Child Grieving and Sibling Loss

There is a process when it comes to grieving and especially when grieving the loss of a child. However, parents are not the only ones that grieve. Seeing loss from the eyes of her child, Michelle made it her mission to learn about children grief and help parents understand it. Come and learn what we can do to help us with our grief and what we can do to help our children.

Listen Here:

Can't Listen? Read the Transcription Here:

Michelle Benyo: We really need to honor grief, whatever it looks like with children.

Jen: Welcome to the Parents Place podcast with Hilary and Jen.

Hilary: All right. Welcome to the Parents Place podcast. We are excited to have you guys here today. We have a special guest with us. This is Michelle Benyo. She is joining us from Minnesota. And so, we are excited to have an out-of-towner here today and to discuss with us a topic that definitely is important and needs to be discussed. And so, we're excited for her knowledge that she is going to share with us. So, I will turn the time over to her, I’ll let her introduce herself, and then we will dive into our topic at hand. Go ahead, Michelle.

Michelle: Okay. Hi. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today. My name is Michelle Benyo, as Hilary said, and I am the founder of Good Grief Parenting. I'm an early childhood parent coach and a certified grief recovery specialist. And I got into this field of working with early childhood aged families, families with children of that age, because of my own experience, actually more than 20 years ago, when I was an early childhood parent educator in a program that we have here in Minnesota in every school district, working with families, raising young children. And I had two of my own, and it was the perfect job. I got to talk about parenting with other parents every day. But then my son, who was four and a half, was diagnosed with cancer, and I had his little sister only 15 months old. And so even though I had gotten my master's in family education and felt prepared as this parenting expert, I was not really prepared for this entire journey of loss of dreams that ended up after two and a half years being the death of my beloved firstborn son and my daughter's best friend and brother. And so, I was already really tuned into the early childhood aged child and all of that, just crucial, significant identity formation and learning and coping that happens at that age. But the thing that really, really brought me to this mission was her statement to me when her brother died. Mommy, half of me is gone. And so, it just really brought home for me how deeply young children are impacted by loss and death and also, most specifically, that sibling relationship that is often overlooked. People would see me, they knew I had a child die and everyone thinks and knows, believes, that's the worst thing that you can experience as a parent is losing a child. So, people were keenly aware of my loss. They weren't as keenly aware of hers. But I was. And so that's become my mission over these years. She's now grown. She's an adult, and I've watched her sibling bond evolve in so many ways and have so many secondary losses and impacts on her life that I really want to help parents help their little ones grow up whole and happy. So that's my mission. Yeah.

Hilary: And what a mission to have. Michelle, thank you for sharing that story. Thank you for, that's obviously, as I'm hearing this, as a mother myself, I'm thinking you're right there. You can't think of much worse, much harder of trial than losing a child. And that statement you made about your daughter losing half of herself, it just breaks you up. So, let's start at the beginning. So, for a family that loses a child, what is that grieving process? I mean, and again, this might be a tricky question to answer, because I'm sure that it's different for everyone. Yeah. What does that grieving process tend to look like for most? Yeah, Let's go through kind of the basics of what that process what that process is.

Michelle: It really begins with the devastation that you cannot imagine ever, ever moving through. You can't imagine ever feeling okay with the death of your child and you never will be okay with it. What it doesn't look like is the way that people tell you it's going to look. It is completely unique. I didn't know anything about grief when I experienced this, so I had to be aware of my child's grief and I didn't know anything about what to expect for my own grief. People started telling me about the five stages of grief. I had never heard of them, and I didn't do them. So, I was thinking, Oh my gosh, what's wrong with me? I'm not doing grief right. I'm not doing all of these things. I have since learned so much about grief. And I think the first helpful thing for anyone who might experience grief of any kind, you know, not just death of a child, is that it's going to look however it looks for you and people will try to tell you what to expect or what might be good for you to do. But you will go through it in your own way. And I've since learned that actually those five stages of grief that so many people, even some well-meaning therapists try to guide you through are actually not were never intended to be stages of grief. They're actually stages of dying. Those were stages that Elizabeth Kubler-Ross identified in her studies of death and dying as possible emotions. And I don't even really want to call them stages, but just things that people might go through who have had their own terminal diagnosis. And so that when I realized that that really was not good advice, that you, you know, should go through this, it was liberating to me and to learn that I will go through grief in my own way. And in my case, I really, as I said, was tuned to my daughter because of the work that I did. I think that that's not typical. I think that's what's enabled me to want to help other parents because I was able to have those glasses on from the very beginning. I didn't feel I needed therapy, which certainly is an option for many people, but it's not the only option. I just needed someone to tell me how do I help my child and how do I help my family go forward from this irreversible loss and void and have some bright possibilities ahead of us and even experience joy again? So that was my experience, was learning that I could share my feelings with her. That's one of the important things I learned that I might not have done had I not been through a grief support group where they said, ‘Yes, don't hide your feelings from your child and then just experience it together as a family’. So that's kind of a long-winded answer to your question, but I think the point is that it is devastating, it eases. But then beyond that, you're going to go through it in your own way. Yeah.

