Promoting the Grief Work August 7, 2012

by David A. Opalewski

A small child falls off her bike as she was riding through her neighborhood one day.  As a result of the fall, she has a nasty looking scrap on her knee.  A neighbor who came to her aid offered to wash her wound and apply an antiseptic to the area.  The girl refuses the kind offer from her neighbor knowing that washing her wound and applying antiseptic is painful and she wishes to avoid any more pain.

As the child returns home she refuses to let her Mother wash the wound and apply a topical medication to sanitize the wound.  As times moves on, an infection sets in.  Because she refused to deal with the pain of cleaning her wound and applying an antiseptic or other solution to prevent infection and promote healing, she is much worse off than at the onset of her injury.

A wise person once stated “grief isn’t the problem, it is the solution.” The reality is in order to for a person to “heal,” they must feel the “hurt.”  Healing does not mean we get “over” our grief, it means we get “through” our grief.  The day a person can get “over” his grief is the day he doesn’t care anymore.  He will always care as he loved the person who has died. Therefore, grief is the process of healing that follows a loss. It is natural and necessary. Acknowledging the pain is an important first step in the healing process.

Refusing to acknowledge the pain of grief compounds the stress and heartache it brings. Hiding and/or denying feelings delays the healing process. Unhealed grief leaves festering emotional wounds and is a powerful source of distress.

How to go About Grieving

Go ahead and grieve. Grief isn’t the problem, it is the solution.

Give yourself permission to grieve. People who go through surgery usually accept the fact that they won’t regain full strength for quite some time. Often, however, people with an emotional loss won’t give themselves time to heal. They compound the problem by becoming the pain that follows loss.

Invest in yourself again. After you have been hurt, it is natural to hesitate about making new social investments.  Look for people and challenges in which you can reinvest your love and attention.

Use strengths resulting from grief. Although grief is seldom if ever an experience people choose, it is an opportunity for growth. As a result of your pain, you will find you possess a new set of strengths. Use them to help yourself and others.

For more help, see Dave’s two books on childhood and adolescent grief:

Understanding and Addressing Children’s Grief Issues

Understanding and Addressing Adolescent Grief Issues

Grief’s Road to Recovery, Healing, Hope, And Learning to Live Again August 7, 2012

By Dave Opalewski

Adults and adolescents will and do experience grief differently. Much of this is due to normal developmental factors, and some of this is due to simple stage of life and acquired experiences. Also, neuroscience has shown that the adolescent brain is at a much different developmental state than children or adults, and therefore will respond differently than other age groups. The challenges of grief for the adolescent are compounded when adults place adult level expectations on them. Proper and effective support results when adults can refer to their life wisdom while tempering their approaches in ways adolescents can receive and process imparted wisdom and understanding.

Like adults, adolescents will experience anger, guilt, denial, helplessness, and fear. For many adolescents, a grief event may be the first time they have felt these emotions to an extreme intensity. These emotions can be foreign and frightening.

A supporting adult who has experienced most of these emotions to a high level of intensity has significant potential for assisting the adolescent if great care is taken to refrain from imposing grief reactions parallel with adult reactions and perceptions.

Adults who can draw a connection between the usefulness of their experiences, their ability to communicate empathy and compassion along with their presence with the adolescent will make a quality, if not monumental difference in the journey through their grief process.

Adults must remember, recognize, and relate. Adults must remember what their experiences were as adolescents, recognize how those same feelings may be manifesting in the adolescent, and relate their own experiences as the support person for the grieving teen, and to the teen’s actual experience as he describes it.

Once this happens, the supporting adult can bond further with the adolescent by utilizing himself and the relationship to the teen as natural resources.  The stronger this relationship becomes, the more favorable the circumstances for healing and growth during this very painful time in the adolescent’s life.

For more help, see Dave’s two books on childhood and adolescent grief:

Understanding and Addressing Children’s Grief Issues

Understanding and Addressing Adolescent Grief Issues

A Sense of Urgency: Are Children Becoming Emotionally and Socially Illiterate? August 7, 2012

by Dave Opalewski

Someone once stated that “as educators, teaching children isn’t as much as what we do as who we are.”  Reading deeper into this statement two important beliefs can be inferred:

• Children are our Country’s most precious resources
• Educators can and do touch the future by making positive differences in the lives of children.

