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Because children experience grief in a variety of contexts, adults need a guide through the maze of thoughts and feelings that loss evokes for themselves and their children. This guide seeks to empower parents, educators, clergy, and health care professionals to handle children's loss and grief issues in an informed, open, and loving way, reducing the fear and denial often associated with these topics. The text is divided into nine chapters. Chapter 1 provides loss and grief statistics leading into the 21st century and explores the categories of childhood losses, offering suggestions on how to help. Chapter 2 explores the myths of loss and grief with which adults have been raised, and chapter 3 explains the four psychological tasks of grief, including the child's developmental understanding from birth to adolescence. Grief resolution techniques that can be used at home or in school are presented in chapter 4. Chapter 5 presents a story that provides an answer to the question of what to say when a child wants to say goodbye to a dying person. Intended especially for educators, chapter 6 describes the challenges that they and their students face daily. Chapter 7 presents a model for a community grief team, encompassing issues on parent education, advocacy in schools, child education, professional training, and multicultural considerations. Lists of national resources and a general list of community resources for caregivers are included in chapter 8. Chapter 9 concludes with annotations of books for adults and children, videos, manuals, CD-ROM, guides and curricula. Web sites for families and professionals about grief and loss have also been included. This second edition of "Life and Loss" seeks to create a framework for children's griefwork in the new millennium with a large number of updated resources. (Contains 46 references.) (GCP)

Many adults are uncomfortable addressing the complicated grief children experience. This guide features words and methods to help initiate discussion of these topics, as well as tools to help children understand and separate complicated grief into parts. The text is divided into four parts: complicated grief; breaking the silence; techniques; and resources. The nature of children's complicated grief is discussed in chapter 1, and includes a look at normal grief and its symptoms, complicated grief, categories that contribute to complicated grief, the meltdown process, and activities to help young children with complicated grief, such as the words adults should use. Chapter 2 opens part 2 on breaking the silence with a detailed look at suicide. Other chapters in part 2 deal with AIDS, homicide and other violent crimes, and abuse. Techniques are covered in part 3, which includes tips for handling complicate grief, techniques for saying goodbye when someone dies, and ways that educators can help. Part 4 comprises chapters 9 and 10, which feature national resources and materials and a bibliography that includes annotations on over 250 books dealing with topics ranging from nightmares to death. Includes an index. (RJM)

Since children experience many losses, adults need a guide through the maze of thoughts and feelings that loss evokes for themselves and their children. This guide is intended to help parents, educators, clergy, and health care professionals handle children's loss and grief issues in an informed, open, and loving way, and to reduce the fear and denial often associated with loss. The text is divided into eight chapters. To set the stage, chapter 1 provides loss and grief statistics for the 1990s and discusses categories of childhood losses, offering suggestions on how to help. Chapter 2 explores the myths surrounding loss and grief with which adults have been raised and chapter 3 explains the four psychological tasks of grief, including the child's developmental understanding from birth to adolescence. Grief resolution techniques that can be used at home, in school, or on the playground are presented in chapter 4. In chapter 5, a story that elaborates what to say and do when a child wants to say goodbye to a dying person is presented. Chapter 6 is intended for educators and chapter 7 contains a list of national resources. The last chapter offers annotations of around 200 titles of further resource material. Includes an index. (RJM)