Holidays can be hard already, with multiple plans to manage, gifts to buy, decorations to put up, or religious celebrations to attend to. This time of year can cause stress for families, even without dealing with the loss of someone close to them. When a family is managing grief throughout the holiday season, the demands of the holidays may be overwhelming. It can also be a really confusing time to manage, especially for kids, as they are forced to balance the joy that normally comes with the holidays and their feelings of sadness and grief from a recent loss. Holidays can also remind us of losses that happened a while ago. When families gather or we partake in traditions, we can often feel the missing presence of our loved ones as we remember holidays past.
It’s hard to know exactly what to do to support your kids in their grief during the holidays, and the fact that you’re likely managing your own grief only complicates the matter. Loss can consume our thoughts and feelings, and it almost never works to push that away and pretend like things are all good. Here are some tips for healthy grieving during the holidays as a family.
- It’s okay for this year to be different. As a caregiver after experiencing a loss, you may be impacted in a large range of ways. You may not have the energy, money, or time to do all of the same things you’d normally do. That’s okay. The holidays don’t need to be exactly like what they were before the loss for your child to have a good holiday, and it might even help them to acknowledge that things have changed.
- If planning your usual holiday activities is causing you stress, your children will likely pick up on that feeling. To take care of them, it’s important to take care of yourself. Consider what you can reasonably do this season and include your kids in the planning of new or lower-key activities so they know what’s happening. You can even share with them why things are changing, talking about how loss has affected you can normalize grief for children.
- Plan how you’re going to balance new and old traditions. If a major holiday tradition included the person that you lost, include your child in an open discussion of how that might change. This could be a beautiful opportunity to ask your child how they would like to remember the person throughout the holidays and incorporate something new in their honor.
- Try to stick to basic routines when you can but allow yourself some grace and flexibility. Routines are good for kids, especially when they’ve experienced a big change in their lives like loss. Holidays make it hard to stick to routines already, and experiencing loss can complicate this further. When you can, stick to bedtimes, chores, and other basic routines or expectations to keep a sense of stability and predictability in your family day.
- Understand the kids may grieve differently than we do as adults. It can hurt sometimes when we’re grieving in such a painful way, and kids don’t seem to experience loss in the same way. Kids at different ages will have different levels of understanding loss and death, and they’ll handle it differently too. Especially during the holidays, kids may fluctuate between feelings of joy and celebration, and feelings of sadness, frustration, and anger. Just because they are fluctuating doesn’t mean that their feelings of loss are any shallower than our own. As a caregiver, it can be hard to understand how they might be feeling joyful after a loss, or it might become unexpected when they do feel down. Try your best to validate their feelings, whether happy because of the holidays, or sad because of the loss, and show them that you’re there to listen, no matter the feeling.
- You can share your feelings honestly with your kids, it may help validate the feelings of sadness and loss that are so new to them. It’s okay to be sad in front of your kids, and to explain why you feel sad. Verbalizing this can teach them about grieving and help them feel less alone. While sharing your own experience is healthy modeling and can be a way for you and your child to foster a warm connection, it is important to take into consideration the unique factors of your child’s development. For instance, the information and details you share with a young child should be different than what you share with a teenager, because they have the capacity to understand things differently. Keep dialogue around your experience short and simple; repetition can be soothing and help them have an internal narrative for how to cope.
- Gather support and take care of yourself. Parenting after a loss can feel like an immense challenge. Before things get busy during the holidays, reach out to some friends and family that you trust. Let them know when you think you may need support or arrange with them times that they can take care of the kids to help you relax, unwind, and process for yourself.
- Keep an eye out for signs that your kids may need more help processing grief and loss. Most children who experience a loss adjust to the change and move forward to live healthy lives. During the holidays, it’s normal for feelings to intensify. Some children may have fantasies about seeing the person they lost again during the holidays, and they might experience mood fluctuations. This is all normal, and often we can trust that with the support of a caregiver, kids will move through this period of normal grieving and readjust. Some things to look out for that may indicate needing more support are:
- Having trouble completing daily tasks beyond what is typical, like homework, chores, hygiene, etc.
- Intense feelings of sadness, tiredness, or social withdrawal that lasts for at least six months after the death
- Reckless or risky behaviors, like using drugs, drunk driving, stealing, etc.
- Displaying an inability to talk about the death, or appearing to be disconnected from reality
- Expressing the desire to hurt themselves, even if the motivation is to be reconnected to their loved one in the afterlife.