How does the death of a significant family member impact a child’s social emotional development?

Hi, everyone. My name is Megan Anderson, and I'm a junior health studies major on the pre-nurse practitioner path at the College of the Holy Cross. This podcast will explore the ways in which the social emotional development of children who have experienced a significant loss in their life is impacted, as well as the mental health repercussions of losing a loved one. In March 2023, my 21-year-old cousin and my best friend, PJ, passed away from a sepsis infection due to complications from a staph infection. Though each member of my family was significantly impacted by PJ's death, the changes that I noticed in my 8- and 10-year-old cousins were drastic. I saw my cousins suddenly develop anxiety and fear and start to use concerning language that usually involved very mature questions and topics of death. I was inspired to further research how losing a loved one can impact a child's social emotional development and mental health as an effort to help my cousins navigate this experience and provide a resource for all parents, educators, and medical professionals so that they may better understand the impacts of losing a loved one as a child. My research is specifically interested in the short-term and long-term impacts on mental health and how experiencing a loss in childhood not only affects social emotional development in childhood but also in the future. I first want to define the word loss for the purpose of this discussion. I would like to consider loss not only as death of a loved one, such as a parent, sibling, caretaker, or other close family member, but also seeing loss as losing a parent or significant loved one through divorce, imprisonment, abandonment, and any other mechanism that may cause a child to lose a person they love and be removed from a loved one. I would like to also highlight that the word childhood encompasses children between the ages of 6 through 12 approximately. So I first want to discuss what does grief look like from a child's perspective. Understanding the stages of childhood development can help explain the capacity to which a child may be able to understand and conceptualize death and loss. Research has shown that children are able to understand death as a finite act and the universality of death. Yet children yearn for the opportunity to ask questions about death and tend to be most interested in the biological processes of death. Studies have shown that when children have the space to ask these questions to supportive adults willing to have these conversations, these children are able to cope with death and or grieve better than children who do not have these discussions with the adults in their lives. This has led me to believe that children are curious about death and want to be more informed, but not many adults are capable of having these conversations with their young children. I wanted to look deeper into how avoidance and the silencing of the topic may negatively impact a child. In Western cultures approximately 5-7% of children under the age of 18 experience the loss of a parent or sibling and nearly 50% of the children under the age of 18 experience the loss of a close family member or friend. So while the experience of losing a loved one may unfortunately be somewhat normal, why are adults so hesitant to have these conversations? A study was performed on 220 grieving children under the age of 18 who all attended a bereavement camp in Western Australia. All of these children have experienced a significant loss in their close circle of family and friends. A safe space was created for these children to ask any questions that came to mind and the results were quite telling. Children wrote down questions like is cancer contagious, why did they leave me, how does a peacemaker work, and what is the meaning of life? While the results were heartbreaking, researchers were able to conclude that children formed questions based on the information that they did know. Children are curious about the empty gaps in their stories and have the desire to make sense of the loss that they experienced. When these questions are left unanswered and children are left uninformed, this may create tension, anxiety, and distress. Though some researchers agree that children are able to understand certain aspects of death and given that children are only able to understand death to the extent that they are familiar with, some researchers have said that there are some children who do not understand death much at all. So how can we support these children who have had someone they love taken away from them? A specialized social-emotional team within a child's school has shown to be most effective in supporting children through grief and loss. Based on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, while children play a role in their own development, the interactions between microsystems and mesosystems play a critical role in developing positive coping skills and healthy social-emotional development after experiencing a loss. So, for example, the teacher-school-psychologist relationship, the teacher-student relationship, or the teacher-parent relationship. It is important to acknowledge that a child's parents or family members may be coping with their own grief and may not be able to support their child in the ways that are needed. Educational psychologists placed within schools provide a supportive environment for grieving and bereaved children and help to develop better coping skills and promote healthy social-emotional development despite the challenges that the child has faced. Not every school district is fortunate enough to have an in-school social-emotional team and a school psychologist. I was curious to see if any of the schools near my home provide this support and wanted to speak to members of the school community faculty to inquire about their experience with children who have suffered a loss. I turn to my mom, Kelly Anderson, who is a first-grade teacher in Billerica, Massachusetts. She has 15 years of experience as a teacher in Billerica and Lawrence, Massachusetts, and has taught grades 1 through 4. In your years of teaching, have you had experience with children who have experienced a loss in their family? Yes. Okay. What have you noticed about these children's social and emotional behavior that