We’re terrible at talking with children about death and dying, but we owe it to them to teach about grief and loss
Unsupported grief is linked to a range of mental and physical health challenges and increased mortality – with huge financial and social costs across a person’s lifetime. Photo / Getty Images
‘One of my schoolmates said to me years later, ‘Oh, I didn’t realise what was going on for you’. Everyone is pretty self-absorbed at that age, so they didn’t understand.”
“I would have liked my teacher to have taken me aside and acknowledged my father’s death, or my friends to have said something. I don’t remember anyone saying much of anything.”
“At break time, a boy started dancing around me singing, ‘Lisa’s mum’s died! Lisa’s mum’s died!’ I remember that to this day, but he probably doesn’t.”
“I wish I had known it was okay to reach out, to share, to ask for help. The difficulty is that teenagers haven’t necessarily developed the ability to communicate what’s inside them.”
These are just a few snippets from the 75 interviews I conducted for my “Too Young” project, exploring what it’s like for a child when their parent dies. I know – my mother died when I was 9.
Nearly every adult bereaved as a child I spoke with told me they wanted to ask for help but didn’t have the language, or they yearned for understanding from their school and their peers but didn’t receive it. A lucky few did. Their teachers were compassionate and acknowledged the death in a way the child felt safe, seen and heard. Some friends offered physical and emotional comfort. These children knew that, if they chose, they could talk about their loss and receive care.
As I listened to their stories, I recognised we must do better for young New Zealanders today. We’re terrible at talking about death and dying, especially with children. But children will be bereaved. In 2020, the Growing Up in New Zealand study published “Now We Are 8”, noting that by age 8, 35% of studied tamariki experienced the death of a close family member, 3% experienced the death of a close friend and 1% experienced the death of a parent. Extrapolating that data more than 10,000 tamariki by age 8 will experience the death of a parent, not to mention grandparents, siblings or friends. The numbers only increase from there, and these young people likely have little idea how to process their feelings or ask for help.
Unsupported grief is linked to emotional distress, concentration difficulties, behavioural challenges, long-term risks of depression, poorer physical health and increased mortality – with huge financial and social costs across a person’s lifetime.
And that’s what my interviewees told me. Many of us battled through young adulthood, coping as best we could, until finally addressing our loss through years of therapy. And most of us are good. Great, even. But what could our lives have been had we known, back then, how to talk, how to ask for help?
That’s why I’m part of a group campaigning for grief education to be included in the revisions to health and physical education teaching. After a prolonged campaign by the UK’s bereavement sector, grief education must be taught in England’s schools from September. A similar campaign is underway in Australia.