Talking to your child about infant loss

Infant Loss is a Family Event

The death of a baby is a deep loss.

Parents who have lost a baby to miscarriage or stillbirth are struggling to cope with their grief. And often these parents have young children who were looking forward to having a little brother or little sister.

Infant loss is not only a parental loss. It's a family event.

Even in their time of pain, parents are called to to help their surviivng children process at he level they can understand and to feel safe.

Parents Set the Emotional Tone

Children look to their parents to understand how to feel. If the loss occurred early in pregnancy and attachment was still forming, children may register it lightly. If parents experienced a deep bond and visible grief, children will sense this and often share in it.

Children experience strong emotion differently than adults. A child may cry deeply — and then go play. This isn't insensitivity. It's developmental regulation. Children cycle through strong feelings in shorter bursts. Let them do so.

Children Experience Strong Emotions, Including Grief, in Small Spurts

Because of their developmental phase, children sustain strong emotion in smaller spurts than adults. They will feel sad and cry for a bit and then need to change to a different feeling. Parents shouldn’t blame their child for being insensitive if he or she goes off to play instead of focusing on their lost sibling.

How Children Understand Death

Children’s understanding of death evolves with age. These are general patterns - each child is unique.

3 - 5 year old children:

• Believe that death is temporary and reversible

• Are very concrete

• Might think the baby is alive somewhere else

6 - 8 year old children:

• Mostly understand death is permanent

• But are still concrete in thinking and may believe that death can be prevented if one is careful

• Sometimes think that death is contagious

9 - 12 year old children:

• Understand the permanence of death

• Might make jokes about death to distance themselves from it

• Might mistakenly feel they have caused the death

Gently check for magical thinking. Children often might believe they could have prevented the death and carry private guilt.

What to Say:

Keep the explanations clear, honest and simple. Depending on the age of the child, the emotional and medical explanations can be more detailed. But, in general, too many medical details are not needed.

Say something like:

Simple facts:

Our baby died because the cord that gives her air and food got a kink in it and she couldn’t get any more air and food. So her heart stopped working. Sometimes this happens and no one really knows why this happens.

Release feelings of blame:

It was not anyone’s fault, certainly not your fault.

Name emotions and assure continued love:

Mommy and Daddy are sad and angry about losing our baby. We may be sad and seem angry sometimes. And we still love you even if we seem sad, it's not because of something you did.

What to Do:

• Acknowledge the death as a family
  

Include the children, as appropriate, in the funeral or memorial service you have for the baby. Don’t force them to attend the entire ceremony. Accept they will participate to their capacity, not yours. Ask another family member or hire a babysitter to take them outside if needed.

• Encourage emotional expression through drawing and play
  

Children metabolize their feelings through movement, play, drawing. Often, they spontaneously release trauma or highly-charged emotion by acting out the events in their lives using their toy houses, trucks, dolls and blocks. Also, cildren will often express their feelings in drawings. Give your child free access to simple art materials such as paper, markers, crayons, and clay. Don't direct the play and let this unfold at their own pace.

• Create a family ritual
  

Process grief as a family by creating a memorial collage, decorate a memory box in which to put special keep-sakes or message notes. Light a candle.

• Get back to regular school and social activities
  

It's healthy to express sad feelings and to acknowledge loss. It is also healthy to encourage resilience, positivity and growth in life. Even if you are feeling very sad, help your children get back to their regular routines.

Be a Model of Self-Care

Even if it seems impossible, take care of yourself. You are a valuable person and your life is valuable. You are your child’s first teacher. Model self-respect and self-care through a hard time and they will learn resilience from you.

A Book to Support Families

We Were Gonna Have a Baby, But We Had an Angel Instead  is the most lovely book about infant loss for children that I’ve read. I think it’s helpful for adults, too. I know I cry whenever I read it, and I’ve read it many times.

I wrote a review of the book, it’s here, if you’d like to read it.

Sources:

Davis, D. L. (1996). Empty cradle, broken heart: Surviving the death of your baby. Golden, Colorado: Fulcrum Books.

Limbo, R., Kobler, K. (2009). Will our baby be alive again? Supporting parents of young children when a baby dies. Nursing for Women’s Health, Aug/Sept,13(4), 302-311.

Schweibert, P. (2003). We were gonna have a baby, but we had an angel instead. Portland, Oregon: Grief Watch.

Trozzi, M. (1999). Talking with children about loss. New York: Perigree Books.

Worden, J. W. (2002). Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy. New York: Springer Publishing Co.