiences of families that are not as concrete or identifiable as traditional losses . . . [these losses may be] considered to be taboo . . . such as a miscarriage . . . ‘the relationship is not recognized, the loss is not recognized, or the griever is not perceived as one with permission to grieve’ . . . [B]ereaved children experiencing ambiguous loss often fit into one of these categories.”
Adults do not always recognize ambiguous loss as experienced by children and thus do not affirm or validate the experiences of those children who are grappling with ambiguous loss. Moreover, the children themselves have difficulty in conceptualizing and articulating their loss and may feel alone and confused.
Among the many challenges in discussing pregnancy and infant loss with children is the central fact that there is no one correct way to approach the topic. Even within one family, different ages and individual personalities may require different approaches.
An expert’s perspective
Writes pediatrician Dr. David Fenner: “No one knows your child better than you do and in many ways, no one knows you better than your child . . . [W]hile it is natural to try to set your emotions aside and show your children only your brave face, they will sense and share your sadness. Often they will have an insight into your emotions that no one else can sense and on a level no one else can reach. Their opportunity to help you will help in their healing as well. Don’t be afraid to let them in.”
Note that it is not necessary to provide a great amount of detail. Says Fenner, “Children will often ‘set aside’ bad news on issues they don’t understand only to revisit it again and again to digest in small bites.” Let them help you pace yourself.
In addition, each party may benefit simply from parent/child connection and presence. If a parent needs some respite, this is an excellent way to make use of offers of assistance from friends and family who are eager to help. Finally, children sometimes need reassurance regarding their own health and safety as well as that of their parent(s). Be careful not to inadvertently distance children during this time and to seek pediatric assistance if a child’s anxiety becomes excessive.
It can be helpful to engage your child’s process. Writes Fenner, “[F]or toddlers and preschoolers, the line between imagination and reality is often blurred. Your child might say at a later time that he misses the baby. In a way, the concept that he had of the baby and the thoughts of what they would do together were to him, real. Support him as he works through his reality.” In this way, parent and child grief around pregnancy and infant loss may not be so very different.
A winter like no other
During that terrible and beautiful winter, when I got down on the floor and played with my son, it is true that I have seldom experienced such intimacy. I still think a lot about that searing winter when the dead and the living were juxtaposed, each clamoring impossibly to be understood. I remember the white-hot grief and the blunt-force trauma of my sudden loss, and also the sweet presence of my little boy, playing with blocks.
We have, as parents, a powerful impulse to correct things. When something terrible happens we want to explain it or fix it. Or, in the absence of explanation, we want to demonstrate our steady presence in the face of it. After the stillbirth, our pediatrician gave us some excellent advice. To this day, it remains the most helpful advice I ever received about parenting after baby loss. He suggested that we decide on two or three things we would not budge on as parents. Things like bedtime, how much television to watch or sugar intake. “Then,” he said, “you can be flexible about anything else.” I see now that he was telling us to be gentle with ourselves. And to do what we could to create a modicum of clarity during that bewildering time.
Making two or three go-to rules about parenting post-loss is a good idea. The definition of these things—no matter what they are—enables reflection regarding priorities and boundaries. When daily life is utterly overwhelming, it is grounding to remember the minimalist decided-upon rules.
Almost a decade later, the threads of ambiguous loss connect us all. Each of my children asks about the brother they never knew. They are not scared or sad, necessarily. They are interested and curious to imagine his life. We all experience his loss in a different way, but we are all in it together, wondering as a family and carrying on.
Takeaways
- The loss of a child can be devastating, but when you are parenting other children at the time of the loss, make two to three go-to rules to get yourself through the grief.
- It’s important to validate the experience your child is having.
This article was originally published on the Huffington Post blog and was posted here with permission by the author.
Illustration credit: Sofia Lindholm
Tara Shafer is the cofounder of Reconceiving Loss, an online resource center for families coping with pregnancy and infant loss. She is a contributing blogger to the Huffington Post, Psychology Today, and BabyCenter. Her work has appeared in the New York Times and on National Public Radio. You can follow her on Twitter at @reconceivinglos.
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