90’S FAMILY : REAL LIFE : Kids Must Grieve in Own Way, at Own Pace

One child wanted to crawl into his father’s casket. Another asked her recently widowed father when the new mommy was coming. A preteen who had experienced four recent deaths in the family acted as if nothing had happened and wanted to go shopping.

“At first, I thought, my God, what’s wrong? My children seem like zombies,” said Andrea Powell, 39, who was devastated last year when her husband, Mike, died in a freak accident at age 40.

Nothing is wrong. In a society that has tended to hide the death experience, it is hard for adults to know what is normal--or to know that children grieve differently.

Inside, they might be blaming themselves for the death. They might be ashamed that they are now different from their peers, or afraid no one will take care of them. They might just be wishing desperately that life would go on as it was before.

Often, children simply need more time to assimilate what has happened, said Margaret Stuber, assistant professor of psychiatry at UCLA. Sometimes, symptoms of anger, sadness or guilt may not surface for a year or two.

In the past several years, many parents have learned not to force children to attend a death, a funeral or to touch a body, or conversely not to prevent them from doing so if they want to, with explanations of what to expect ahead of time. Many also understand now that it is best to be honest with children and that a good method of encouraging small children to talk about their feelings is to go first. (“I feel like this. If I were you, I might feel like that. . . .”)

Still, many do not appreciate how children grieve at their own developmental level.

Pre-verbal children are aware something is wrong and need consistent warm care and reassurance, Stuber said. Preschoolers do not understand that death is permanent and will need repeated answers to the question, “Why?” (A simple answer, such as “because he was very sick,” works well.)

School-age children are vulnerable to gross misunderstandings. One child was distressed to find her aunt in the funeral home when her parents had said she had “gone to be with Jesus.”

They are also likely to be taunted cruelly by schoolmates. “A couple of kids asked bluntly, ‘Didn’t your dad get drunk and kill himself?’ ” Powell said. She said she had to tell the particulars of his death repeatedly to them so they could say the same to their friends.

Teen-agers, hyper-conscious of peer norms, are reluctant to be different in any way. But hiding their responses can increase the isolation they feel.

Powell said her children like to sleep in their father’s T-shirts. Parents said sometimes it was helpful to take pictures of the dead person to school and share good memories.

One mother from West Los Angeles said her 5-year-old daughter didn’t talk about her father’s death for three months afterward. “If she said a sentence about Daddy and I responded, she’d run away or change the subject,” she said. “I felt I couldn’t help her on my own. It was way out of my league.”

She found professional help with Stuber and joined a new bereavement center, Our House, which runs support groups for parents and children in West Los Angeles. The groups are run on a nonprofit basis for a sliding fee.

There, they can discuss common issues, such as children who constantly urge their parents to remarry or whether or not it is important to appear strong for the children.

Alan Goldhammer, 37, whose wife died of lung cancer four years ago, said he normally believes in being strong in front of his children. But once when he could not help crying, he said he found unexpected comfort from his daughter, then 5.

“I’m sad about Mommy,” she told him. “But I’m not real sad because I have you.”