The major question we must address is does the present state of education in our country reflect these two important beliefs?

It is easy to point the finger at parents for not having their children “learning ready” as they enter preschool or kindergarten.  It is also equally easy to place blame on parents for a void in children’s emotional development and a lack of values and social skills.  Although many parents do a stellar job in raising their children, educational institutions are not excused of the responsibility of helping to develop every child’s heart as well as their minds.  In fact, The Search Institute in their 40 Developmental Assets, (assets children need to become emotionally healthy)  list 3 assets all educators need to be aware of:

Asset #3 – “Children need support from 3 or more nonparent adults” – Most of these adults tend to be teachers.

Asset # 5 – “Caring school climate” – The school needs to provide a caring and encouraging environment.

Asset # 24 – “Bonding to school” – The young person cares about his/her school.

From these three assets we must conclude that children from sound homes still need the emotional and social developmental skills schools must model and value. We can also see the role schools must play in developing the whole child.

Although it is of no value to assign blame, the following questions needs to be asked; “Is our present educational system becoming guilty of not meeting children’s needs by focusing on demands forced on it by the “No Child Left Behind” legislation? By concentrating on getting students to pass a state assessment test are educators failing to present students’ opportunities to develop healthy emotional and social skills through developing community in the classroom and school environments? Although academic knowledge and skills are very important, the focus seems to be on developing children’s minds and little if any time is left for developing the heart.  As a result, opportunities for children to learn about and discuss social and emotional issues facing them in the classroom have become rare.  Thus, the chance for children to become emotionally healthy, well rounded and productive citizens are lessened.  The following short list of recent statistics can be strong evidence for this point:

• Approximately 80% of students entering school feel good about themselves. Only 20% do after the 5^th grade. (National Parent Teachers Association)
• 62% of U.S. adolescents claim that suicide is a common thought to them. (Michigan Association of Suicidology)
• Suicide has increased 124% in the 10 to 14 age group the last 10 years. (Michigan Association of Suicidology)
• The high school dropout rate was still around 20% at the ending of the 2007-2008 school year. (National Center for Educational Statistics)
• High school dropouts are more likely to be involved in crime. (Lochner & Moretti 2004)
• It is estimated that 10 million females in the U.S. have eating disorders (National Eating Disorders Association)

The point must be made that this is a short list of issues facing our children. Additional issues such as bullying, divorce, parental unemployment, poverty, etc. create the need for providing healthy emotional development opportunities for our students.

In 1983 Rudolph Flesch reprinted his book, “Why Johnny Can’t Read.”  This book was a shocking wake-up call for educators and parents.  It brought to light that we were quickly becoming an illiterate society and the devastating price we will pay if things don’t change.  “The 5 Additional R’s” is a wake-up call of equal or even greater degree.  One must ask of what value will knowledge be to us if we as a society are emotionally unstable and socially uncooperative?  We can’t and should not try to separate the mind from the heart.

Although the educational system can’t be and shouldn’t be blamed and held totally responsible to solve these issues, educators must believe that they can be a positive factor in helping children deal with their issues and develop resiliency skills.  Just like quality environments lead to healthy lives, quality educational environments lead to quality lifelong educational opportunities for children.

The good news is teachers already have the tools to create quality classroom environments which develop children’s hearts as well as their minds.  No requisitions have to be filled out or additional money needs to be spent.  Additional classes don’t need to be added to the existing curriculum.  “Who we are as educators” means we are people who love children and adolescents and are dedicated to their happiness and success in life both inside and outside of the classroom.  It also means we recognize a strong sense of urgency in getting the focus back on developing the whole child; emotionally, socially, as well as academically.

What Kids Need When Parents Divorce March 31, 2010

by Tip Frank

It is believed by many that the grief response experienced by children in a divorce situation is even worse than the death of a loved one. This may be due to the lack of closure in so many divorces. Read more

Addressing Grief Needs from Anticipated Death and Sudden Death March 23, 2010

by Dave Opalewski

From my personal experiences and from my many years as an instructor in Death and Dying and Suicide Prevention and grief support group facilitator, I wish to shed some light on a few distinctions many people fail to consider when supporting a grieving friend or family member. The two areas I wish to discuss are anticipated death and sudden death and some of the different dynamics that go with each.

