Companioning the Grieving Child A Soulful Guide for

Caregivers

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 Also by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

Companioning the Bereaved: A Soulful Guide for Caregivers

Companioning the Dying: A Soulful Guide for Caregivers

by Greg Yoder Foreword by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

Companioning at a Time of Perinatal Loss: A Guide for Nurses, Physicians,

Social Workers and Chaplains in the Hospital Setting
by Jane Heustis & Marcia Meyer Jenkins Foreword by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and
Healing Your Heart

Loving from the Outside In, Mourning from the Inside Out

Eight Critical Questions for Mourners: And the Answers That Will Help You
Heal

Healing Your Grieving Heart When Someone You Care About Has Alzheimer’s:
100 Practical Ideas for Families, Friends, and Caregivers

Companion Press is dedicated to the education and support of both the bereaved and bereavement
caregivers. We believe that those who companion the bereaved by walking with them as they journey
in grief have a wondrous opportunity: to help others embrace and grow through grief—and to lead
fuller, more deeply-lived lives themselves because of this important ministry.

For a complete catalog and ordering information, write or call or visit our website:
 Companion Press
The Center for Loss and Life Transition
3735 Broken Bow Road
Fort Collins, CO 80526

(970) 226-6050 FAX 1-800-922-6051

[email protected] www.centerforloss.com
© 2012 by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Companion Press is an imprint of the Center for Loss and Life Transition, 3735 Broken Bow Road,
Fort Collins, Colorado 80526, (970) 226-6050, www.centerforloss.com.

Companion Press books may be purchased in bulk for sales promotions, premiums and fundraisers.
Please contact the publisher at the above address for more information.

Printed in Canada.

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 54321

ISBN 978-1-617221-58-3
To all of the children, teens, adults, and families who have allowed me
the privilege of “companioning” them out of the dark and into the
light. You have been my teachers and encouraged me to inspire others
to “bear witness” to families experiencing grief, loss, and the resulting
transformation of life, living, and loving. What an honor to be able to
attempt to touch the lives of people throughout North America and
the world. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
 CONTENTS
Preface

Prologue

Introduction

Chapter One
10 Common Misconceptions about Grief

Chapter Two
Mourning Styles: What Makes Each Child’s Grief Unique?

Chapter Three
Sad/Scared/Mad/Tired/Glad: How a Grieving Child Acts, Thinks, and Feels

Chapter Four
How the Grieving Child Heals: The Six Reconciliation Needs of Mourning

Chapter Five
Techniques for Counseling Grieving Children

Chapter Six
A Family Systems Approach to Companioning the Grieving Child

Chapter Seven
Helping Grieving Children at School

Chapter Eight
Companioning the Grieving Adolescent
A Final Word

My Grief Rights
 Preface

Please take pause for a moment to reflect on your own childhood losses and
your struggles to understand your experiences with these losses. As you do
so, I hope you recognize the need for resources intended to help adults
artfully companion children in the journey into grief and mourning.

It was in 1983 that I wrote the following: “Any child old enough to love is old
enough to grieve.” Since that time I’ve attempted to continue to learn from
many grieving children and their families. I’ve also had the privilege of
teaching and learning from thousands of caregivers to bereaved children
throughout North America. I have certainly changed and, I like to think,
grown both as a caregiver and as a human being in these last twenty-nine
years.

On a personal level this growth is largely attributable to the births of my

three lovely children, Megan, Christopher, and Jaimie. They, along with the
children and adolescents I have companioned as a counselor, are my
constant teachers. I hope the following pages reflect some maturity and
wisdom gained over nearly three decades as a counselor. As I grow older, my
inner child keeps reminding me that I must stay in touch with that little boy
inside myself. Every day, even as my children are growing into young adults,
they often remind me that play and good self-care should always be a
priority in the journey of life and living.
To “companion” grieving children means to be an active participant in their healing. When you as a
caregiver companion grieving children, you allow yourself to learn from their unique experiences.
You let them teach you instead of the other way around. You make the commitment to walk with
them as they journey through grief.

Professionally, I am convinced that working with bereaved families,

particularly children, is more art than science. I believe the current trend
toward evidence-based research is inviting many caregivers to work with
grieving families more from their heads than their hearts.

