Helping Young Children Through The Death Of A Sibling

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:00:05

Welcome to the D ship podcast, where we provide inspiration, motivation and education to help you transition from the challenges of divorce to discover the freedom and ability to live life on your own terms. Are you ready? Let's get the shift started. Hi, and welcome to the day shift podcast. I am really excited to have my personal friend and a woman that I have been associated with for a couple of years working together almost on a weekly basis. Michele Benyo , she is a certified Grief Recovery specialist and an early childhood parent coach. And Michele, that's a lot of stuff. So I would like you to tell us a little bit in your own words about what you do. And maybe what brought you to this field because it's a it's a different field than a lot of coaches and experts are in so take it away, Michele.

Michele Benyo: 00:00:59

Okay. Well, thank you, Mardi, really happy to be here with you and your listeners. And I yeah, I'm the founder of good grief parenting, which grew out of my personal need as a parent who. And it's actually been 22 years now, this isn't a recent thing that happened to me. I had two young children. I was an early childhood parent educator here in Minnesota, every school district has that program. And I was, you know, a young mom with two kids. And I thought my life was perfect. I got to go to work every day as this early childhood parent educator, working with families of children, my ages, and then my son got cancer, he was three and a half or four years old, his sister was 15 months old. I was trained as an early childhood parent educator, but I did not know how to walk my family through this. This loss of dreams, which was a phrase I'd actually been introduced to in my training and found so interesting, never believing or never realizing that soon, that would be me. And so we walked for two and a half years through my son's cancer. When he died at the age of not quite seven, his sister was three and a half. And she actually said to me, mommy, half of me is gone. And so I was just faced with she was all through his illness. And the years after, she's been my case study, just really showing me how young siblings are impacted by these kinds of events in families. And when she said that, to me, I didn't know I didn't know what to do. I didn't know anything about how to help her with that. And I thought, while I'm in the field, I'll find resources, but I couldn't find any. And so for the last, you know, 22 years, I've been walking this journey as the mom of a, what I call a sibling by heart, because she's still a sibling, even though she grew up without her brother. And I really had to learn in those early years what that meant to her as a bereaved sibling. And as it happens, we also my husband and I went through a divorce within the year after my son died. It wasn't why we divorce that's kind of a common, I think it's a misconception. I think families maybe, you know, break after the loss of a child, but if their marriage was not as strong as it could have been in the first place, and that was the case with ours. But so I raised this, this young girl, as a brief sibling, with just me, spent time with her dad, but didn't live with him. And that became good grief parenting, everything that I learned about the needs of a sibling, after child loss are what I want to give to families that are experiencing this same thing. So that's, that's what brought me here.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:04:23

Wow. And, you know, that's got to be kind of a double difficulty for a parent, I'm guessing because I've never experienced but and I am you know, we've talked about this before, I am sorry for your loss, and I'm sorry for the loss of every other parent that is going through this. So can you tell me a little bit about the difference between feeling the grief as a parent and whether you want to you know, I don't want to put you on the spot. NASA asked you to share your kind of your personal experience, but just kind of general general information. How as a parent when you're Like weighted down with his grief of the loss of a child, but you still got to be a parent to Little one, because you just work with with early childhood, right? So how how do parents even know how to deal with this from you know, as a now having to continue to parent a child,

Michele Benyo: 00:05:19

you know, I say that we when you are a bereaved parent having to raise the bereaved siblings you are trying to do at the same time, the two hardest roles that you could ever be asked to do. I mean, under the best of circumstances, parenting isn't easy, it's very tough to do well. And grieving, of course, is, is really hard to do, no matter what your grief is. And when you need to do both of those things. At the same time, it can be just really overwhelming. And for me, because I was in that early childhood field, when my daughter said, Mommy, half of me is gone. I knew that was a true statement. And in the sense that those early formative years are when their identity is formed. And her identity was as a sister to David. And now David was gone, and who was she, and she had to grow up with half of her gone. And so because I was in that area, and was so attuned to her, that really some people have asked me, What was the hardest thing about losing your son. And my own loss, of course, was was devastating and so painful. But even worse for me was knowing that she was growing up without her brother, and there was nothing I could do to give her that relationship back. And she said, half of her was gone. And she had her lifetime ahead of her. And it's like, no, this is not okay, you know, my child can't grow up feeling this way. What am I going to do about it? And I know that I help families who have a similar feeling. But because I was working already in this field, I think I took note of it in a way that I wouldn't have otherwise. Sure. And that's one of the that's one of the messages that is so important for me, is for families to know that these really young children, most of whom would not say what my daughter said, are experiencing very deep grief, right? You don't see it in them, because they're going to play it out more than then show it in other ways. But make no mistake that they are feeling it and and parents, parents can address it. There's some common kind of misconceptions about how we handle grief. And that's kind of where I start with families to help them do these two roles together of grieving and parenting at the same time.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:08:01