Read more

Common Myths About Children and Grief March 11, 2010

by Dave Opalewski

As a father of two adopted boys whose biological father died, I have been in a position to learn a great deal about children and grief. The oldest boy was 21 months and the younger was two months in the womb. I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that BOTH grieved his death. I met my now wife when the boys were 6 and 4 years old and we were married when they were 7 and 5. I adopted the boys and we have been very close since the time my wife and I started dating.

Along with this experience, I have worked closely with grieving people and facilitated support groups, I have seen how children are affected by the death of a family member and heard many beliefs that in actuality are damaging myths. The purpose of this blog is to examine a few very common myths about children and grief and to prevent further damage and heartache when a tragedy happens in their young lives.

• A child’s grief is short in duration – Experience has taught me that a young child’s grief experience may be as long, or possibly longer than many adults. Young children very often lack the vocabulary to express their sorrow and confusion. They don’t have life experiences to draw on to make any sense out of what happened. Many times the lack of life experiences causes great fear to go along with the confusion. All this can lead up to a long duration of frustrating grief experiences.

• Infants and toddlers are too young to grieve – Ask any widow or widower who have young children and most if not all will refute this myth. Physical and emotional bonding to parents begins immediately at birth. According to my wife, our oldest son who was 21 months old when his Father died knew shortly after the death that his father was missing. He asked for “daddy” often and in a short time span became very sad. The sadness stayed on his face for a few years after the death. When I started dating my wife, the youngest boy (2 months in the womb at the time of death) shared with me that he “missed daddy” in a very sad tone. The fact is, young children and toddlers DO grieve and they need comfort, time, understanding, and the security of the surviving parent. This can be a difficult challenge for the surviving parent as they become fatigued from their own grief over the death and many times don’t have the energy to reach to the child.

• I can help my child get over his grief – Grief is an experience you NEVER get over, but you CAN get through. The day a person gets over his/her grief is the day they don’t care anymore. Although you can never get over your grief, you can heal and move on with your life. Trying to “get over” one’s grief will lead to much frustration usually manifesting into depression causing several residual personal problems affecting the quality of one’s life. Grief is what it is. One must grieve in order to heal. However, there is a huge difference between getting over the grief and healing.

Dave Opalewski is author of Confronting Death in the School Family, Understanding and Addressing Adolescent Grief Issues, Understanding and Addressing Children’s Grief Issues, and Answering the Cry for Help: Suicide Prevention/Education for Schools and Communities published by The National Center for Youth Issues. He can be reached by contacting The National Center for Youth Issues. (800) 477-8277.

Personal Factors Affecting Grief February 3, 2010

By Dave Opalewski

It has been often stated and is generally believed that no two people who suffer the loss of a loved one ever grieve alike. Therefore, grief tends to be a unique experience for every individual. This being true, we can conclude that there is a strong chance that there are no grief experts. The question we must then ask is how can counselors and support persons assist and guide the grieving person through the grief process while not being experts?   Read more

The Facts About Some Common Myths Surrounding Grief February 3, 2010

by Dave Opalewski

As a grief support group facilitator for many years, I have discovered some common and quite damaging myths grieving people tend to believe. Although there are many myths about grief, The following are the ones I find most common that get in the way of the healing process.  Read more

Correctly Identifying Depression Among Youth February 3, 2010

By Tip Frank 

It is believed that 1 in 8 teens and 1 in 33 children are depressed at any one time in America (National Mental Health Association).  Furthermore, it is estimated that two-thirds of these youth do not get the treatment they need (National Mental Health, 2006).  Read more

Guiding Grieving Adolescents Through the “Smothering Parent Syndrome” February 3, 2010

by Dave Opalewski

One of the many issues for the counselor or caring adult who is attempting to help an adolescent who lost a friend to a sudden death is “The Smothering Parent” syndrome. This is when parents are trying to protect the grieving adolescent and fix a problem that can’t be fixed. Read more