Well - Tara Parker-Pope on Health
December 23, 2010, 12:14 pm
Children, Loss and the Holidays
By JOSHUA SPARROW, M.D.

Dr. Joshua D. Sparrow, a child psychiatrist, recently took reader questions on children, stress and the holidays. Here, Dr. Sparrow responds to a recent widow concerned about helping her 5-year-old daughter cope with their first Christmas without her father.
Q.

My husband died of cancer in August, and my 5-year-old daughter and I are facing our first Christmas without him. He loved the holidays, putting up a big tree, cooking Christmas dinner and creating a warm atmosphere in our home.

This year as Christmas has approached, my daughter has had episodes of crying and talking about missing Daddy. Tonight she said that the only thing that would make her feel better is if “Christmas does not come.” She does not want to go through with Christmas without her dad.

How do I help her cope? — new widow
A.

Dr. Joshua Sparrow responds:
Dr. Joshua D. Sparrow, left, and Dr. T. Berry Brazelton

For a young child, death is just too bad to be true. How could someone go away and never come back? Never is such a long time.

It sounds as if you are helping your little girl begin to grasp what is so incomprehensible to so many of us. She may be close to understanding that dad isn’t coming back for Christmas, so she doesn’t want Christmas to come at all. Your truthfulness with her is vital, no matter how much the truth hurts, because she needs to know she can trust you. Your trustworthiness really matters now because children this age know that they are hopelessly dependent on their families for their survival. When one parent dies, a child this age is bound to wonder, “If Daddy can just die like that, couldn’t Mommy die too? Then what will happen to me?”

The fact that your child has been able to tell you how much she misses her dad also suggests that you’ve been able to show her that you are still O.K. and strong enough to help her with her distress. She knows you will take care of her — even though recently you may have been focusing a lot of your energy on thinking about him.

When one parent dies, the other suffers not one loss, but two. Not only is there the grief over the partner who is gone, but also the grief that comes with seeing one’s child grieving -– and the loss of the childhood that you both wished you could promise her. There is a sense that somehow as parents we should be able to protect them from everything, and certainly from anything as earth-shattering as this.

Many parents try to find comfort in the belief that their children are just too young to really know what’s going on or to remember. Your child is fortunate that you have been able to accept the reality of her suffering, despite how much it hurts to have her grief pile on to yours. As a result, she knows that she can bring all of her feelings to you (terribly hard when you are aching too), rather than feeling all alone with them.

It can seem impossibly hard to deal with both one’s own grief and a child’s at once. Every time you try to “be strong” because the child needs you to be, this may wrench you away from your own feelings that need to be tended to. If there are other adults in your life, and in hers, who can stick with you as you go through this process, their presence can provide the breaks you need to take stock of what has been lost and what is left, and feel the feelings that will eventually help you heal. Yet sometimes the need to pull oneself together for the child’s sake can seem like a blessing. There may also be comfort in feeling that simply carrying on, to protect and care for the children, is a gift to them and to the partner who is gone.

Parents often feel that they must not let their sadness show. They worry that it will frighten and overwhelm the children. But keeping one’s own feelings under cover can be baffling for them. They are struggling with all kinds of feelings and will be watching how you express and handle yours as their guide. If they see no clear expression of emotions, they’ll wonder what could possibly be going on: Does this loss not matter to you? Is it dangerous to cry or to feel desperately sad?

If they see your sadness, this will make sense to them. Of course you are terribly sad, but you are handling it. The feelings are painful, but they will not destroy you. You need the feelings — both to be clear about what really mattered to you about the spouse you have lost, and to begin to figure out how to go on. Still, there are times when the feelings just are too much. For both the child and the parent, trying to make the painful feelings go away may seem like the only option either can handle. Then, making Christmas go away too might seem like a solution.

To show your child that you can stand to hear how sad she is, you can start with her sadness about not having her father here for this special time of year — about all the things that he would have done, about all the things that would have been different. You might need to let her know: “We can’t keep Christmas from coming. Just like we couldn’t keep Daddy from dying. And just like we can’t make him come back. But if you really don’t want to, we don’t have to celebrate Christmas this year.”

As upsetting as this may sound, children are often reassured to know that the grown-ups can still talk about the family member who is gone, that they can — in a way — bring him back with their memories and their respect, and that they don’t have to lock his memories away with silence because it’s too unbearable to say them out loud. By letting her know that you and she could decide to do Christmas differently this year, you are also offering her the possibility of having a little control in a world that has already shown her so early in life how little control any of us has.

Once she knows that you take her feelings seriously, that you are not just trying to cheer her up because it’s too hard for you to see her suffer, she may be ready for you to help her take a different perspective on Christmas. “We could decide that we are going to celebrate it differently this year, because this year is different,” you might say. You might try to see if she’s ready to think about what Daddy would have wanted for her, for both of you, if he knew he couldn’t be there with you. “Would he have wanted us to never celebrate Christmas again? Or might he have wanted very much that we would keep on celebrating Christmas, and keep on remembering the things that he did to make it special?” you might ask.

Perhaps you and she can decide to add a ritual to remember him by -– one that you might perform every year. When you brainstorm together about ways of commemorating him at holiday time, try to settle for one that allows you to experience these memories when you choose to, instead of one that confronts you all the time, or at times when it’s just too much to handle.

For some families, for example, a big ornament at the top of the Christmas tree in honor of the person who died might be just the right thing. But others might find it difficult having to look at it all the time and need the chance to focus on something else. Another option might be to choose a slightly more out-of-the-way place to go to be with an object you choose to remember him with -– a photo, for example, or an object that belonged to him. Or you might choose a favorite Christmas song or story or video that you shared with him -– then you can decide when it’s time to listen or watch, and when it’s time to move on.

Along with Christmas rituals, old and perhaps new, it will also help throughout the year to stick to normal routines as much as possible. So much has changed, but it is very reassuring to children to know that some things can stay the same.

Another way in which losing a loved one hurts is the feeling of being all alone, of being different from everyone else, and of feeling out of place -– like an unwanted reminder to everyone else of the risk we take when we dare to love. To many, this time of year can seem like a cruel joke, a disturbing confrontation between the way things are and the way things are supposed to be. But the way things are supposed to be — the perfect families and the prescribed cheer — are rarely the way things really are for any of us. Holiday times needn’t be just for the forever and always happy families that don’t exist. Instead, can’t they be times for us to draw close to those we love and care for, and to have the feelings we need to have together?

You are not alone. And there is much to be learned from the experiences of others, whom we hope to hear from too.

For more information about how children at different ages understand and experience loss, and how to help, you can also read Maria Trozzi’s book, “Talking With Children About Loss” (Perigee, 1999), and “Touchpoints 3 to 6: Your Child’s Behavioral and Emotional Development” (Da Capo Press, 2001), by myself and Dr. T. Berry Brazelton.

Do you have additional questions about helping children cope with all kinds of stress? Please post your questions in the Comments box, below. Dr. Sparrow will be responding to readers in the coming weeks.

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