What effect does grief have on children?
• Grief affects the formation of attachments. Children become unwilling or unable to take the chance of facing another loss. • Grief interferes with development. Every child needs an adult attachment figure to develop normally. Grief can prevent children from mastering the development tasks they face as they grow. • Grief takes energy. This leaves little energy to cope with the present and almost none for the future .• Grief makes children different from their peers. Most children do not have this loss experience. A grieving child looks and acts different. Normal grief looks abnormal. • Grief in children makes adults uncomfortable. Children’s behavior often reflects their pain. The resulting anger or sadness is hard for adults to handle and gets children moved and/or labeled. Children are thus discouraged from working on the grief and denied the expression of those feelings. • Grief work is hard and stress causes regression. Grieving children may avoid dealing with their grief, especia