differs from typical children? They can feel the feelings much more dramatically, I see. They are definitely more easily irritated or annoyed. Okay. To what extent has the social-emotional development of these students been impacted by the loss in their life in your experience? I have them in first grade and then I only have them for a certain amount of time. I don't see anything long-term. I've been lucky enough that I haven't had a child experience an immediate family loss, but mostly grandparents, some uncles. What structures are in place at your school to support these children and is there a specialized social and emotional team educated in supporting these students? Yes. We have a social-emotional team at our school that consists of a social-emotional coach, two social workers, a school psychologist, and there's a little interim interventionist role right now, too. Do you feel like these support systems are productive in assisting students with their social-emotional development and behavior? I don't see great results come out of it. I think there's a lot of, in my situation, a lot of no one knows what their caseload looks like or can conform to the times that they need to to make it more productive. Okay. So based on your experience, what more can be done within schools to support grieving children and to promote healthy social-emotional development? Well, I think across the board, the social-emotional development of kids is just so important right now. These are still COVID babies and things are kind of all over the place and it's important for them to have that structure and maybe there's a small group every day that they go to or maybe there's more minutes added to social-emotional learning on the whole, even to take it in class, because sometimes I have our SEL coach come in and do a lesson for the kids and it would be great if she could do that once a week. After talking to my mom, I was also interested to hear from my sister, Molly Anderson, who is a social-emotional learning support tutor in Lowell, Massachusetts. She previously worked as a paraprofessional for special needs students in Billerica, Massachusetts. She is currently in a graduate program for social work at Regis College and has had experience working with students both young and old from many different backgrounds. Explain your role and your position as an SEL tutor and what does SEL stand for? SEL stands for social-emotional learning and as an SEL tutor, I work three days a week in a K-8 school in Lowell. I work with 4th grade, 6th, 7th, and 8th, and I am a support staff in the classroom for students that are having social-emotional crises or behavioral problems. My job is to support those students so that the teachers can do their job. What have you noticed about these children's social-emotional behavior that differs from quote-unquote typical children? The population in Lowell is a lot more exposed to different social problems and conditions such as substance use, alcoholism, and other issues. A lot have family custody issues, living situations that are really tough. They also have something that's special at the school I work at is that all of the kids from the kids that go to the school come from all over the town, not just the nearby area, so they come from a lot of different home lives. To what extent has the social-emotional development of these students been impacted by a loss in their life? Have any of them lost a family member, parent, sibling? A lot of the loss that I see with students and their family members is situational. It could be because of divorce, custody battles. A lot of students I work with have parents or siblings that are in prison, so they have the effects of that. I have some students that have no father figure in their life and some students that have no mother figure in their life. What we've noticed is that with those students that don't have a certain parental figure present for them, they lack the ability to connect with staff that resemble that parent in one way or another. If a male staff is placing demands on a child who has father abandonment issues, they're not going to react to what the male staff is saying because it triggers them differently than it would a typical child who has not experienced some sort of loss. What structures are in place at your school to support these children? Obviously, there's a specialized social and emotional team educated in supporting these students, but what does that look like? Students that are put on the radar for different social-emotional needs, they have intervention with a member of the team, whether it's a school counselor, a school social worker, a behavior specialist. There's lots of trusted adults that these students have that they're able to check in with throughout the day. There is a walkie-talkie system in the building like they have in many buildings so that if a crisis arises, the important people on the team can be notified right away. If a situation were to arise in a classroom that required external support from the team, we could either use a walkie-talkie or call them on a phone that is in all the classrooms. Do you feel as though these support systems are productive in assisting students in their social-emotional development? I think that during the school day, yes. I think that the school I work at does absolutely all that it can for these students, but there is a lot that a school just can't provide once these students go home and they go back to their living situations, whatever it may be. A lot of what we do is not reinforced by parents because either the parents are not there or they're not emotionally there. They are effective for the day-to-day as we need them, but it's not permanent, I guess. Have you taken classes related to childhood grief and social-emotional development as someone who's getting their master's in social work? Yes. I am not taking a class on grief of any sort, but I've taken several lifespan development, childhood development classes that goes into the different physical, emotional, social-emotional developments that people undergo as they exist. One thing I learned about, too, although it's in there, is we studied in my program the ACEs study, which is the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, where they have a system in place to identify adverse childhood experiences. As a result of those experiences, there's just