Helping Children Cope With Loss, Death, and Grief

When A Child Grieves And How To Help Them Deal With Grief

Grief whether it’s a parent, grandparent, sibling or much-loved pet who dies, the grief a child feels can be overwhelming. By encouraging the child to share their feelings and giving them time to grieve, you can help them to say goodbye.

Grief is very individual and there is no ‘right’ way to feel. Children might withdraw, mope around, become more troublesome, have temper outbursts, change their appearance or cry. Some grieve openly right away. Others take a while to show their feelings. A child’s grief may not be constant as feelings come and go repeatedly.

Answer the questions they ask. even the hard ones.

Kids learn by asking questions. When they ask questions about a death, it’s usually a sign that they’re curious about something they don’t understand. As an adult, a couple of the most important things you can do for children is to let them know that all questions are okay to ask, and to answer questions truthfully. Be sensitive to their age and the language they use. No child wants to hear a clinical, adult-sounding answer to their question, but they don’t want to be lied to either. Often the hardest time to be direct is right after a death. When a child asks what happened, use concrete words such as “died” or “killed” instead of vague terms like “passed away.” A young child who hears his mother say, “Dad passed away” or, “I lost my husband,” may be expecting that his father will return or simply needs to be found.

Remember other children may hear their parents talking about the death if it is known in the local community and speak to your child about what has happened. It is important your child hears information from you first. Do not hide the fact that you are upset and miss the person who has died so that they can feel comfortable showing their feelings too.

There are a number of resources that can support and help children, including specialist organisations and picture and storybooks. There are also helplines and websites for teenagers and young adults wanting to talk with someone about the issues they face after a bereavement.

When Grief Comes Home During the Holidays, How Do You Manage?

Grief during the holiday season beginning with Thanksgiving and going through Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year is a stressful time for all people, but particularly for those going through the seasons of grief after the loss of a loved one.

The holidays bring back memories of past holidays and hold much in the way of joyful and sorrowful feelings. Those who have lost a loved one fantasize that everyone else is surrounded by family and friends and is having a wonderful time, while they are feeling alone and miserable. This fantasy keeps them from creating their own plans or asking others to spend time with them in ways that will be helpful to them.

Ways to Cope with Grief Individually at the Holidays

Individuals who are bereaved may also need to be extra gentle with themselves during the holidays. The following are some suggestions:

• When others offer help, accept it. The holidays are a draining time of year for most people and those who are grieving are already short on energy.
• Think about your belief system. Is now the time to strengthen your ties to your religious community? Loosen your ties? Or perhaps change your beliefs so some extent to fit with any new lessons you may have learned from your grief.
• Take care of yourself. Avoid overindulgence in alcohol, tobacco, caffeine and sweets. Grief takes its toll on one physically, as well as emotionally. Try to avoid further stressing the body by eating nutritious food.
• Do something special for yourself. Buy yourself a gift in memory of your loved one, perhaps something you think they would want you to have. Pay someone to clean your house. Get a massage. See a good movie.
• Allow yourself time to cry.
• Allow yourself to be alone when you would like to be. Many people who grieve feel guilty about wanting to “cocoon” during the holidays, but it may be seen as a natural way of helping us slow down when grief is taking its toll on us.
• Decide with whom to spend your time. Spend time with those people who are able to be supportive. Decrease the amount of time spent with unsupportive friends and family.

Accept your grief in this holiday season, do not try to “pretend” it away. This will not be helpful to you or others. The seasons of grief only pass as we live through them and change and grow in them. To resist your grief is to prolong it. Growth can come only through your grief. Your life is different: learning how to cope with this difference constructively is the task for you as a griever both during and after the holidays.

Try not to put so much pressure on yourself to get everything done. If you do not feel like shopping or sending greeting cards or baking or cooking, then admit this to yourself and to family and friends. Find new ways of celebrating this year. You don’t have to live up to others’ or your own expectations. Ask for help in addressing those cards or putting up that tree if that’s what you want, or need. Allowing yourself these feelings and expressing them may be what you need, rather than the added stress and strain of accomplishing a whole list of items. Give yourself the time and space to feel and experience your loss while also sharing it with family and friends as much as possible.

