How the Evolution of Kids Grief Impacts Us As Parents
The author with her family in 2002. Photo courtesy Marny Williams.
Parenting is hard.
Widowed solo parenting to grieving kids? Impossible!
Most of us signed up to co-parent with our partner and had dreams of what our family would look like. When our partner died, our ideas of what this looked like died as well. We became the “everything” parent, with every responsibility landing on our shoulders.
Whether you have one child or multiple, each child’s grief experience will be unique. Each will grieve on their own schedule, but somehow, they all seem to do this at bedtime when our energy and patience are at a low!
Research tells us that children’s grief is impacted by the age our children are at the time of the death and that it will evolve over time as they grow and understand more. This article from Dougy Center explains in more depth the developmental understanding at different ages.
Knowing this research and living it are, however, very different. Sometimes parenting can feel like we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. We worry and wonder how the loss of innocence and the death of our kids’ other parent will be detrimental to their lives.
My kids were three years old and three months old when their dad died. The early years of grief were spent talking about what “dead” meant and striving to recreate stability in our world. Basically, it was “survival mode” for all of us. We got up, we did, we went to bed. And then we did it all over again the next day.
As my kids aged, the conversation around death advanced. They had many questions and asked for more specific details on the illness, death, and what their dad was like. Each moment prompted me to rewrite our story into a version they could comprehend at that time. And as their parent, the more detailed the stories became, the more my heart ached at the reality of having to have these conversations with them.
The term “bittersweet” seems to go hand in hand with widowed parenting. All conversations, challenges, meltdowns, triumphs, and ceremonies come with a combination of sadness and pride. Sadness over the topics and words we are sharing with our kids, but pride in how they are handling the tragedy bestowed upon them. Pride over their successes and sadness knowing you are the only parent to do the cheering. Pride in knowing you, the solo parent, are hugely responsible for these wins, but sadness in wishing you weren’t alone.
Trust that when your kids’ grief resurfaces through the years, you will be stronger and more equipped to be present with your kids and to help them navigate their changing grief.
As you parent your children remember that their grief will change with time. Questions will demand more specifics, and increasing cognition may bubble up new emotions. But also know that, by then, your own grief will probably be very different than it was in the early days. You will have learned so much and created your own coping strategies, as well as fostered strategies to support your children. Trust in this. Trust that when their grief resurfaces through the years, you will be stronger and more equipped to be present with your kids and to help them navigate their changing grief.
When my youngest turned 10, her understanding of the finality of death and the realization of what she was missing because her dad died reignited grief. It was intense, emotional, and painful for me to stand beside. She was feeling how I was feeling at six months into my grief, except it was now a decade after the death. Those 10 years granted me the wisdom to somehow know how to be present and how to help her to write her own story of dad and his death.
There is no parenting book that covers all the possible struggles we may face and there certainly is no book that combines that with parenting grieving children. Grief is truly an evolution. It ebbs and flows. As these happen, trust in yourself and your kids. In my early days, I could never have imagined where I am today. The worry and angst I carried for my kids felt like I had the world on my shoulders. I still worry, and I will always worry, but I am also beyond proud of the adults they are becoming.
Solo parenting grieving children while grieving yourself is probably the hardest thing in the world to do. We carry our grief for a lifetime. How can we not? We are a different person because of our partner’s death and our experience with grief. Our kids are too.
Sometimes the lessons we try to teach and model for our kids are not received or appreciated until they are older and can see things differently. Just like parenting, grief is a lifelong journey. It continually teaches more and more, and it’s important for widowed parents to be on guard for when it may resurface in our kids through the years.