Hilary: So, Michelle, I'm just thinking of I mean, with your particular situation where you had a very young child then and when we're working with young children that maybe don't have the vocabulary, the capability to express how they feel and what they're feeling. How does one help out these young children that maybe don't even necessarily know how to communicate those feelings, those big feelings they're experiencing?

Michelle: Oh, that is such a good question, Hilary, because that's the situation for most of us. If my daughter hadn't said to me, Mommy, half of me is gone, I wouldn't have looked at her and seen this half missing child. She played, she laughed. One time I said to her I was really sad because I was missing David's hugs, being there to give me hugs. And she said, ‘Oh, Mommy, he still hugs me’. So, they have their own way of processing this relationship. And yeah, we don't we don't always realize that they're grieving. And so, the first thing I want parents to know is that whether you see your child look like they're grieving or not, you can know that they are deeply impacted by it, whether they're showing it to you or not. And they're watching you closely. So, you are modeling for them, hopefully, how to take care of yourself and how to acknowledge these big feelings. Because you're right, they don't know how to articulate them. It's really pretty amazing that a three-and-a-half-year-old was able to say that to me because not many of them would. She was actually my little case study from the very beginning because when she was 15 months old, the very first night that her brother was gone to the hospital with his dad, and she and I were home alone. And I wasn't this, you know, distraught mess. I wasn't in control, being okay, mom. But this little 15-month-old wandered around the house, just wailing. She was making a sound. It sounded inhuman. I'd never heard it before. I would go to her and comfort her, try to comfort her, and she’d push me away and throw herself on the ground. So, from the very beginning, at 15 months, I knew how deeply this was impacting her. And again, many children would not express it in a visible way. That's really not all that common for kids. They may have sort of some uncharacteristic behaviors. They might be irritable or they might be quieter than normal or they might be. She was kind of as good as gold through our journey with my son. She just she went through twos and threes and she wasn't even close to terrible. She was just as good as gold. So, you cannot go by them looking like they are grieving. So then what should you do? You should acknowledge what's happening in the family, that you know that something is, you know, that your brother is really sick and we're sad and we're trying to help him get better. And, you know, but we feel really sad. They might feel scared. They might feel worried. And it's helpful for adults to say, is there anything you're worried about? You know, we're kind of we've gone to the hospital a lot. We're kind of worried. Is there anything you're worried about or is there anything you're wondering about or, you know, give them opportunities to talk about it so that that there isn't this elephant in the room that nobody's talking about? So, I think just assume that they are grieving and then help them get the vocabulary and help them have the opportunity to talk.

Hilary: Yeah, So I know for myself the fear of uncertainty is probably one of the biggest things for me. And so, with a case like an illness where, you know, our child may be asking us questions and realistically speaking, we maybe don't have an answer to them because we don't know ourself. Is it okay to admit that to our kids and just say, I'm not sure. We don't know.

Michelle: Yes, absolutely. Don't make something up. Don't tell them what you think they want to hear. Definitely don't tell them everything's going to be okay. Because if we had been telling Deanna that and then her brother died, that would have been a horrible breach of trust. So, we say we don't know. We're doing everything we can, and we are going to keep being a family. We're going to be okay. We're still going to be able to take care of you. Because you're right, the biggest thing that kids feel in the midst of a situation like this is they just know their world has been upended and it's not what it used to be. Mom and dad are really, you know, they're sad. They're not happy like they used to be. We don't get to do all the things we used to get to do. My brother is really sick, are my mom and dad are going to get sick. What happens if they do? What if I get sick? They start having all of these fears. And so just telling them we're here with you. We're going to find the best ways that we can to take care of things. We don't know, but we hope that things are going to get better, that your brother's going to get better. When they say, you know, Mommy, are you going to die, too? I hope that I don't die for a long, long time. But again, this idea of death is a healthy one to give kids when they're confronted with it because it's a fact of life. Yeah, you are going to die. You hope it's not going to be for a long time, but you can't say, ‘No honey, I'm not going to die’. You could die the next day, be hit by a car. So, these are the kinds of things that I think are important, just bringing the whole conversation, all this stuff that we don't want little kids to have to even think about. It's front and center in their lives. So, we just need to be honest with them in an age appropriate way. When we introduce them to the word died, it just means that body stops working and they can't do the things they used to be able to do. So that's often really hard for adults to use that word themselves, let alone teach it to their kids.

