How surviving parents handled their young children's adaptation to the crisis of loss

The Ashes of Tragedy: Parental Death and Child Character Development in Bambi and The Lion King

The Walt Disney company has been the topic of extensive research for decades; among the explored subjects and identified themes is Disney's fixation on death. Disney has capitalized on the incredibly traumatic childhood experience of the death of a parent by featuring parental death as a major narrative component. Speculation remains regarding the accuracy of not only death presentations in media, but death influence on characters. Using textual analysis, this paper explores the role of parental death on child character development within two Disney animated films. Analysis demonstrates an inaccurate depiction of parental death influence on children in a positive light - essentially overlooking the trauma associated with loss during childhood and the mediating factors of long-term bereavement outcomes. Conversations remain to be had regarding how these inaccurate depictions of death and dying in popular culture influence the children consuming them.

Family Communication in the Crisis of a Child's Fatal Illness: A Literature Review and Analysis

When faced with the tragedy of losing a child to a terminal illness, communication is a crucial factor in alleviating stresses and anxieties experienced by the child and his family. Two opposing modes of communication have been advocated-the protective approach in which the ill child is shielded from knowledge of the disease diagnosis and prognosis-and the open approach, which encourages provision of an environment in which the child feels free to express concerns and ask questions about his condition. This paper is devoted to an examination of family communication about the crisis of the dying child from these two perspectives. The rationale for the protective and open approaches is discussed in terms of the sources of the child's anxiety, his conception of death, and his observed behavioral response to the illness.

Childhood Bereavement

Nowadays children are increasingly exposed to death in their environment. The literature indicates that bereaved children make up a vulnerable population; they are at risk of developing psychological and behavioural dysfunctions as well as social difficulties. Just like adults, bereaved children need to relieve their painful thoughts by expressing their feelings and talking about the deceased with their family, friends and/or psychologist. However, children are often overlooked during such a crisis and their needs may be ignored because adult family members are preoccupied with their own grieving. These factors point to the need for intervention; the school psychologist, during this painful period, can be an important source of education, guidance and support for the child and the family. Responding appropriately to children's needs, however, requires an understanding of how they view and react to death. The main purpose of this article is to provide a review of the literature on children's developmental conceptions and reactions to death. In addition, suggestions are made as to provide appropriate intervention strategies that can be used by psychologists, such as individual counselling, play therapy, bibliotherapy, family counselling and group counselling.

Evaluation of a preventive intervention for bereaved children

One hundred eighty four families completed a twelve month parent-guidance (experimental) or a parent telephone-monitoring (comparison) intervention initiated during one parent's terminal cancer illness and continued until six months after the death. Children in the parent-guidance intervention reported greater reduction in trait anxiety and greater improvement in their perceptions of the surviving parent's competence and communication, a primary goal of the intervention. Identified problems in implementing evaluations of experimental interventions with bereaved children include the following: (1) Available and commonly used standardized psychopathology measures do not adequately capture changes in non-psychopathological but bereaved distressed, grieving children and adolescents. (2) Experimental and control samples usually have very few children with psychopathology (scores). Relatively small changes in scores within the normal range may be insufficient to allow measurement of meaningful differences between interventions. (3) Both experimental and control interventions must provide sufficient help to retain families for later evaluation. The level of general support and referral for other treatments, if adequately done, may be sufficient to blur differences in standardized psychopathology measure scores between any two interventions. It may only be in the specifically targeted intervention area that differences can be expected to be significant in adequately resourced families.

Death Education: A Comparison of two Programs for Mothers of Young Children

The study compared two death education programs for mothers ( N = 90) of young children. Pre- and post-test scores on the State-Anxiety Scale and researcher-designed instruments that included the Children's Questions About Death Scale (CQADS) and Future Plans Inventory (FPI) were compared. Mothers in both the Didactic and Didactic-Experiential programs scored significantly higher than the Control group in their level of effectiveness in responding to children's questions, but the two treatment groups did not significantly differ from each other. Neither the Didactic Death Education nor the Didactic-Experiential Death Education programs significantly affected mothers' anxiety before responding to children's questions about death. Post hoc analyses suggested trends relating subject characteristics to mother's level of effectiveness in responding to a child's questions about death.

Prenatal diagnosis: the experience in families who have children

Recent investigations have documented the potentially stressful nature of prenatal diagnostic testing but no systematic attention has been paid to the particular experiences of women who already have other offspring in the home. Some evidence suggests an alteration of parent-child relationships. Further support for need to inquire into this issue can be found in the extensive literature concerned with children's reactions to death and bereavement, as well as to miscarriage. Results are presented from a study of the experiences of families in which mothers used prenatal diagnostic testing. The sample consisted of 112 women drawn from an outpatient population receiving prenatal testing and their 175 living offspring who were 4 years old or older. Over two thirds of the mothers indicated they had told at least one child in the family about the testing, and children's reactions were characterized as very interested, with low to moderate levels of anxiety, worry, or confusion about the testing. More extreme, worrisome reactions were the exception. In a few cases children were reported to have been concerned about the possibilities of harm to the mother and about abortion. Some of the preschool age children seem to have been frightened by overly graphic descriptions of the procedure itself. A few mothers also voiced concerns that as a result of knowing about the testing their children might become frightened and feel less secure about their own imperfections.

Young mothers' communication about death with their children

Young mothers' death-communication style and content patterns were determined by use of a simulation device in which a child's recorded voice posed questions or expressed reactions to a death situation. Eight different situations were constructed, depicting two each of four common reactions of children to a type of death occurrence (fear, curiosity, anger, fantasy/denial). Interviews were conducted with 100 mothers of young children who also responded spontaneously to each of the eight situations just as they might respond to their own children. Judges were able to place the women's recorded responses into both content and style categories. Content patterns were inconsistent; style (relationship) classifications appeared to be most consistent, with subjects falling into four predetermined style patterns (open-warm, open-cool, closed-warm, closed-cool) and one mixed category. Parents' reaction differences appeared only in the more ego-involving situations in which the child displayed some emotions, whereas a majority of mothers responded similarly to the "developmental curiosity" of the child. Background and personality factors relating to communication styles were investigated; factors labeled "commitment to education" and "resistance to emotional discussion" discriminated most clearly among the five style groups. combined groups (open versus closed, warm versus cool) also revealed significant differences. Implications for parent education and for further research are discussed.