Each of us as caregivers to grieving kids must, in part, find our own way. We
must combine our life experiences with knowledge, skill, and a creative,
intuitive, flowing sense of joining the world of the hurting child. For me,
counseling bereaved children is more of an intuitive, spiritual process than
the traditional medical model of mental health care supports. I have left my
clinical doctoring behind to become the grief gardener and “companion”
that I am today, and I hope the grief gardening/companioning model I offer
in this book invites you on a similar journey of professional growth. (“What
in the world is ‘grief gardening’?” you’re probably asking yourself right now.
“Has Wolfelt finally lost it?” I assure you that I have not “lost it,” but instead
have gained much, personally and professionally, through the development
of this model. But to understand what I mean by “grief gardening,” you must
read this book, particularly the parable on p. 5, the Introduction starting on
p. 9; and the Tenets of Companioning the Bereaved on p. 12.)

Bereavement literally means “to be torn apart” and “to have special needs.”

When I created this book in 1996 and now this most recent revision in 2012,
I told myself I didn’t want to add another academic textbook to the library
shelves of educators and clinicians. While I must admit that I occasionally
find myself thinking I should fill these pages with a multitude of research-
based references, I have resisted the urge. I’m proud to be an academician-
clinician and respect the need to draw on research in my work with
bereaved children. However, I wanted this book to be about what I think
and feel about companioning grieving children: what I do and how I do it. If
this sounds interesting to you, please read on! If it doesn’t, you may find
other books more suited to your needs.

I have found that many people who work with grieving children are
burdening themselves with thoughts that they should always know what to
say and do. Many seem to want a cookbook, prescriptive approach to
treating the child. I have found that the need to fill silences and treat
bereaved children as patients results from contamination by a medical
model of mental health caregiving. This model teaches us to study a body of
knowledge, assess patients, and treat them with hopes of resolving issues
and conflicts. In my experience, there is one major problem with this model
as it applies to caring for grieving children—it doesn’t work!

I realized years ago that the true expert in the counseling relationship is the
bereaved child. This seems so obvious to me now, almost too elementary to
write down. Yet this simple realization has proved profound to me in my
work with children, teens, and families over the last three decades. Bereaved
children are our finest teachers about grief and mourning. They are naturals!
They don’t play psychological games or hide out in efforts to repress genuine
thoughts and feelings. They instinctively move toward it in natural doses,
even when they fear the pain. As they mourn the death of someone loved,
they tutor us in walking not behind them, not in front of them, but beside
them. They know about the need to mourn; they just need safe places in
which to do it in their own way and time.
If you work with grieving children, you will at times feel uncertain, even
helpless. I don’t always know why I’m responding the way I do when I’m
with a grieving child; my reactions are never scripted. Usually I’m following
the lead of the unique child. I like to say, “I invite children to the dance, but I
allow and encourage them to lead.” When I work with grieving kids,
sometimes we actively embrace pain, but more often we laugh and have fun.
Techniques I might use are merely in response to the evolving process. I
want the child or teen to come to know me as someone who accepts and
respects him for who he is and where he is in his grief journey (note my
special chapter dedicated to teens). Not every moment is filled with some
therapeutically profound insight, but I realize something is happening all the
time. And, some of the deepest communication comes during our silences.

I remember being a child—at times a happy child, at times a sad or angry

child. I remember feeling deeply (as I still do). I wondered about life and
death. Sometimes I was scared and uncertain about my future and the future
of my family. I loved to play with other children (I still do that, too.) I think
my ability to remember my childhood provides me a view of children that
children respond to. Yes, it’s easier to be around children when they are
happy. Yet we must also be present to them in their pain and loneliness. I
hope this book helps you use your gifts to “be with” and learn from bereaved
children and teens.

In recent years, my life has been touched by many losses. Both of my parents
(Don and Virgene) died, my family home burned down just after Christmas
2009, and I had a health challenge that reminded me of my mortality. All of
these losses have only left me more convinced of the value that I have to
contribute to death education and counseling. I am at the same time
humbled, yet proud, of what I do each and every day to help people mourn
well so they can go on to live well and love well. With that said, I invite you
to take what works from this book and leave the rest.
I hope we meet one day!

