CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.16. ACTIVITIES TO SUPPORT CHILDREN LIVING THROUGH BEREAVEMENT
2.16. ACTIVITIES TO SUPPORT CHILDREN LIVING THROUGH
> Listen to the child's questions - and respond with honesty.
> Do it over and over until each aspect has been worked through successfully.
2.16.2. Care and support from significant others
Kroen (1996) and Backer et al (1994) concurred that children cannot grieve if they do not understand what has happened to them. Death ends a life, not a relationship. The old adage
"time heals all wounds" does not apply to children living through bereavement. Bereaved children have a need for love, support and care from significant others, as well as their own friends to talk to about the death. When children are encouraged to talk about their feelings, and share their experiences, they are able to come to terms with their feelings and feel less anxious about their future. Caregivers need to ensure that bereaved children get back into reorganising their daily routines as soon as possible, which include: appropriate personal care, sleeping and eating habits, homework assignments, and maintain acceptable levels of behaviour despite feeling overwhelmed by the death experience. Backer et al (1994) cautioned that reorganisation should not be seen as recovery, but merely a part of normalising the grieving process as children start to participate in activities that they enjoyed prior to their parent's death.
Children are able to get in touch with their feelings through games and exercises. Play is the child's natural language and medium for communication. To play it out is the most natural self- healing measure that childhood affords, according to Erikson, as cited in the Childline SA Prevention & Education Training Manual (2006:40). Art, music and play are all therapeutic activities for children, despite their painful experiences. Play helps children focus on the present - and the future - because it helps them think and reflect on their environment. They cannot change the past, but play affords the opportunity to be happy again. The Childline SA Prevention & Education Training Manual (2006) describes a number of valuable benefits for children who play: providing a means for establishing rapport, helping others understand children's relationships and interactions, helping children express feelings they are unable to verbalise, and it can also be used to act out feelings of anxiety or tension in a constructive manner. Play is beneficial when it is age-appropriate and in accordance with the child's level of development. Bereaved children usually welcome the opportunity to express their feelings through constructive play.
Kubler-Ross & Kessler (2005) suggested that when facing loss, it takes an enormous amount of strength and determination to cope with our loss in a manner that honours our love one. It is difficult to determine what a grieving child feels, but the support of listening and respecting their needs on how to work things out in their own way will be helpful. Offering expressions of reassurance and allowing the bereaved to reminisce about their loss are essential for a child living through bereavement. In helping children grieve, children should not be made to feel helpless because grieving is an emotional experience and not a mental one. Significantly, according to Jackson, as cited in Abrams (2000:46), talking is considered to be the single most important influence on how well people adjust and recover. It doesn't take away the pain, but talking is enormously beneficial.
2.16.3. Memory projects
Healthy grieving involves recognising the importance of remembering. When bereaved individuals socially share the loss of a loved one, they give both the death itself and its consequences more reality. Because the deceased is still in a sense part of the bereaved, one needs to preserve and indulge in memories of the dead as part of the grieving process, according to Abrams (2000).
Kon (2002) highlighted the importance of a "memory box" for the bereaved, especially for a bereaved child who may be desperate to "hold on" to memories that may be fading fast.
Memory boxes hold tangible memories, where valued or treasured keepsakes, such as:
photographs, letters, poems and little effects associated with the loved one, are a great source of comfort. Each treasured memento has its own story or associated memory. Kon (2002) recommended that memory boxes need not be elaborate, but rather something children are able to make by themselves, and keep in a special place so that they can access it whenever they need to.
Van Dyk (2001) refers to the National Community of Women Living with AIDS in Uganda who have successfully implemented the Memory Project for infected parents and children. This project allows children to gather information about their parent/s that will be beneficial to them in later life, especially for orphans. Nyammayarwo, as cited in van Dyk (2001:337), also emphasises the importance of the memory project in encouraging children to take up the challenge of looking after themselves after their parent/s have died.
The Sinomlando Project devised a Memory Box Programme, aimed at facilitating opportunities for family members, infected and affected by AIDS living in the Durban area, to tell their life stories. (Sinomlando is the Zulu phrase for "we have a history"). With the help of "memory facilitators," children whose parents are living with, or have died from AIDS, were given the opportunity of creating memory banks that would allow them to know more of their family history, especially events associated with familial happiness. The research findings of the Sinomlando Project's pilot study, according to Denis, suggested that children who have distinct recollections of life with their parents are better able to cope with the misfortunes associated with AIDS-related death because they are more familiar with their family history and can infer the cause of parental illness or death (www.sorat.ukzn.ac.za.sinomlando/research/meinorv- boxes.html).
2.16.4. Giving grief words
Kubler-Ross & Kessler (2005) highlighted some of the benefits of letter writing for the bereaved, and those include: grief being externalised, finishing unfinished business, drawing comfort from reading old letters and cards, and being able to commit to paper their feelings for loved ones. Because bereaved children grieve for a longer period of time, memory projects create opportunities for them to participate in creating something that comforts them and allows them to personalise the way in which they choose to remember their loved one. Anniversaries and special occasions, that once brought happiness and great joy, now symbolise sadness associated with the loss, Hence the importance of creating an appropriate way to deal with these memories.
Memories have an important place in one's grieving process because it keeps the past alive, according to Grosshandler-Smith (1995:120). Children should be honest in remembering all aspects of the deceased, some good and some not so good. Memories signify that although the body has gone, attachment still continues. Grieving involves remembering, not forgetting.