Essentials: Supporting Children Through Bereavement And Grief In Schools

The death of a close family member can deeply affect a student's emotional well-being, leaving educators wondering how best to provide support during such difficult times. Justine Wilson, counselor from the Edwards Trust, joins us in our latest podcast to shed light on initiating conversations about grief, offering invaluable advice on what to say, and equally important, what to avoid saying to students grappling with a loss. Tune in to find out more. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential.

Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world. So you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi there. Simon Currigan here. And today, I'm going to share with you a slightly longer essentials episode of School Behaviour Secrets than normal, where I share indispensable strategies and insights from an earlier episode that can have an immediate impact on the students that you work with. Remember, if you're enjoying the podcast, please remember to subscribe in your podcast app so you never miss a single episode.

So today, we are revisiting an interview with Justine Wilson who's clinical lead at Edwards Trust, a charity that specializes in supporting children experiencing bereavement, where we discussed some of the ways in which adults can sensitively support students with the issues of death, grief, and loss. We're going to pick up my conversation with Justine about midway through the interview. But when it comes to bereavement, what kind of behaviours might be considered normal for a grieving child? And then what I'm driving that really is what kind of behaviours might highlight to us that the child isn't coping, there's a cause for concern, there might need some additional support.

I think certainly being emotional and showing the concern, they may be talking about the person that's died, they may want go over time and again, actually, things that have happened so that they can sort of process and make sense of things. All of those things are are quite normal and all of the responses that we've previously spoken about can be considered to be normal in terms of the grieving process. I guess the time to be concerned is if that is prolonged for, you know, a long period of time, and that it's beginning to impact on day to day coping, day to day functioning in terms of you know, it might be that it's really impacting on school work and their ability to engage with education and just to get through the day. Sometimes, you know, if if things are starting to feel really difficult, then it may be really helpful for them to have a bit of space to explore what's going on. And as I said already, it will really also depend on the support around them. So, you know, if they have a support network and people that they can talk to and the family are very open and promoting the ability to access memories and share that information. That can be really helpful.

But for, obviously, for other grieving parents or family members that might be really painful to support that and it might be quite difficult to support the grieving child when you're grieving yourself and so it's not always easy to offer that. So it's a combination of things really, I suppose, that we would look for. Does this person need support in terms of what was their behaviour like before the bereavement When

When you think about the conversations you've had with the many children that you've supported, what were the sort of things that they said that their teachers or educators had done or they wished they'd have done that are helpful to them?

Yeah. I think there is, as we know, a bit of a stigma still about talking about death and dying generally within society, and it's not an easy subject to broach. And I guess, you know, certainly for the young people that have attended Edwards Trust, we've made some films recently actually with some of our young people who have talked about the support that they had in schools and what they wished would have been in place and actually what they experienced. And one of the things I think first of all is just an acknowledgement of the loss. So, you know, rather than teachers not mentioning it at all and pupils being unsure actually what people know and whether other pupils know, whether teachers know. It's just that open conversation of acknowledging that there has been a loss and that actually, it might be difficult at times. So that is definitely helpful.

I think the ability to have someone to talk to about what's going on is really useful. And things like practical things actually, like a time out card. So if a pupil feels that they're really struggling to have that facility to be able to just take a little bit of time out and for it to be okay and be supported by school, I think is really, really valuable because one of the things about grief is that we don't actually know when things are going to impact on us. And it may be that emotions start to rise and can hit us when we least expect it. And so I suppose from a school perspective, if we're alert to that and we're supporting pupils to be able to take some time out and acknowledge that that can happen, I think that's really helpful. Some of the activities that we do in class, obviously, if we're thinking about celebrating Father's Day, Mother's Day, other events that might be really significant in a child's life and and their sort of experience with family. It's worth thinking about the fact that that might impact on that particular child.

And if we can, give them a bit of advance warning that we might be looking at that subject, you know, in the next lesson. And, you know, how do they feel about it? Do they want to engage with it? You know, because we can't assume, for example, because dad's died that a child might not want to make a father's day card for example because actually that might be really helpful and they may want to do that. They may want to take it to the grave for example. So I think there's something about not making assumptions, but having that dialogue and open conversation really so that pupils know that they can talk about what's going on for them if they feel they need to.

