Helping Students Respond to Grief and Loss

The following information is intended to help adults monitor and recognize signs and symptoms of loss and grief that may need attention and intervention. There is also information provided on responding to children with deep-seated loss and grief issues.

• Since children often lose the emotional availability of adults at home, as well as their normal structure and routine, one of the best strategies for a teacher working with a grieving child is to be physically and emotionally available and to keep routines at school normal. We can be the stable, constant person in the child’s life until his or her parents are ready to step back in.
• Remember that children often express their feelings physically. Give them appropriate opportunities to vent their energy and feelings, and teach them appropriate ways to express their feelings. Talk to the child to explain that you know about the situation and are willing to listen. Teach the language that is necessary to express feelings. Encourage the expression of feelings through writing, songs, creative movement, play, and exercise. 
• Watch for signs that the child is blaming him or herself for the incident. Remind family members about letting children know they are not to blame and talk to the child about the true cause. 
• Let the child ask the same questions over and over. It’s one way of trying to make sense of grief. 
• Help parents to utilize the support networks that the community offers. You can recommend agencies that can help the family cope with their feelings and also with the problems, such as loss of income, that a death or separation may cause. 
• If you don’t feel comfortable dealing with the student’s emotions, seek out other trained professionals, such as your school counselor, who can help the child. Know how your own feelings about death affect you. How does a loss you have experienced previously affect the way you deal with students who are grieving? Remember that helping someone through the experience of loss causes your own experiences with grief to re-surface. Do not be afraid to share your own emotions and feelings of grief. 
• Accept their feelings. Understand that their emotions may be very volatile. Share your coping skills and suggest others. Assist the child to unburden feelings through expression, confession, remembrance, and release. Give him or her opportunities to discuss memories of the person who has died or left, to ask questions, and to express antipathy as well as affection for the departed. 
• Be aware of the feelings of guilt and abandonment a child may be experiencing. Reassure the child that there will always be someone to care for him or her. Be consistent with your expectations and routines. Do not physically or emotionally isolate the child. 
• Offer children early experiences for casual conversations about death, and discuss experiences of death in animals, plants, seasonal changes, etc. This helps children understand the process of life and death before they have to deal with it personally. 
• Understand where children are developmentally and gear your answers to their questions according to their level of understanding. Answer all questions calmly, truthfully, simply, and directly. Do not give false information and do not tell fantasies. Remember that young children often take what you say literally and attach their own meanings to statements. Avoid phrases such as “he went to sleep” or “he went to the hospital and died” because the child will become afraid to sleep or go to a hospital. 
• Let the child know what to expect. Talk about what a funeral is, teach about the stages of grief and the intense emotions that may arise, about how things may change at home, etc. Try to be supportive but not intrusive. Remember there is no wrong way to grieve. Everyone has his or her own style and timetable. 
• Aid the child in re-establishing normal, age-appropriate social activities. The necessity of carrying on daily routines will assist in the process of adjustment, and in time special interests and pleasures will assume their normal places in the child’s life. 
• Recognize that grief will cause cognitive interruptions in the child’s learning. He or she may have difficulty concentrating and paying attention and may become disorganized. This can cause temporary difficulties in learning new materials. Help the student with strategies for maintaining attention and concentration, provide a quiet place to work, shorten assignments or give alternate assignments if necessary, and be prepared to re-teach new concepts at a later time. 
• If parents ask your advice about whether a child should attend a funeral, share the importance of including the child in the family’s grieving process. If they don’t want to have the child present at the service or the child does not want to go to the service, suggest other good-bye rituals the family could provide. If the child does attend the service, adults need to explain beforehand what will happen. Another suggestion is to arrange for a friend or relative to be prepared to take the child from the service if the child has trouble sitting still or being quiet for a long period. 
• Encourage classmates to think of ways they can support the grieving child by being a special friend, by being more patient, by asking him or her to play, etc. Discuss how to talk with their classmate, as many children feel uncomfortable being around someone who has experienced a loss. 
• If the death has affected many students in the class or school, provide opportunities to commemorate the loss. Writing stories, drawing pictures, creating a group mural, planting a tree, providing a piece of commemorative artwork, and so on all give children a positive way to express their grief. 
• If your school does not have a Tragedy or Crisis Plan for how to deal with the loss of a student or staff member, help establish a committee to write a plan of action. Pre-planning and training on how the staff will handle a tragedy and what routines need to be in place during a tragedy will help your staff be more prepared to calmly and effectively deal with a difficult situation. 
• Remember that the reactions and stages of grief we have discussed do not pertain only to death. They also apply to any loss a child or adult may encounter.