Hilary: And I'm still I'm just thinking, you know, just kind of going along with this topic of this communication aspect. What about if we have a child that doesn't want to talk about it, that just almost shuts down? And we're attempting to have these discussions to discuss these feelings, and they don't want anything to do with that. What's the best response there?

Michelle: That is totally okay. You can't make kids talk. And that's not the point. What you're doing is creating an environment in your family where they can talk when they want to. And so, you can just say if there's ever anything you're wondering about or anything you want to talk to me about, you know, you can come and ask me. And if you think that they're feeling, you know, if you kind of can sense they're feeling sad, you can say you want to come and sit with me for a while. You want a hug, let's just cuddle for a bit. You look like you could use a hug or and then, ‘Do you want to talk to me about anything?’ No. No, they don't want to. Okay, well, let's just sit here for a while. The thing along with that, to be careful of also, is trying to make them feel better. That's not the point either. If we clearly know they don't feel okay, but they don't want to talk to us about it. We can’t, they need to get the message that it's okay to not feel okay. You don't always have to talk about it, but if you want to, I'm here and you can talk about it because they're going to grow up and have you know, as they learn more, as they develop and go through other cognitive stages, they're going to they're going to have opportunities where they're going to have more thoughts and more vocabulary, and they're going to know because you've been inviting them for years, from the time they were little to talk to you, they're going to someday come to you and do it. So, yeah, totally okay. We don't need to make them talk.

Jen: I think that's great advice of just letting them be and come on their own. And what an excellent way to just let them know that they can come and talk to you when they're ready. Because, you know, that applies to lots of different areas throughout parenting. So, if you have something, come and talk to me. You're opening up that door to where even scary things can be talked about with you as a parent.

Michelle: Absolutely. And that's the whole point. Jen, you are so you are so right. All of the things that I teach in Good Grief Parenting are just good parenting. The way to help a child who is grieving is just to do the good parenting that acknowledges the difficult emotions, the behavior, the difficult behaviors that tell you there's something going on under there that this child needs to be addressed and supported through, not punished over or disciplined around. And just that connection that we make with our child. And as you said, that opportunity to talk and knowing that they can talk is one of the most important things you can establish with your child in the early years, whether they're experiencing something horrendous like the loss of a loved one or not, just that attitude that when there's something tough, you can talk to me. Yeah. So important.

Hilary: And Michelle, one of the hardest things for me as an individual, maybe outside looking in, wanting to help a family that's going through grief and going through trauma, but not knowing what to say or do or respond. I know that there are many people in that position and we don't know what to say, so we don't say anything. And so, what's the how can we best support these families and these children? What provides the most comfort assistance during that time?

Michelle: That's another just really great question, because that's one of the most important things around grief in our society is just supporting one another and not doing it because we don't know how. So just know as the person who wants to support that there is nothing you can do to take the pain away. So that shouldn't be your goal. Your goal is simply to say, I know this must be so hard. I'm here for you. Don't tell them, I mean, it's okay to say, but don't expect them to tell you. Don't say if you need anything, I'm here. Because they're not going to know what they need. They're not going to come to you. So, the best thing is to just touch base with them and say, I'm thinking of you today. I'm here for you. Be a listener when they want to talk. And the other thing that I think most people appreciate is you sharing fond memories of the loved one who died. If you know that person, a lot of times we avoid talking about that person all together. And I don't know a griever who doesn't just love when someone says, ‘Oh, I remember that time that David did this funny thing’. Or I remember when, you know, your husband helped us with this. He was such a kind man or anything that someone wants to share about your loved one. When we tear up as grievers, that's not a bad thing. I went back to teaching parent classes with my families after my son died, and I was there every day talking about children, my children's ages and siblings that my daughter no longer had. And I would get teary and they'd get concerned and I'd say, it's okay this is just you know, this is a reality for me, but it's okay. We're talking about this because it is so important. And so just acknowledge what the person's going through. Be willing to speak their loved one's name. Tell them you're there for them. Don't tell them what they should do and don't try to fix it for them. And avoid those platitudes like, ‘Oh, well, they're in a better place. I, I'm a believer in Christ. I do believe my son is there. I do believe I'm going to see him again. But having someone say that to me doesn't necessarily help me with my grief right now here on Earth without him. And so just, you know, be careful of those things that we say intending to be well-meaning, that aren't always taken that way. So that's my handful of advice for someone who wants to support.

