Chap 8- FSPAC Children and Death- exam 3 Flashcards
True or false:
It is estimated that over two million children in the United States alone will experience the death of a parent before age eighteen.
True
True or false:
It is estimated that in any secondary school of 800 pupils, 100 children will experience the death of a family member.
False- 24 Children
True or false:
Children’s grief might prove more difficult to assess because they have neither the vocabulary nor the life experience to easily express their feelings and needs.
True
True or false:
Nearly 80% of children think about death at one time or another.
True
- Age or developmental level
- Manner of the death
- Relationship with the deceased
3 factors that determines children’s belief structures surrounding death and how they respond when a death occurs.
Before the age of 6 months, infants show only a non-specific distress reaction to the absence of their mother.
- Raphael speculates that this could be the beginning of early grief responses.
After 6 months and up to around 2 years, infants begin to experience normal grief reactions in response to the absence of their mother.
- If the absence continues, the child manifests despair and sadness.
- If absence continues over a long period of time, the child may eventually become detached from everyone, unless a constant caring person takes over.
- Loss of someone other than the mother, it is difficult to tell if the child’s reaction is truly a reaction to the loss itself or if the child is mirroring the grief of the mother.
Birth- 2 years of age
- Pre-schoolers do not understand the permanence of death.
- Little understanding of time (all seems the same)
- Can miss a person who is gone and is very aware of nonverbal communication (i.e., change in routine, moods)
- Concerned with the physical well-being of the deceased
- Cannot learn outside the realm of their own experiences (not capable of cognitive reciprocity).
- May want to see or touch the deceased (4-5yrs)
- May ask the same questions about the deceased
- Do not know how to act so they may confront visitors or strangers to pick up on clues.
- May experience guilt because they feel responsible for the death because of something they did, said, wished, or failed to do.
- May act as if the death never happened
- May act in a regressive manner
Ages 2-5 years
- Latency-age
- have a more complex understanding of death and dying
- realize death is irreversible and universal experience.
- Still find it difficult to believe that death will happen to them. (it happens to older people)
- Death can be personified in the forms of monsters, ghosts, or other frightening creatures which allows children to be able to hide or run away from it, thereby keeping them safe.
- Tendency to engage in magical thinking (wish bad thing to happen to other people- if that person died, it may cause feelings of guilt).
- Lack of vocabulary to express how he feels causes him to act out these feelings in behaviors.
- crying, withdraw, frightening dreams, aggressiveness, and misbehavior
- Often need permission to grieve, particularly boys, who frequently exhibit aggressive responses and pay patterns.
Ages 6-9
- Have the cognitive understanding to comprehend death as a final event.
- Can understand and accept a mature, realistic explanation of death as final and inevitable
- Short attention spans
- Typical to be crying, depressed one minute and outside playing the next
- Adults may interpret this as if the child is not upset over the loss. - concerned about who will care for them or who they will play with.
- may not talk about what is bothering them
- builds up and causes behavioral problems - in school: misbehavior, lack of concentration, drop in grades
- should be encouraged to express their feelings
- Interest and curiosity in the physical aspects of death and what happens after death
- May identify with the deceased and imitate mannerisms
- boys are more aggressive in acting out their feelings.
Ages 9-12 : Pre-adolescence
- Understand death much like adults do
- Realize it is irreversible and happens to everyone
- frustration, anxiety, confusion of normal puberty that intensifies their grief
- Deaths adds to already conflicting feelings of unattractiveness, insecurity, not belonging, not being on control of self and surroundings
- Can be developed into 3 stages:
- early teen years
- Mid teen years
- Late teen years
- Feel put in the position of the protector, comforter, and caregiver
- outwardly seem well, inwardly falling apart - Philosophize about life and death while searching for meaning in these mysteries
- Conflicting feelings about death
- May feel immune to death while at the same time experiencing anxiety and fear over thoughts of their own death.
- take unnecessary chances with their own lives - Academic achievement and competition
- difficult to perceive value others place on academics - Males and females react differently
- females: reassured, held, comforted, consoled
- Males: aggressive behaviors
Ages 13-18 (Adolescence)
Explains that in confronting death adolescents are trying to overcome their fears by confirming their control over mortality.
Worden
A time where teens search for the answer to the question “Am I okay?”
- Very concerned about fitting in and act as if there is an imaginary audience watching everything they do.
- May feel ill at ease when expressing grief
- Since they usually are not concerned about what other people think unless it relates directly to them, they may have a difficult time understanding another person’s reaction to loss if it is not the same as theirs.
The early teen years (ages 12-14)
A time when teens believe that they are indestructible and that bad things won’t happen to them.
- Cannot imagine their own death
- Believe they will live forever
- Express grief by taking unnecessary risks (driving too fast, drinking alcohol)
Mid teens years (ages 14-16)
A time when teens search for a meaningful relationships.
- better able to understand complex relationships
- more interested in another person’s point of view
- better understand of others’ thoughts and feelings
- grieve must as adults do
Late teen years (ages 16-19)
