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When children are grieving, it's very important to help them to be able to identify, label
the various emotions that they're going to be feeling. I think that it's perfectly okay
if they see a parent or a caretaker crying because essentially that's giving them a healthy
role model for grief. It's letting them know that it's okay to cry when you feel sad. One
of the things that I've used with my children and you can see they've gotten a lot of use
out of this chart. It's basically an emotion chart and it shows all kinds of different
feelings and it has little facial drawings that describe what the feelings look like
and sometimes I will have them point to what feeling they're having. This is really helping
kids to be able to learn to identify their emotions and to be able to learn healthy ways
to handle that emotion, to express it and to help themselves through it or get support.
So, you may not have one of these charts in your home, but the other thing that you can
is to have children draw how they feel. As you can see here, I asked the kids how they
felt when our dog Brutus died and they both drew faces that, what feeling are in these
faces Bailey? Sad. Sad. What about yours Autumn? Disappointed. Disappointed. So, it's also
important to let them know that they also may feel all kinds of other feelings other
than sadness or disappointment such as anger, such as loneliness. Again, validating their
feelings, helping them to put words to their feelings, providing them with physical comfort
is all a very important part of helping children through this grieving process. Again, it is
okay for them to see you crying yourself. If you're feeling like you're having a difficult
time with your own emotions regarding the loss of your pet then it might be important
for you to get the help that you need so that you can best be there for them as well.