Is your child grieving a loss or facing the serious illness of a loved one?
Has your grade-schooler, teen or young adult experienced the death in the family or of someone they love, or has someone close to them recently been diagnosed with a serious illness or been in an accident? Grief counseling can help.
Are you wondering how to talk to your kids about death? Are you unsure how to explain the disease, prognosis, or changes in your family or daily life? If your family is one of the millions affected by cancer each year, you may be wondering how to tell your child you have cancer—or perhaps agonizing about how to tell your child they have cancer themselves.
If a family member or loved one is ill, is your child afraid to see or talk to that person? Are you trying to navigate the balance of being honest with your child about the situation without scaring them with too much information?
Are they talking about the loss very frequently or not at all? Are you worried about their mood and behavioral changes? Are you confused about how and what to tell them about the death or accident? Has your son or daughter been asking questions that you don’t know how to answer? Is your child afraid of dying, or are they worried about the safety or well-being of others around them?
Is this loss or death impacting your child’s academic performance and motivation? Has it impacted their social life or the way they interact with peers? Have teachers commented that your child is talking about the loss at school or acting withdrawn?
Is it difficult for your family to talk about the loss because different members of your family are in different phases of their grief, processing, and comfort discussing the topic? Are you deep in your grief yourself and finding it challenging to meet your child’s emotional needs because of your own sadness?
Grief counseling for kids offers the age-appropriate information and education that is crucial in helping children to cope.
Experiencing illness, loss and death of a loved one during childhood can be confusing, painful and life-altering. So how do you explain death to a toddler, or to a teenager? Depending on your child’s age and stage of development, they may or may not be able to grasp the permanency of death or understand that illness can impact one family member or loved one without putting everyone they love at risk. Children of all ages may feel angry, confused, frustrated, hopeless, lonely and deeply saddened by the loss.
Because the concepts of serious illness and death can be challenging for children to wrap their minds around, children often require frequent and repetitive conversations about how and why an illness or accident occurred. For parents who are grieving themselves, these conversations can feel exhausting, frustrating and deeply painful. However, helping children to move through these questions and discussions is crucial in supporting healthy coping.
For pre-teens, teens and young adults, they may be hesitant to engage in conversations about the accident, illness or death with their parents or family members out of a desire to protect others from added pain. However, this hesitance can result in feelings of isolation and unprocessed grief.
Grief Counseling For Children and Families Experiencing Loss
Individual and/or family grief therapy can be a helpful and supportive way for people of all ages to move through their grief experience and the changes happening around them. Therapy can also be helpful in exploring how to maintain a connection with their loved one. Speaking to a therapist can help the person who is grieving to move through their feelings and process their relationship in a safe, unbiased spaced where they can ask vulnerable questions, reflect on memories and express raw emotions.
Our counselors can provide active listening, emotional processing and opportunity to deepen one’s understanding of their loss or grief experience. Grief therapy can also help to support your child in integrating back to school and into their social circles, finding strategies to advocate for their needs in grief. Our counselors can help to liaison with school staff in considering how to best support your child and family during this delicate and sensitive time.
Experiencing a loss or death can have a profound, lasting impact on a child and family. However, with the skilled support and guidance provided during family grief counseling, your child and family can process their grief and develop the coping skills and support they need to be successful in the future. Our passionate, highly trained and thoughtful team of therapists can teach you how to talk to your child about mental health, working with your family to foster healthy processing and grief.
Bring Out The Best In Your Child With Grief Counseling For Children
If you’re looking for children’s grief counseling centers in Manhattan near the Upper West Side, we offer a convenient location on 79th Street, near the American Museum of Natural History. Contact us today for a free 10-minute phone consultation so we can discuss your child’s needs and answer any questions you may have about our treatment center.
In addition to providing grief counseling for kids, we offer individual therapy for grade school students, teens, and young adults to help them and their families overcome a variety of mental health issues. We also offer youth therapy groups to help your child acquire important social skills and parental counseling to teach you how to talk to your kids about death and loss.