Special Needs & Children 1. Grief and Children with Special Needs: Children with special needs may express their grief and feelings differently, but their grief is still just as powerful. Keep these strategies in mind when working with these students: · Be open and honest. Use appropriate words such as “dead” and “death” and avoid euphemisms. Don’t lie to the child or tell half truths. · Beware of telling a child that the person is “just sleeping”. · Be available to listen, to talk or simply spend time with the child. · Be patient as the same questions may be asked over and over again. · Allow the child to show their grief in whatever way they want, as long as it is safe. . · Enable the child to say goodbye and see the body of the person who died if at all possible, and encourage parents to allow that.
. · Don’t exclude the child from helpful rituals of death, which will help them understand someone important in their life has died. . · Rituals that are abstract may be confusing, frustrating and of little value. 1. 2. 3. 4. How to Talk to Children with Autism about Death | Autism Society of Pittsburgh.
By Jennifer Cerbasi, New Jersey Special Education Teacher Jennifer Cerbasi teaches at a public school for children on the autism spectrum in New Jersey. As a coordinator of Applied Behavioral Analysis programs in the home, she works with parents to create and implement behavioral plans for their children in an environment that fosters both academic and social growth. In addition to her work both in the classroom and at home, she is also a member of the National Association of Special Education Teachers and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
The only thing harder than losing a loved one may be explaining that loss to your child. Some people mistakenly describe all children with autism as much less emotional or even “robotic” as compared to their typically-developing peers. There are some important things you can do to help your autistic family member cope with this loss.
State the facts Children with autism are concrete thinkers. Incorporate your religious beliefs. Guide to understanding death for young children and special needs kids at One Place for Special Needs. Guide to Understanding Death for Young Children and Special Needs Kids My grandmother recently passed away. With the ceremonies and experiences in my mind, I thought I would address some of the anxieties and other issues that can come up for children when explaining death and going to a wake and funeral. These resources offer matter of fact language that can assist children with autism, Down syndrome, learning disabilities, generalized anxieties and behavior disorders.
They can also benefit any young child who is struggling with making sense of the loss of a loved family member. This guide is in honor of my grandmother, Millie Kabat, a lovely woman who will be missed. by Dawn Villarreal, One Place for Special Needs Addressing death when you have an elderly family member - This article explains what you can do beforehand to prepare your child for a relative's death. Why do people die? Why do people die young? Additional resources Please visit our sponsors. About the writer.
Talking with a Child with Special Needs about Death and Dying| Jewish Social Service Agency (JSSA) Author: Arlen Gaines, LCSW-C, ACHP-SW, JSSA Hospice Talking with any child about death and dying can be daunting, but it may be particularly so when the child has special needs. When done in a way that takes into account the child’s specific developmental, social, and learning needs, a discussion such as this can be meaningful and highly influential as the child continues to grow and develop. Though there may be an inclination to shield children from loss, in fact these kinds of discussions can serve as important teaching moments about the nature of life and death. This article provides suggestions for parents and other loved ones in talking about death and dying with children who have special needs.
Use Real Words. Www.cc.nih.gov/ccc/patient_education/pepubs/childeath.pdf. Funeral offers lessons in living. Center for Family and Community Ministries || Grief Resources. Special Resources for Teens and Children These congregational resources for loss and mourning have been compiled by Helen Harris, LCSW, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Work. The resources on this page include brief handouts for church leaders, longer published papers with details about other resources, and several powerpoint presentations for use in your congregation and for preparing leaders for experiences of care related to crises, loss, and mourning. What is a Congregation to do? Grief in Family and Congregational LifeBy Helen Harris; Family Ministry Vol. 17, Number 2, Summer 2003. Illness and death, loss and grief, the need to mourn are experiences common to all families.
What is a Congregation to Do? This article explores the professional literature available to congregations to guide helping and makes recommendations to congregations and pastors interested in increasing service and outreach to the sick and the dying. Www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/92009.pdf. GriefShare: Grief Recovery Support Groups. Relax, You Don’t Have To Do “Grief Work” | Remembering For Good. In the modern Western world we’re so obsessed with working and achieving that we’ve even tried to push the experience of loss and grief into our culture of working and achieving. I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about needing to do “grief work.”
Grief work is often usually interpreted as thinking and talking about your losses and expressing your emotions through talking or crying. While I do think that talk therapy and crying can be useful sometimes, there are a lot of other ways that we can relate with our grief and use it to transform ourselves, and I question whether “work” is a useful metaphor for grieving and transforming. Words create assumptions, expectations and experiences The words we use matter because our words create our expectations and also the permissions we do and don’t give ourselves, which ultimately mediates our experience of grief.
“Grief work, grief tasks, unresolved grief, achieving closure…” Can you hear the modern Western industrial cultural influence? Relax.