On Death
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Want Your Kids to Have An Easier Time Dealing With Death? Don’t Send Them to Their Rooms to Cry
By Wendy Thomas Russell | May 6, 2013
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People never “get over” the death of a loved one. Sadness comes and goes, and that’s natural. But they can, according to Russell Friedman of the Grief Recovery Institute, ”complete” their grief. That is, they can grieve in a way that allows for happy memories to reign over painful ones. For life to overshadow death. Despite intermittent waves of sadness, people can recover from their grief and move on with their lives. But grief completion doesn’t just happen, Friedman contends. People have to make it happen. Grief recovery, he says, requires that people be fully present and engaged [...] Read more – ‘Want Your Kids to Have An Easier Time Dealing With Death? Don’t Send Them to Their Rooms to Cry’.
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Memory Candles a Secular Way for Kids to Honor Their Dead
By Wendy Thomas Russell | May 2, 2013
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This is how my good friend Katie describes herself: “A confused Catholic married to a cultural Jew, raising a moral, but interfaithless family.” You love her too now, right? So anyway, the other day Katie and I were talking about a recent blog I’d written about the importance of talking with our kids about our dead loved ones in “happy terms.” She said she’d really struggled with this herself, having lost her mom nine years ago to cancer. She still experiences lingering pain, and sometimes the loss makes her profoundly sad. (I expect she’s not [...] Read more – ‘Memory Candles a Secular Way for Kids to Honor Their Dead’.
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12 Tips for Talking to Little Ones About Death
By Wendy Thomas Russell | April 16, 2013
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When American children return from school today, many will undoubtedly have questions about the Boston Marathon bombings — having glimpsed photographs, viewed video clips or spoken to peers. Depending on the age of your child, you might have some questions yourself: How much do I say? How much do I share? Click here for some great advice from Dr. Gene Beresin on CommonHealth for discussing the event — and others like it — with kids. Or read on for 12 general tips, revised from an earlier list, for talking to little ones about death. 1. Have [...] Read more – ‘12 Tips for Talking to Little Ones About Death’.
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Don’t Just Hang in There: It’s Time to Retire Certain Myths about Grief
By Wendy Thomas Russell | April 8, 2013
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If this poster looks at all familiar, you were probably alive in the 80s. For many years, a kitten hanging from a tree branch with the tagline “Hang in there” was as ubiquitous an image as you were likely to find. The pre-Internet version of LOLCats. (What is up with Americans’ weird fascination with captioned cat pictures?) Anyway, the reason I bring it up is because that poster informed how I looked at “hard times” when I was a kid. “Sometimes life sucks and you’ve just got to hold on,” is what I took from [...] Read more – ‘Don’t Just Hang in There: It’s Time to Retire Certain Myths about Grief’.
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Thinking About the Best Ways to Comfort Grieving Kids? Think Again.
By Wendy Thomas Russell | April 4, 2013
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Ten months ago, I wrote a blog called Heaven Doesn’t Help Us: Talking to Kids About Death. It’s all about how religious platitudes are useless when it comes to explaining death to young children. In fact, according to numerous child psychologists and grief experts I’d interviewed at the time, talk of heaven is rarely a comfort at all. But what I failed to realize at the time — in fact, what I failed to realize until this week — is that this whole notion of comfort is part of the problem. Russell Friedman, co-founder of [...] Read more – ‘Thinking About the Best Ways to Comfort Grieving Kids? Think Again.’.
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Discussing Death with Little Ones (Whose Deaths We Fear So Much)
By Wendy Thomas Russell | December 17, 2012
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Not since 9/11 has a tragedy so deeply affected our nation as the massacre of 20 first-graders and six school administrators in Connecticut on Friday. It seems to me, words were not meant to communicate this level of horror. Our capacity for emotional pain is so much deeper than our capacity to verbalize what has happened. Sometimes silence and tears are our only option. But when it comes to children, we have a duty to discuss death and dying. It is an important part of parenting, and we mustn’t shy away from it. Yes, it’s [...] Read more – ‘Discussing Death with Little Ones (Whose Deaths We Fear So Much)’.
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My Last Will and Testament (Sort Of)
By Wendy Thomas Russell | December 13, 2012
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One thing about being a nonreligious parent is that I have no expectation of an afterlife. I believe that when I leave the universe, I leave it for good. And whatever “spirit” I have survives only in the memories of the people I love. Which is enough. Honestly, it is. But it also makes me hyper-aware of what I leave behind. And that is especially true when it comes to my daughter. For the first few years of her life, I couldn’t help but be concerned that I would die, and all of what we’d [...] Read more – ‘My Last Will and Testament (Sort Of)’.
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‘Day of the Dead’ Might Just Be the Best Holiday Yet
By Wendy Thomas Russell | November 1, 2012
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Looking at all the Halloween decorations in our neighborhood yesterday, my daughter points to the 1,657th fake gravestone with “R.I.P.” etched on the front and asks, “Why do people do that?” “Because,” I say, “it’s scaaaary.” “It’s not scary,” she says. “It’s sad. People die, and it’s sad.” I laughed at her insight, but now that I’ve been researching the “Day of the Dead” (which starts today! Happy Day of the Dead!), I realize I missed an opportunity for what could have been a pretty fascinating talk about death. In other words, I blew it. Not [...] Read more – ‘‘Day of the Dead’ Might Just Be the Best Holiday Yet’.
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12 Mistakes Parents Make When Talking to Kids About Death (Part II)
By Wendy Thomas Russell | June 21, 2012
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I’m back with again with my Grim Reaper friend. I like that little guy. Just wish he were more cheerful. Anyway, in my last post I described six mistakes parents make when talking death with kids. Well, apparently, we screw up A LOT because here’s a whole other six: 7. We yada-yada over the science part. Talking about decomposing bodies may seem a ghoulish proposition, but the actual science of death is not only fascinating to children (particularly preschoolers), but can be comforting, too. It’s true that adults tend to focus their worry on the emotional aspects of death [...] Read more – ‘12 Mistakes Parents Make When Talking to Kids About Death (Part II)’.
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12 Mistakes Parents Make When Talking to Kids About Death (Part I)
By Wendy Thomas Russell | June 19, 2012
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Let’s face it, talking about the Big D with the little humans we love more than anything in the world ain’t easy. All we want to do is protect our kids — is that so wrong? — and here comes Mother Nature to screw it all up: Hey, guess what, darling? I’m going to die! But don’t worry, because you’re going to die, too! In fact, everyone you’ve ever loved or will ever love is going to DIE! But don’t mind that. Let’s go get some ice cream. Yeah, it pretty much sucks — and [...] Read more – ‘12 Mistakes Parents Make When Talking to Kids About Death (Part I)’.
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