Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Five Stages of Grief

Grief...  It isn't a process we ever want our kids to go through, but unfortunately it does happen.  Children go through loss, wether we mean divorce and/or family struggles (i.e. economic, social, warfare, medical, etc), or after the death of loved ones, including, as the sweet and heart-breaking video below shows, the loss of a pet for the first time.


Elisabeth Kübler-Ross first wrote about the Five Stages of Grief in her book "On Death and Dying".  The stages were not meant to be chronological, nor complete.  Some people get stuck in one stage, and may need an intervention to help them cope.  It is helpful to check for those stages when you are caring for yourself or a loved one, and try to help them within each stage that they go through.  Some of these stages are often socially unaccepted or frowned upon, like Anger.  We need to allow ourselves and our children to feel and express these emotions without fear of repercussion.  Our main goal then becomes containment.  We, as the support system for our child, work on containing our child's feelings, and allowing him or her to express such feelings within a safe environment.

The Five Stages of Grief are:

  • Denial
  • Bargaining
  • Anger
  • Depression
  • Acceptance


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