How to Care for Newly Pierced Ears and Other Piercing

Pierced Ears and Other Piercing

An earring is a nice accessory for women and men. If you’ve just gotten your ear piercing, you’ll need to know how to care for ears and the jewellery you use. Here are some tips to help you.

• Use a cotton swab and an antiseptic to clean the earring and the area around the earring at least twice a day. Note: don’t clean the area too much or your skin will dry out.
• Your piercer should recommend an antiseptic for your ears (no chemicals should be used).
• Even after a bath or shower you’ll need to clean your ears. Be careful that no shampoo, conditioner, or body wash infects your piercing. As mentioned above, use a sea salt solution to disinfect your ear.
• At night, don’t sleep on your side. You want to be careful not to be unwanted pressure on your ears. This will take some time for you to get used to but you will have to cope with your new situation. It will be a couple of days, leading up to a month or two, before you can sleep on your side again.
• Once your ears have healed, which will take 6 to 9 weeks, you can swap out your earring. Your piercing should be flexible enough to accommodate smaller jewellery, larger jewellery, or any other alternative you chose. Just make sure your initial piercing is completely healed.

A few times a day (many people find themselves doing this all the time), turn your earrings so the piercing doesn’t heal around them. If you don’t turn your earrings, the skin will grow back in around the earrings and you won’t be able to get them out. Make a point of doing this at least twice a day. If you do it more often (playing with your new piercing), that’s fine. Turning them more is better than turning them less.

Be sure to leave your studs in for at least six weeks (recommendations will vary). If your piercing is having trouble healing – bleeding, crusting (make sure this is clear scabbing fluid and not pus), still painful, etc. – leave your studs in longer and continue to clean the piercings frequently. If your ears are healing well, you can remove the earrings after six weeks. However, continue wearing earrings most days, and stick with studs. Make sure the studs are hypoallergenic if your skin is at all sensitive. Wait a few more weeks, at least, before wearing any dangling earrings or non-hypoallergenic ones (until the piercing is healed even better).

When Divorce Is A New Year’s Resolution

Divorce Rates to Increase as New Year Sets In

While some couples may have kissed under the mistletoe this past holiday season, many others are destined for a date in divorce court. Matrimonial lawyers know that this time of year produces a very well-known annual event: After the champagne has flowed on New Year’s Eve, divorce fillings and the number of new cases inevitably begin to spike.

Many unhappy spouses make the resolution to move forward with a divorce some time during the course of the previous year or possibly even longer before that. As is often the case, they choose to bide their time with a great deal of deliberation and patience. Remaining committed to spending one last holiday season as a family unit, the estranged spouse decides to make the best of it just one more time before announcing the decision to end the marriage.

When children are involved, this carefully made decision to delay the announcement may be the best choice for everyone involved. Of course, this is only as long as the family gatherings held during the holiday season remain free of uncomfortable frictions, confrontations and fighting.

Divorce is sadly often unavoidable and can have a huge impact on the entire family so it’s important that issues are resolved quickly and sensitively. For many separation is a last resort, when all other methods of reconciliation have failed, so couples want their legal affairs in order and papers finalised as soon as possible so they can start to move on.

However, many couples are often unsure of where to turn, especially when expensive legal bills are not an option as proceedings can become long and drawn out. Lengthy divorces do not benefit anyone especially where children are involved so it is vital that both parties seek impartial legal advice sooner rather than later.

Families worried about spiralling divorce costs should always seek professional advice. There is plenty of free advice available on a range of family matters, including divorce, from organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureau. Specialist solicitors can also advise you on your rights and help you find the right options to help you resolve your problems and if you require it representation in court.

Although divorce levels have fallen in the UK, we still hold one of the highest figures in the world, with more than one in a 100 marriages ending in divorce. This means divorce is still a very real issue throughout the country.

Matrimonial disputes are often stressful and emotionally highly charged and believe that the relationship between client and lawyer must be based on trust, confidence and accessibility.