In general, in those early days, who should be initiating those early conversations? Should we, as the adults, be approaching the child to say, look, we know something's happened and that, you know, we're here to support you? Or is it better to leave the child to come to you, but run the risk then that they feel that no one cares?

I think I would certainly advocate for the first option there, Simon, which is let's have that conversation in terms of, you know, we know what's happened. We are aware of it. If you need some time out, if you need to talk, then that's okay. Because I think if we leave the onus on the child, then that can be difficult actually. You know, we're asking people to be quite vulnerable, aren't we, in terms of this is what's happened. This might be really different from every other child's experience in this classroom, and that might be difficult for me to ask for what I need. So I think if the teacher's taking the initiative, then I think that's that's really helpful.

What sort of things should we avoid saying and doing?

I think there's something about simple and honest communication. So we can all be guilty actually of using euphemisms when we're talking about death. So people might say that person has gone to sleep, or they're watching over you, or they're in the stars. And it may feel like it softens the blow almost and makes it easier for the child to kind of take on board. But I think for children often they can take that literally. So you can find that children, for example, might struggle to want to go to bed and go to sleep if they've been told that someone's gone to sleep because it might feel really scary actually or if they're told that somebody's lost, we've lost them.

Where are they? Let's try and find them, you know, where they must be somewhere. If we say that somebody's in a better place, what does that mean and why can't we go and visit them, for example, You know? So I think our language, if we can think about the things that we say, that can be really helpful. We want to try and make it better often, don't we, when children are distressed and when they're upset. And so we can try and say things that sort of minimise what's going on. I know how you feel, you know, you need to be strong, those sort of things.

But it's not necessarily helpful because what message are we giving the children then? Are we saying it's not okay, actually, to experience what you're revealing and to be able to show that. So I think it's about, you know, thinking about the language we use, trying to be clear and and simple in what we say, but don't be afraid to use 'dead' or 'dying' and the specific terms. And I think part of the difficulty we have is that as adults, we can find it difficult to have those frank and honest conversations. So it can feel quite brutal to talk in that way to children. But as we know, they respond well to factual information, and they can cope with it as long as it's age appropriate language and we don't necessarily overload them with information, it feels like that's the best approach.

What would you say to a teacher or a teaching assistant who's got a child in their class who's recently had a death in the family and they want to support the child, but they're worried about saying the wrong thing, what would you advise them?

I think don't be afraid to open the conversation, really. And as we've said already, take the initiative, conversation if they want that. And I think if children feel that they're listened to and that there is time for them to talk if they need to, then that's amazing. It's about offering opportunities to remember those opportunities to talk, but also space if they need it just to have a little bit of time away as well. I think it's being open, and I think it's being available and just being aware that their grief can surface at any time. So, you know, maybe just a watchful eye at times as well. The other thing I would say actually for school staff generally is that this subject is difficult.

And as we know, you know, most people do experience a loss at some point during their lives. And for some school staff, they may also be experiencing their own personal issues or losses. And it may bring up things for them too. And they may find that it's really worth thinking about, am I the right person to support this child in their grief? Because I might have a lot going on myself and might find it difficult to be available. And, you know, it might bring things up for me as well about the losses I have.

You've mentioned lots of practical ideas to support kids, but if you're a teacher or a parent listening to this podcast, what's the first step you can take today to start supporting those pupils around the issues of death, grief, and bereavement? You mentioned you've got some videos on your website and you've got some resources. How can they get hold of those?

There's quite a lot of resources in the videos as I say. So if they just go to our website, which is edwardstrust.org.uk, they're all available on there.

And if you would like to hear more about how the death of a family member may affect a child and the types of behaviours we may see at home or in school as a result, please click the link at the bottom of the episode description to go back to original episode number 50. If you found today's episode helpful, we'd really appreciate your support. It only takes you 30 seconds to sprinkle some podcast joy by rating and reviewing us. Trust us. This tiny gesture will make a big difference because hitting the subscribe button not only guarantees you won't miss out on any future episodes, but also helps us share valuable insights to educate the school leaders and parents everywhere. Thanks for tuning in, and I look forward to seeing you next time for another School Behaviour Secrets.