So that begs the question, Can you can you share maybe one of those common misconceptions, the one that you see as the sort of the most common net, and not just parents, so we're not. And this is nothing against what parents are doing. We just what Michelle and I are trying to highlight is that this is a reality for some parents. And there are people out there that have the expertise and the knowledge and the ability to help with these situations, because it's not something we plan for. It's not right parenting books talk about this, like, this is what you do if a child passes away, that's the right thing. So what's one common experience or One common misconception that parents buy into when they're dealing with a grieving, younger child?

Michele Benyo: 00:08:47

Mm hmm. And thank you for saying that, you know, we're not that this is really for everyone. This is for any adult who would encounter a family where there's been child loss and where there are young children. And that is the feeling that we want to protect these young children from the pain of it from the loss of it. We want to protect them from what they might be triggered to feel, and we want to protect them from what we as adults are feeling because it's so painful. We don't want them to see it. And that is really the biggest mistake that adults make, because these children are feeling it anyway. I say that my daughter is a was a little case study from the very first night because the first night that her dad and her brother were at the hospital. She and I were home alone. She was 15 months old. And she started wandering around the house just wailing. The sound that she was making was inhuman. She was just distraught. She knew something awful was happening and she didn't understand it. I would go try to comfort her And she pushed me away and throw herself on the floor. So from the beginning, we said, okay, the four of us are in this together, we're not going to have her, we lived in a cul de sac, lots of people who would have loved to have taken care of her. But we took her to the hospital with us a lot. And let her be with the family a lot. That was important for her to be able to have that relationship with her brother feel secure, because she was with the whole family, and have an understanding of what we were going through. And we met a lot of families who said, Oh, but we wouldn't have our other kids here. We don't want them in the hospital, we don't want them to, you know, experience this. And I think it was one of the most helpful things we did for my daughter. She knew when her brother died, that he died, we talked about the word died. We gave her that vocabulary word, even though I choked on having to say my son died. We talked with her, let her see us when we were sad, talk to her about her own sadness, and just went through it as a family. So the tips that I you know, give parents is, you're not going through it separately from your child, you know, it's either my grief or theirs. It's your grief as a family and just talk about it. You know, we all miss David right now, when do you miss David the most talk about it mentioned his name, have memories and involve the child in that it's one, it's the most healing way that you can respond to this. And that only

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:11:47

makes sense. You know, and thank you for sharing that because, and again, no judgment against parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, because they're, they're doing what they think is right. But just imagine if, say, your spouse passes away, and then you just pretend that that person never existed, or nobody talks about the spouse or nobody, you know, you're not allowed to to express sorrow or grief or loss and have to pretend everything's fine. We wouldn't recommend that other adults do that. So it makes sense that we would not want to restrict our children from sharing that. Right? Feelings and sharing their grief and working it out and dealing with it. So.

Michele Benyo: 00:12:31

And they're all all kinds of grief, including divorce. And so you know, that's the other important thing. And that was the thing, my husband and I were very, you know, we talked about it. And we were very conscious about the fact that, you know, we were going she was going to see spend time with each of us, we were going to talk about each other, you know, in a in an open way, if she was sad about her dad not being there, I would talk with her about it, I would recognize that as a grief. Because her father was gone, she missed him, she loved him. And her life as she knew it was gone was no longer there, right. And grief is our response to losing something. It's a normal natural response, we may lose a person or we may lose a way of life. And all of that is grief. And so to really acknowledge it, I also help parents recognize how to honor a child's grief. Because sometimes we want to, we want to make them feel better. That's kind of the first thing we want to do. They don't have to feel better, they're not going to feel better, it's normal, to not feel good when someone you love is missing has died or moved out. And so to try to make them forget about it and feel better is not helpful to say yes, I know this really hurts right now. But you know, we'll get through it I know you can handle it, I'm going to help you get through this we'll get through this together those kinds of messages that say it's normal to feel bad now. This so all of that I think is just important. And like you say, you know adults are well meaning when they try to protect kids from this but you're leaving kids alone with very real feelings that they need for adults to help them understand and validate for them.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:14:36

And I want to I want to say as as a past elementary school teacher, um, you know, I taught grade one and two first and second grade. And you know, when things when there was a death in a family kids talk about that a lot at school, kindergarten, play school after school activities. You know, they want to talk about it. They We've been wanting to talk about the loss. And so if your kids, you know, if your children, I think are able to express their stuff and express their feelings and feel comfortable, I think that really helps them have the language have the words have the ability to talk about that, because they are going to talk about it to everybody? Well, most children, I wouldn't say ever, you know, some kids are going to shut down, not going to talk, but others are going to talk to a lot of people about it.

