This week’s installment of In Due Course is an answer to a question sent in by Lu:
“I lost my grandmother four years ago. She was like a mother to me. My own mother and father are still alive today. The loss of Grandma was tough. What I would like to know- is it fair/normal for a person to compare the amount of their grief for the loss of both their parents to the grief/loss I have of both my grandparents? We all handle grief differently but how should I handle this person’s behavior towards me? Thanks.”
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Today my posting for In Due Course is a wrap-up of our topic for the past seven months – bereavement, grief, and mourning. I will cover what I consider important concepts about loss and its ramifications for each of us.
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It is time for another posting of In Due Course. Today, I will discuss socially unacceptable or inappropriate grief and mourning, also known as disenfranchised grief and mourning, and its impact on those who are subjected to it. Ken Doka has defined disenfranchised grief as “the grief that persons experience when they incur a loss that is not or cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported.” In other words, in disenfranchised grief, a person who has suffered a loss does not have the right to act as if he/she is bereaved. Doka contends that society disenfranchises grief and mourners by not recognizing one or more of the following: 1) the relationship between the deceased and a survivor, 2) the importance of the loss, or 3) the need to be a griever.
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Welcome to In Due Course, an educational and question/answer blog about death, dying, and bereavement. Today I will continue discussing children and grief by concentrating on warning signs that may indicate that a bereaved child needs professional help with his/her mourning. Before I begin, I would like to stress a couple of points. First, not all bereaved children need professional counseling regarding their grief. Children can be remarkably resilient and about two-thirds are able to adjust well within two years after the death. However, one-third of bereaved children have sufficient emotional and/or behavioral problems that counseling may be justified. The challenge is determining which children make up that one-third.
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Welcome to another weekly installment of In Due Course. Last week I began discussing the needs of grieving children by covering the first five needs: Need for Adequate Information, Need to Address Fears and Anxieties, Need for Reassurance They Are Not to Blame, Need for Careful Listening, and Need for Validation of Feelings. Today, I will continue this topic by writing about the other five needs. Just like last week, this information is adapted from William Worden’s book Children and Grief: When a Parent Dies, a book describing the results of the two-year Harvard Child Bereavement Study.
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Welcome to another installment of In Due Course. Today, I want to continue the discussion that I started last week on children and grief. Last week’s posting concerned the issues particular to children when they mourn. Today, I will explore children’s needs and how supportive adults can help. Just like last week, today’s information is adapted from William Worden’s book Children and Grief: When a Parent Dies, a book describing the results of the two-year Harvard Child Bereavement Study.
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Today is Thursday and time for another installment of In Due Course. Last week I started a mini-series on the impact of loss on children and adolescents. The first group I addressed was adolescents. This week I will continue the series by discussing children and grief. In the mid-1990’s William Worden and others conducted a two-year study – the Harvard Child Bereavement Study – on the effects of the death of a parent on children. Worden presented the findings from that study in the book Children and Grief: When a Parent Dies. Much of what I will be writing today is from that extensive study.
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