The child experiences the loss of a beloved bear or doll as a catastrophe. “Don’t try to distract him,” says the child psychologist. “Find the strength to share this loss with him.”
“It’s just a toy” — at the sight of a sobbing daughter or son, one wants to call on common sense for help! Soothe, distract, cheer. But this can only achieve the opposite — to devalue children’s grief. Our reaction is understandable: the tears of a child cause feelings of anxiety, guilt, a feeling that something must be done urgently. We are not ready to endure his grief, because we rarely allow ourselves to grieve. And sometimes we console him because we want to avoid our own experiences.
Each of us grieves over the loss of what is valuable to him. And value is always subjective. For others, this is an old, shabby bear, but for a boy or girl, he is a friend, a real one and, perhaps, much more faithful than his real friends. He is as dear as his mother, because he did everything that she did: he warmed, consoled, listened, understood, was always there. And if you offer a child to buy a new bear tomorrow, he will be even more upset. And we ourselves would want to change our best friend for a new one? Parents may be offended that the child is so worried about «some» toy: will he ever grieve inconsolably for themselves? But by allowing a child to cry now, adults give him a chance to learn to appreciate, not to devalue, to feel pain, and not to pretend that everything is fine, to be faithful to loved ones. Therefore, the best thing that can be done in such a situation is to give the child time to throw out his grief, experiencing with him. Having cried, he will be comforted and will be ready for the new that life will present him. In addition, he will have the experience of grief, shared with a loved one (and not total loneliness at a difficult moment), and the memory of what was really dear to him.