Hilary: No, that's really helpful. And as you're sharing this inside, I'm thinking to myself, yes, that makes complete sense why those phrases would or wouldn't be helpful. So, I appreciate that. So, I'm looking at some of your beautiful quotes and artwork that's behind you and thinking I'm thinking to myself as a family that has gone through a process, as a family that has lost a loved one. Long term are there maybe I'm thinking pictures or visits to the cemetery or mementos. Is there anything that's helpful when it comes to like longevity, keeping up traditions, different things like that?

Michelle: Absolutely. And that was, you know, as I said, I didn't know anything about grief when I had to grapple with it. And it was 22 years ago that my son died, almost 23. And one of the things I discovered as I was exposed to these ideas about how we grieve and was experiencing it for myself, was that the idea of continuing bonds. Because Freud was one of the pioneers in grief, and his idea was that healing from grace means getting over the relationship and moving on. And that's why so many people will actually use that terminology. But when you're a griever, you know that you're never going to get over this loss. So, there's continuing bonds idea of grief and healing from grief is that we find ways to carry that relationship forward because death ends a life, but it doesn't end a relationship. And that is such a crucial part of my work with bereaved siblings. My daughter still has the relationship with her brother, even though she's grown up the last 23 years without him. And so, it really is finding ways to, yes, to have do things together that were traditions that they enjoyed or traditions that may honor what they enjoyed. To have places in your home where you, besides pictures and things, I've got on the back of my chair a Pokemon sweatshirt because my son was into Pokemon and every time I sit in my chair, it's like he's giving me a hug. You know, I kind of call these fond memories. I have various things in my house that when I see them, they remind me of him, some aspect of him. And this is healing. Some people who don't know any better and are well intentioned might say to someone, ‘Oh, you haven't taken down their bedroom yet and it's been five years. Aren't you just kind of obsessing, you know, don't you think you should kind of get over this?’ So sometimes that carrying forward can be construed by someone else as being sort of hanging on or obsessing. But it really is a healthy part of grieving to find that we not only can we, but it feels so good to have ways that we continue to honor our loved one. And you see people doing amazing things to carry on these memories of their loved ones. So, yes, that's that is very healing and a wonderful thing to do.

Hilary: I think my biggest takeaway from this podcast, Michelle, is going to be that statement you just made where it said that death, death ends a life, but it doesn't end a relationship. Yeah, I immediately wrote that down because I thought that is so powerful to remember.

Michelle: So, our job as a griever is to figure out how to continue that relationship. And when you know that, when you know that you can, the term that I use is live forward because working with families who have young children, their whole lifetime is ahead of them. They are not living what they expected. And yet my daughter had her lifetime ahead of her. She was three and a half. I need it as a family. We need it as a family to make her growing up as good as it could be anyway. And so, part of that had to be, what are we going to do with this relationship and carry it forward? Because as a parent, if you think you have to leave your child behind, it's impossible to do. It's impossible to do. And unfortunately, some people do feel like that's the goal of healing. And it's not the goal of healing. The goal of healing is to live forward, to carry your loved one with you in healthy ways and to have new dreams, live forward toward a future bright with possibilities. And that's what I want to help families do.

Jen: Yeah, that's an amazing quote. I'm just thinking, where can I stick that “live forward”? I mean, that's good advice for anyone. Yeah. But I'm also thinking about this grief process. And I'm like, we have a stepfamily class here at The Family Place. And so, I think these are all great things for, you know, divorced couples that have children to be able to have. I mean, there is a loss within their family. And so, I think it's great information that can be applied in lots of different areas.