been a ton of research supporting how experiences in childhood can affect you later in life, physically, emotionally, all over. Based on your experience, do you have any thoughts on what more can be done within schools to support grieving children and to promote healthy social-emotional development? What more can be done? Is that what it was? Yeah. Do you feel like anything more needs to be done? I feel like a lot is done in the schools, but like I said, we can't control what goes on at home. In a perfect world, if there was some sort of intervention that would work 24 hours a day, that would be ideal, but it's just not realistic for schools to service kids 24 hours a day, when most likely that's when they need to be receiving social-emotional help. It's clear that my mom and sister have had very different experiences with children who have suffered a loss. My mother has found that throughout the years, her students have lacked support. As a result, she has seen her students become stressed and irritated in her classroom when they are unable to regulate their emotions and cope with daily activities. My mom believes that her school district needs to be doing more to support grieving children within schools. While Barica Public Schools have a social-emotional team and a team of school psychologists, my mom finds that it is not very effective, and not just her students who have experienced a loss that are struggling socially or emotionally, but all her students require more social-emotional support and intervention. On the other hand, my sister has seen very positive results from the social and emotional supports within her school district. I suppose this may be because of the nature of her role within the classroom, but perhaps towns with more diverse student populations, like Lowell, are able to acknowledge the needs of their diverse community better than others. While children may not respond well to certain individuals given the circumstances of their situation, there are alternative approaches that can be made in order to best meet the needs of the child in the classroom. Something that Molly mentioned in our interview that I found very interesting is the idea that while school support for grieving children is incredibly beneficial, the skills and routines that a child learns with their social-emotional team are often not enforced at home for many reasons. She mentions that many kids lack parental figures or routine at home, or may have a difficult home life where the child's social-emotional needs are unable to be met. Through my research, I have found that most researchers can conclude that children will have better mental health outcomes and a more positive social-emotional development when there is a specialized team of professionals within the school faculty. But what happens when these resources are not available or unable to extend beyond the school day? Grief counseling from a medical professional can be incredibly helpful for developing coping skills and working through emotionally charged conversations. Grief counseling can create a safe atmosphere for children to express their grief and develop skills to manage their feelings. Something that I did not consider until I dove further into my research was how socioeconomic status heavily impacts the resources that may be available to a child. Though much of Lowell, Massachusetts is very underprivileged, as are certain areas of Billerica, these areas are very fortunate to be able to provide a social-emotional team that includes school psychologists. Additionally, grief counseling may not be available in all areas and can be very pricey, especially if insurance does not provide coverage for these services. The best and most affordable way for a child to develop coping skills and positive social-emotional development after experiencing a loss is parental support within the home and a supportive school network of professionals ready to assist children as their needs present. As we know, these are not always practical nor realistic solutions in many, many situations. As I wrap up my discussion, it is important to note that there is still so much research yet to be done on the impacts of loss in childhood on social-emotional development. Conducting this research can be difficult, considering there are so many factors that determine how individuals respond to a significant loss within their circle. In my lifespan to development course, we have discussed how death is a very complicated topic, since there is so much variability that comes with death, despite it being a universal experience. Relationship to the deceased, circumstances of death, pre-existing support systems, personality, which stage of development the child is facing, and cultural context in which the child lives in are just some of the many factors that play a role in a child's social-emotional development as well as their grieving process. At the end of the day, people die each and every day, and it is inevitable that people will experience a loss in their life, whether that be in childhood or later in life. But it is important to normalize the conversation of death, though it may be a difficult conversation to have. It is evident that children are left with many unanswered questions, so I think that it is important for adults to make a conscious effort in addressing their child's emotional needs so that they may have a healthy and positive social-emotional development. Doing so may limit the social and emotional disturbances that a child may experience, such as fear, anxiety, or irritability. Allowing more space and conversation for these topics will result in a more positive well-being for the child and more positive mental health outcomes in adolescence and later in life. Children have so many questions and yearn for the answers that can help them better understand what they are experiencing. More open conversation, more support systems, and listening to children's questions can assist a child in achieving healthy social-emotional development. There is no one correct way to support a grieving child, and grief can be a difficult experience for anyone to navigate, never mind a child. I hope you were able to take something away from this podcast and are able to better understand how losing a significant family member in childhood may impact their social-emotional development. Thank you for listening. Bye.