What Will Learn?

Children and Bereavement is a course that focuses on the psychological and emotional challenges that can arise when a child experiences the loss of a loved one, and how to support children through the grief process. It is designed to provide students with an understanding of the unique developmental and psychological needs of children who are grieving, as well as the various approaches and techniques that can be used to support them through this difficult process.

Course Overview: This course is part of the Ethereal Master Program in Grief Therapy at the School of Grief Education of AITU. It is a 6-hour semester course that must be completed within 6 weeks. The aim of this course is to introduce students to the theory and practice of children and grief counseling. The course work topics include: how do children grieve when a parent dies, does grief differ from that of adults, can the “task of grieving” be applied to children, and how can bereave be helped best.

Course Objectives:

• To identify children and their families in mourning. To identify children’s mourning process.
• To identify the major influences on the course and outcome of childhood bereavement.
• To identify how family rituals influence the child’s adjustment to the loss.
•  To describe the families’ experience of parental loss and how the changes brought about by this loss affected the children and their surviving parent during the first two years after the death.
•  To identify how children changed as they respond to the loss of a parent.
• To identify developmental tasks in childhood.
•  To describe encounters with death during childhood.
• To examine research on the development of death-related concepts during child-hood.
•  To explore sources and typical expressions of death-related attitudes in childhood. To identify issues confronting children who are coping with bereavement and grief. To suggest constructive ways in which adults can help children who are coping with death.
•  To outline the important mediators of the bereavement experience and how these various mediators affect the course and outcome of bereavement.
•  To explore to what extent experiencing parental death places children at risk for serious emotional and behavioral consequences.
• To identify children’s reactions to the death of a parent.
•  Identify children’s loss of a sibling compared with children’s loss of a parent.
• To explore how to help bereaved children.
•  To outline the needs of grieving children.
• To explore issues that must be considered before the intervention.
•  To explore the various models that can be used for intervention with bereaved children and their families.
•  To explore activities that will facilitate children through the various tasks of mourning.