Michele Benyo: 00:15:29

And one of the things that Well, I was just gonna say quickly, one of the things that happens with children is that a loss in their lives becomes a big elephant in the room for a lot of different reasons. Because adults don't want to talk about it, if the child isn't bringing it up, and the child probably, you know, at home isn't necessarily going to bring it up. And also, you know, they want to shield kids from it. One of the things that I that I have put together is for families to a sheet for families to to give to their surviving child's teacher that says, you know, our child may talk about Deanna may talk about her brother, David, he died of cancer, this is what happened, this is what we want you to know. And if she talks about him, please talk about him with her, you know, just to normalize it, and get because the adults don't always know what's okay to say we're really afraid of saying the wrong thing.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:16:31

Exactly. And I love, love, love that idea of being proactive, going to the school having that sheet, especially for the younger ones, because they're not going to be able to express themselves. Whereas if you as the parents just go have that. I love that idea. That would be really an end as a teacher, I would have really appreciated to have. Yeah, because you don't know what to what to say, because you don't want to say something that family hasn't said, right? You know, some families have different religious beliefs around what happens after death. And, you know, I can recall, in my, in my classroom, for example, we had, you know, quite a heated discussion about whether people that died went to heaven, because kids were raised with a faith based where heaven was, you know, Heaven was a place when other kids were, you know, I, we had kids from various cultures where that wasn't what happens after death, you're reborn, reincarnated. Oh, yeah, you know, you go to different places, or you don't go to any place. So it was a lot of debate in the classroom. And it was actually quite enlightening to hear these little little people talking about this. But I was never sure was like crossing, you know, having these conversations and like crossing a line. So

Michele Benyo: 00:17:45

yeah, especially as a teacher, because you know, there are other families and other parents who don't with young children, classmates, parents may not want it to be talked about. And so there's a lot of educating around, you know, how we handle grief and what's really okay for kids and just any adult, whether it's a teacher or the parent themselves, that can be equipped with, you know, some good information that can normalize it for everybody, I think is just really helpful.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:18:16

Yeah. So So you so that's one, that's what that was, we kind of went off tangent there. Yeah, you know, we do that. So you do. So, so that was one really good, I just want to kind of bring us back to with this with this, that the one concept is that you should protect your child and not talk about it. Whereas what you're saying is, you know, age appropriate conversations for the child, and normalizing the fact that you know, that the brother, the sibling is deceased has died. I want to ask you specifically about that language, because yeah. And I know we've had a previous conversation about this, and I found it really enlightening. We have so many euphemisms for death. Is that what? Why is it important to have children understand that died is the word to use? He hasn't passed on? Right? gone to heaven? He hasn't, you know, it's got you know, there's there needs to be a clear explanation of death. And what it is, why is yes, not use those nicey terms that we use?

Michele Benyo: 00:19:29

Well, thank you so much for asking that. That's such an important question. Because we do feel like well, kids don't need to be exposed to death. It's such a horrible thing. The thing is to a child, it's just another vocabulary word. They don't have all the baggage when Deanna would say my brother died, she didn't choke on it. The way that I would. If I went I would say my son died. I really had to get used to saying that for the for the Another vocabulary word, we give them a lot of vocabulary words before they fully understand what they mean. But it's important to give them the accurate word that tells them what happened. No matter what age you are, when you hear that something died, you know exactly what happened. And so we tell a child, when something dies, when a person dies, or a dog or you know, something, a living being dies, their body stops working, they can't do any of the things they used to be able to do, they can't talk, they can't eat, they can't play with you anymore, and we're not going to see them anymore. And that's a true statement about death, no matter what your other beliefs may be. And this is what dad means the child of age three still is not going to fully grasp that. But they're going to grow up. And as they get older, and understand what dad means they're going to have more questions, they're going to have new conversations with you. But they will never at some point realize, you said my brother went away. You mean he died? You know, when they realize that at an older age, and they've not been told the accurate vocabulary, it can almost be like it happens all over again, because they were somewhat misled. So yes, it's important to recognize that it, it's hard for us, but to them, it's just a word that accurately tells them what happened. And we want to give them honest, information. age appropriate, they don't need a lot of details. My son died of cancer, of course, she was with us in the hospital a lot. So she had an understanding about a lot of what was happening. But even if she hadn't been, you know, we would have just said cancer is some disease that happens to the body, it makes the body not work anymore, damages the body, or whatever you want to say about it very minimally. And kids aren't going to ask a lot more questions. Frankly, if they do, then you just answer what they asked, but a little bit of information is going to going to be adequate for most of them. And we're

