How to Provide Support for a Child Coping with a Loss

Use appropriate vocabulary when discussing death and dying. Use the words dead, dying, and died when talking about death. Avoid analogies like "dying is like going to sleep" or euphemisms like "passed on," "lost, or "gone away." Children are literal in their interpretation of language.

Describe death in terms of familiar bodily functions. Describe what it means to be dead, point out that normal bodily functions stop; the heart stops beating, there is no more breathing, no more feeling, no more emotions, no more loving, no more thinking, no more sleeping, no more eating. Do not describe death as sleeping, resting, or lying still.

Children may become fearful of these actions when used to describe death. Explain why the death has occurred. give the child accurate information. When talking to a child about a person or animal that has died as a result of an illness, explain that all living things get sick sometimes, and that mostly they get better but sometimes they are so terribly sick they end up dying because their body cannot function anymore.

When talking about a death that has resulted in an accident or injury, help them differentiate between mortal injury and everyday cuts and scrapes from which we all recover. Children are fragile, but need to understand life and death. Be honest and give them as much information they ask for.

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