What T o D o When Mufasa Dies

1. What To Do When Mufasa Dies Patrick Norton

3. What is Grief? • Universal human experience • Multifaceted response to loss • Emotional • Cognitive • Physical • Social • Cultural • Philosophical • Unique! • Healthy!

4. What does it look like? • Again, grief is unique and influenced by many different factors • Sadness • Anger • Guilt or Regrets • Fear • Physical Complaints

5. Grief Spurts • Adults often have the ability to have one foot in grief, and one foot out. Children jump into and out of grief.

6. Invisible Grief • Grief versus Mourning • Many adults struggle if children are not visibly grieving • Difficult to accurately perceive how a child is grieving

7. Let’s chat about Kübler-Ross…

8. Cyclical and Dynamic • Developmental Level highly influences grief process • Regressive behavior is common

9. If it wasn’t hard enough • Ambiguous Grief and Loss • Traumatic Grief • Complicated Grief

10. Ambiguous Loss • Custody Changes • Moving • Friends moving • Losing Pets • Divorce • Incarceration • Special items breaking or losing them • Military Deployment • Cognitive impairment (Alzheimer's or Dementia, etc) • Disability • Children (and adults) may experience loss that is not caused by the death of a loved one • Ambiguous loss may interfere with a “normal” grieving process • More significance to closure • Resilience is crucial

11. Traumatic Grief • Trauma and Loss are different experiences • Trauma is a reaction to real or perceived risk of harm to self or loved ones • Loss is a response to being unable to access someone or something that is important • Grief may be experienced as a result of trauma or loss

12. Traumatic Grief • May be difficult to distinguish symptoms of grief from symptoms of trauma in children • Severe, prolonged, and interfering symptoms may be indicative of trauma • Intrusive images (including nightmares) • Significant avoidance of thinking or talking about the person that died, cause of death, or places, activities • Negative personal beliefs or mood • Significant and pervasive behavioral changes in appetite, sleep, concentration or startle response

13. Complicated Grief • Complicated grief is persistent acute grief • May last months or years • Differentiated from depression, although symptom presentation may be similar

14. How Can We Help? • Activity Time! • Find a Partner!

15. The Man beats the Gun • The Gun beats the Bear • The Bear beats the Man • If you Tie, you Die!

16. Helping Children Cope with Grief • Take Breaks • Let children express their feelings • Talk about and remember the person who died • Give them good information • Provide routine and structure • Include children in funerals and rituals

17. No-Nos • “I know how you feel” • “It will be okay” • “Try not to think about it” • “Be strong” • “You’re the man of the house now” • “You should feel…..”

18. Yes-Yeses • “What was _____ like?” • “What do you miss the most?” • “What is the hardest part for you?” • “I care about how you are feeling” • “Is there anything I can do in the classroom to help?” • “Is there anything in the classroom you would like to change to feel more comfortable?”

24. For more information… • Patrick Norton • Program Coordinator – Family and Community Services • pnorton@glenwood.org • Pinterest: Patrick Norton

25. Special Thanks!