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:22:26

getting pretty close to our time. But you just made me think of one question that and I'm maybe putting you on the spot a little bit here, Michelle, but do you think it's harder for families when it is a sudden and unexpected, tragic accident that kills a child, as opposed to the tragedy of dealing with childhood cancer, where there's sort of a progression of the disease where the I don't want to say the family can adjust to it. That's, that's not what I mean by you. It's, it's more, you can prepare a little bit for it, because there is that anticipation that death will be, at some point in time, the reality and in this child's life, whereas, you know, your child goes off to school one day and doesn't come home. You know, I think of all the kids in the shootings, and yeah, you collapse it instantly. Like, how is that a different experience for those little what, not the parents now I'm not, but the little ones, you know, the kids at home?

Michele Benyo: 00:23:24

You know, I think there are two different issues here. And one is the fact that the sibling is gone, and you're not going to see them anymore. That's the fact of death. And that's, that's the grief that I deal with, which is growing up never able to have this person back again, and bumping into all those places where there's a hole a gap where my daughter's friends have siblings that Did you know, that defended her when they were fighting and she didn't have her brother, those kinds of, you know, when she gets married and her brother's not there, all of these things that are represented by the death of a person that's gone. That's the same no matter how the sibling dies. The thing that's different is, for example, I know another woman who works with families who have had child loss. Her situation was similar to mine in that her son was the same age and her surviving child was the same age. He happened to be a boy, both of our sons died of cancer, mine after two and a half years, hers after just six days. So what she works with families on is the anxiety of that little boy whose brother was here one day and gone the next week and so I think the the responses of the sibling around the circumstances of death may Be different. But the way that we handle death as the finality of this person being gone, you know, if death is death, and Deanna didn't, we didn't talk to her about death until it had happened for two and a half years, she saw all these things that she knew we're not good. And she knew she saw her brother. Stop being responsive. You know, she saw these things that led up to death. But then death was this thing where we had to say, you're not going to see David anymore. I know you're never going to be have him around. So yeah, but the

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:25:38

good news is through help, through support, parents can continue to parent their surviving child. Yeah, I think continue to create that wonderful space and memories and love for the sibling. That, that is no longer in physical form with you, yes, that there is still that sense of a family and a, and a connection and honoring. And I just love that you do that work. I think that is fantastic. Because it's such, it's such a difficult, it's such a difficult topic. And I think it's not something that that parents, you know, are just going to kind of run through the Yellow Pages and look for somebody write this. So I think it's really important, because it may not apply. And I really hope it applies to nobody in the world ever. But it does, unfortunately, our reality. So, you know, maybe it for people listening, maybe it's not them and their family, but maybe they know somebody in their community or whatever there are support people out there that have the skills, the education, and the compassion, and life experience to help families through this. So Michelle, we have shared a whole lot of information. So tell me what you would like or tell us what you would like people to have, as kind of a top of the mind take away thought from this conversation?

Michele Benyo: 00:27:01

Well, I just want parents, adults to know that children will carry this for the rest of their lives. And what's unique about the work I do is that there's the time of loss where we adjust to the loss. And then there's the rest of the of life going living forward with grief and all the ways that it impacts life going forward. And I just want any adults to know that it will carry forward but you can live forward toward bright possibilities, even though you'll never live beyond your grief. And you can learn how to help children who are surviving, be happy, and you as the parent be happy. What you said is probably the most important piece and that is that if you can and should and hopefully will remember the child who died because they're still a presence in your family, and then live forward toward bright possibilities because they're there. They're so love. That's what I wished for families. Yeah,

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:28:04

me too. So we're on we're, we're on the same page in our hearts without one. So Michelle, if people want to get to know a little bit more about you and what you do, where should they go to find that information?

Michele Benyo: 00:28:15

Anything good grief parenting, I'm on Instagram with good grief parenting Facebook with good grief parenting, I have a now people have link tree links. And I have a link tree link, good grief parenting where you can find those connections with me make an appointment to talk with me. And also get my good grief Guide, which is just a good primer for adults who want to have more information about how to help young children who are grieving.

Mardi Winder-Adams: 00:28:47

Wonderful, and thank you for that gift for listeners. And hey, grab it for grab it. If you even if you don't need it, but you know somebody that does, you can always download it, send it to them, and then they can get in touch with Michelle because the information is on that guide. So thank you very much, Michelle, really appreciate you and thank you everybody for listening.

Michele Benyo: 00:29:09

Thank you, Mardi.