Goodness, February was a hectic month. I feel like so much happened in such a short span of time: too much happened, really! Because I never even had a chance to finish any reading until now, just as I head into a school course focusing on grief and loss.
Beverly Chappell’s book, Children Helping Children with Grief: My Path to Founding the Dougy Center for Grieving Children and their Families does basically exactly what the title implies. It recount’s stories of Chappell and her husband working with various families and children who are experiencing family losses, and how these experiences influenced the ultimate creation of the Dougy Center for grieving children. It also recounts how some other influential people come to become involved with the center as well.
These stories are all told from a personal place, and are often touching to hear. However, being that this was a book that I was required to read for a school course, I was surprised and a little disappointed that there was no real, in-depth insight into how children are able to help other children with the grief process. Sure, there are touches here and there, but the overall method and how this might work is never really expanded on. So aside from being a nice story of the creation of the Dougy Center, I’m not sure I got a whole lot out of it.
But the one thing that will stick with me after reading this more than anything else is a reminder of the fact that children often know that something is going on when a family experiences a loss, yet they are often not involved in the grief process in the same way that adults are: adults are scared of how this information might affect the child, and so they do not explain fully what happened, or they explain the death to the child in a way that the child does not understand. It is difficult to say what exactly the best course of action is in any situation, but knowing that children are resilient and just need to process their experiences in their own way is important to remember. So we shall see what else I learn in the next week to come.
For now, I will say that this book was not challenging to read and is interesting in it’s own way. I just feel like I wanted something a bit different out of it. Also I got this book second-hand and there was a dead spider squashed between two of the pages, so that was unexpected…
[As always, this review is double-posted on my personal blog]
