Friday, June 26, 2009
Talk about Helping children cope with grief and loss- Paul Thayer
Lessons I learnt:
1. Looking at children's persepective, people die due to three reasons: old age, death and for being bad people.
2. There are actually developmental norms for children's reactions to death.
3. Kids younger than three do not understand death, but thay doesn't mean that they are not affect by it.
4. Apart from children, we need to suport parents as well- grieving parents often didn't have energy to deal with the child, leaving the child with a lot of unanswered emotions.
5. Be flexible about allowing child to bring in an object to provide sense of security, not about bending rules.
6. Be sensitive in word used, i.e. sleeping doesn't equals to dying.
7. How we, as teachers should react and respond is important to children.
It's the calling to be humane,
yet teach them that life still has to go on.
