Grief can be tough on some kids, especially when it’s the loss of a close friend. How can someone 10 years old simply vanish from one’s life? It’s not fair and it’s very hard to accept. A young client of mine, let’s cll her Danielle, came to me to help her through this situation. In this case it was a very close cousin who died of leukemia. The death occurred almost a year ago, but since then the child in question has been reluctant to return to her aunt’s home and is really feeling the emotion of overwhelming loss. She wanted me to make the pain go away. She gave me quite challenge.
I’m not sure if I came up with the solution or if we did it together, but this is what we came up with. Danielle talked about her experience reading novels and how when she was in the middle of the novel and the plot was very sad, she would often skip ahead to the end, to see how it will all turn out. I thought this was a very good thing to do in the area of grief. I encouraged her, when sadness was overwhelming her, that she should skip further along in the story of her life to see that it was all going to be a lot better. She brightened up with this strategy and left the office smiling.
