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Sadly departed

Help children to cope with the incomprehensible reality of the death of a loved one through simple explanations and stories, advise Jenny Mosley and Ross Grogan

A Grief is a difficult thing for young children to understand. They are aware that someone important has been lost and that the adults around them are feeling powerful emotions, but they are not old enough to grasp the permanence of the absence in their lives and tend to assume that the person who has died has 'gone away' but will come back soon. This inability to conceive of death as an irreversible loss can lead them to feel 'separation anxiety' and confusion. They feel compelled to search for the lost person and repeatedly ask, 'Where have they gone and when will they be coming back?'

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