June, 2012
 Prologue
The Gardener and the Seedling
A Parable

One spring morning a gardener noticed an unfamiliar seedling poking through

the ground near the rocky, untended edge of his garden. He knelt to examine its
first fragile leaves. Though he had cared for many others during his long life,
the gardener was unsure what this new seedling was to become. Still, it looked
forlorn and in need of his encouragement, so the gardener removed the largest
stones near the seedling’s tender stalk and bathed it in rainwater from his worn
tin watering can.

In the coming days the gardener watched the seedling struggle to live and grow
in its new, sometimes hostile home. When weeds threatened to choke the
seedling, he dug them out, careful not to disturb the seedling’s delicate roots. He
spooned dark, rich compost around its base. One cold April night he even
fashioned a special cover for the seedling from an old canning jar so that it
would not freeze.

But the gardener also believed in the seedling’s natural capacity to adapt and
survive. He did not water it too frequently. He did not stimulate its growth
with chemicals. Nor did he succumb to the urge to lift the seedling from its
unfriendly setting and transplant it in the rich, sheltered center of the garden.
Instead the gardener watched and waited.

Day by day the seedling grew taller, stronger. Its slender yet sturdy stalk
reached for the heavens, and its blue-green leaves stretched to either side as if
to welcome the gardener as he arrived each morning.
Soon a flower bud appeared atop the young plant’s stem. Then one warm June
afternoon the tightly wrapped, purple-blue petals unfurled, revealing a paler
blue ring of petals inside and a tiny bouquet of yellow stamens at its center.

A columbine—the gentle wildflower whose name means “dovelike.” A single,

perfect columbine.

The gardener smiled. He knew then that the columbine would continue to grow
and flourish, still needing his presence but no longer requiring the daily
companionship it had during its tenuous early days.

The gardener crouched next to the lovely blossom and cupped its head in his
rough palm. “Congratulations,” he whispered to the columbine. “You have not
only survived, you have grown beautiful and strong.”

The gardener stood and turned to walk back to his gardening shed. Suddenly a
gust of wind lifted his straw hat and as he bent to retrieve it, a small voice
whispered back, “Without your help I could not have. Thank you.”

The gardener looked up but no one was there. Just the blue columbine nodding
happily in the breeze…

What It Means to To Be a Grief Gardener

When working with grieving children, I find it helpful to think of myself as a
gardener tending fragile yet resilient seedlings and plants. With support, I
help them grow through grief, letting them guide the journey to their own
blossoming.
I am a grief gardener who companions children in their grief journey.
Throughout this book, I reference gardening with hopes that you’ll find this
metaphor helpful in your work with grieving children. Another vital concept
I use interchangeably with grief gardener throughout this book is
“companion.” It’s my philosophy that as counselors we do not “treat” or
“cure” our clients. Rather, we companion them on their path toward healing.

It is my hope that you will call on this parable to enter the frame of mind of
a grief gardener. Unlike the medical model of bereavement care, in which
grief is treated as a sickness that needs to be cured, grief gardeners believe
that grief is organic. That grief is as natural as the setting of the sun and as
elemental as gravity. To grief gardeners, grief is a complex but perfectly
natural—and necessary—mixture of human emotions. Grief gardeners do
not cure the grieving child; instead we create conditions that allow the
bereaved child to mourn. Our work is more art than science, more heart
than head. The grieving child is not our patient but instead our companion.

The seedling in the parable represents, of course, the bereaved child. The
seedling is struggling to live in its new, hostile environment much as a
grieving child struggles to cope with her new, scary world. A world without
someone she loved very much. A world that does not understand the need
to mourn. A world that does not compassionately support its bereaved.

This child needs the love and attention of caring adults if she is to heal and
grow. It is the bereavement caregiver’s role to create conditions that allow for
such healing and growth. In the parable, the gardener removes stones near
the seedling’s tender stalk and offers it life-sustaining water. In the real
world, the grief gardener might simply listen as the child talks or acts out
her feelings of pain or sadness, in effect removing a heavy weight from her
small shoulders. Instead of water, someone who companions offers his
empathy, helping quench the child’s thirst for companionship.