Michelle: Mm hmm. It really is. And that is an important thing to recognize, because one of the biggest guidelines that I give to adults is just to honor grief. And with children, that means when they're sad about something and I share my first grief experience, which probably happened when I was five or six, and I would say that every single one of us had our first grief experience in childhood. It probably wasn't the death of a loved one. Mine wasn't, mine was very different. It was a grief that only a child would have, but it was very much grief. And it was, I grew up in northern Minnesota on Lake of the Woods, where, you know, it's a huge lake that goes on forever. And I was at the beach, and I was playing with Wally the Walrus, this big blow-up toy that I could ride on. And I was loving playing with him. And I fell off of him and he scooted away from me and scooted out too far for me to get him. And none of the adults who could swim could reach him either. The wind took him out too far, and so I had to realize that this toy that I was just enjoying was gone. I mean, I could watch it. I did watch it from the beach float, float, float to the horizon until it was just a speck. And to this day, I remember that feeling in my body of the finality of him being gone. And that's what grief feels like. And the way to honor that kind of grief in a child is to is not to say, ‘Oh, go play with something else’ or ‘Oh, we'll go get you another blow up toy’. But to say, ‘Oh, you were having so much fun, I'm so sorry that got away from you. That doesn't feel very good to know you can't play with him anymore’. There's just this honoring grief. And Mark Twain has a quote where he says, and I this is a paraphrase of it, a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are griefs of the same size. So, every grief, no matter what it is that you've lost, is 100%. You're going to just feel these emotions around it. And some of them are more life impacting than others. You know, Wally didn't impact my life, but it was my first recalled experience of grief. So, yes, in divorce, you know, when the parents are maybe not happy with each other, they need to just really honor the child's need to have a good relationship with both parents and to, you know, to miss that one parent is gone and isn't there to put them to bed or that they don't see them. To miss the fact that when they go to one house, they have a new bedroom, it's not the same bedroom. The movie Inside Out where Riley moved, that was a movie about grief. And she was missing her old neighborhood and her old bedroom. And we really need to honor grief, whatever it looks like with children and help them learn that we are going to go through this together. This doesn't feel good. It's sad. It hurts. We miss them. We're going to get better. We're going to go through this together. And the other message you're giving them is your feelings matter. I'm sorry you're feeling this way. I really care that you know that you're feeling this. So much in that.

Hilary: Michelle, I feel like we need a Michelle in every state and county. Oh, so maybe let's close with this. Could you offer any ideas on where parents can go to get more information on grief? Do you have any particular books you would recommend? Websites, places that parents could go for more?

Michelle: Well, one good resource. Although I have to say that one reason why I felt so convinced when I was a newly bereaved mom, to eventually help parents with whatever I learned, was that I did not find resources. I still don't find a lot of resources for early childhood age children. We are better now with supporting kids of preschool on up. And one organization that I'm affiliated with that is a really good place to start. It's a place to find maybe local organizations, grief centers, as well as other resources, is the National Alliance for Children's Grief. I will say that they are lacking as well in supports for early childhood. I actually work virtually, so I am available to anyone, anywhere in the world to support them in this. I have a link tree link which is where people can access all of me and all different ways and I'll give you that for the show notes. Everything that leads to me is good grief parenting. That's my website, goodgriefparenting.com. If you go to Instagram, Good Grief Parenting you will find my link tree link and there is a link in there for anyone to set up an appointment to talk with me. So, I'm available by zoom, by phone call to anyone and I have a good grief guide that is a resource anyone can download from my website or from my link tree link that is just going to help adults who want to help children with any kind of loss who are that young age. It just really helps to guide them in, what can I do? So, I am happy to be a resource for anybody. I do just think we want to start our little ones off feeling supported and their parents and other adults who work with them feeling supported as well. So goodgriefparenting.com.

Hilary: Perfect. Thank you so much. Jen, I'll turn it over to you.

Jen: Yeah. I just want to thank you, Michelle, for joining us today. Okay. This is great information for parents to have with their little ones to help them through that process and just to know that they can talk to their parents about hard things. And so, I really appreciate you coming and spending some time with us. And I know our listeners will be able to take the pieces that they need at this time in their lives and know that it’ll be here for them when they may need different pieces. And so, I appreciate that and I thank you so much for coming. We want to thank you as our listeners for coming today and remember to be patient and kind with yourself. And we will see you back here next week. Thank you for listening to the Parents Place podcast. If you would like to reach us, you can at Parents@thefamilyplaceutah.org or you can reach Jen on Facebook. Jen Daly - The Family Place. Please check out our show notes for any additional information. Our website is thefamilyplaceutah.org if you're interested in any of our upcoming virtual classes, we'd love to see you there.