Helping Kids Through Tough Stuff

What You Can Do

• Re-establish personal safety - ASAP
• HUGS
• Give facts - ASAP
• Allow for special time for kids to be together and to talk about the event
• Update facts as more is known
• LISTEN to each child's story

Provide activities to vent feelings:

• Performing dramas
• Writing poetry
• Murals
• Sit in child's desk
• Write child's family

Do a memorial for children:

• Photo collage
• Memorial meetings or service
• Trophy case display
• Page in annual
• Notify kids and parents about funeral services

Keep talking. . . DON'T ask "How are you feeling?" Instead, try these:

• "What is the worst part about this for you?"
• "Tell me what you saw or heard."
• "What went through your mind?"
• "Tell me about ________ (John, Mary)"
• Restore HOPE for the future
• Rebuild trust

Commemorating

Kids can.

• Plant a flower or tree
• Blow bubbles
• Send up a balloon
• Light a candle
• Say a prayer
• Write a poem, story, or song about the loved one who died Send it to the loved one's family
• Talk into a tape recorder or make a video of memories
• Make cookies or a cake and take them to the family of the person who has died
• Create a mural or collage about the life of the person who has died
• Create a special memorial service
• Memory book or photo collage board

Schools can.

• Create a memory wall with stories and pictures of shared events
• Have an assembly about the student
• Plant a memory garden
• Initiate a scholarship fund
• Make a class book of memories and reproduce a copy for the family
• Establish an ongoing school fundraiser such as a car wash or a bake sale with proceeds going toward the family's designated charity
• Place a memorial page and picture in the school yearbook or school newspaper
• Send flowers to the grieving family