I think we do our children a disservice hiding complex emotions from them. I get it. It’s a natural reaction to protect our children. What parent or teacher doesn’t wish to keep their kids from feeling sad? But we all know that to be unrealistic. So even if it’s our instinct we need to push past it and dive into these mucky waters of grief.
Everyone gets sad. And everyone will feel grief. Even our non-verbal students. Imagine feeling grief and not have the words to describe it. Imagine that grief trapped inside of you when all the people around you are pretending to be happy. Wanting you to be happy. How confusing. The thought makes me want to scream.
And we wonder why some of our kids are having behaviors?
But what are the right words? I’m not a child psychologist. I know every student to be different. So I can’t tell you what the right words to say to a child who is grieving. But I think it starts by acknowledging it. Not hiding from it. Not expecting them to ignore whatever the big change was in their life that caused their grief.
When a tragedy happened at our school I felt that same instinct to just move on. Keep going with the lessons I had planned. Because I didn’t know the words. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. How could I expect to teach my students what to do?
Thankfully, there are some amazing books to help. Two we received from our district’s grief team. One I know from family experience. I had help from my amazing SLP team. And so, I thought it might be helpful to walk you through my thinking, my process, as no doubt there will be times when you have to approach the subject with your students or even your children.
The first book I presented was “Why am I so sad?” I start by pulling in some background knowledge, which I established at the beginning of the year. Using the Color Monster and the Spot Emotions books we have established in our classroom colors that we’ve assigned to emotions. It’s made for a quick and easy shorthand to acknowledge feelings in our classroom and a foundation to use to discuss characters feelings.
But grief is a little different. As you get older emotions start combining. I try to explain that to my students by showing them our blue for sad, red for anger, and gray for confusion/scared/anxiety. And I press these three together.
Grief is all three at once. I put the colors together in a basket. (Thank you for the suggestion from our SLP) showing that any one of them might pop out at anytime. You might start crying and not know why. You might feel anger without reason. You might hear a normal noise, but today it frightens you.
I go on to explain that all these emotions are normal, and they happen to kids and adults. I talk about how it can feel scary to see an adult be sad. It makes you wonder if you are safe. It makes you angry that something seems to be hurting someone you love. These are normal emotions too.
It’s even okay to be happy when others around you are sad because everyone grieves differently. There is no wrong way to grieve. The best thing to do, however, is be able to talk someone you trust about your feelings. And there are examples of this in the book. Friends comforting, teachers listening.
Now I say “talk”, but what I mean is communicate. I reference the core words “Feel” and “Need.” We can model using the core words, “Need, feel. I want feel. Feel bad”. Even the words, “Not same. Different. Want same.”
But not every student is going to know how, especially in the moment they are actively grieving.
Sometimes it’s our job to just be able to recognize that a child is grieving. My daughter Fiona has Angelmen Syndrome. Generally people with Angelman are “happy.” They laugh at everything. They are usually smiling. And I love listening to my daughter laugh. To me, it’s the most amazing sound in the world. However, she laughs even when she’s upset. She laughs when she’s mad. She laughs when she’s frustrated with me.
I’m not going to see tears from her when she’s grieving. I will see some behaviors though. Items will get knocked off of counters or desks. I’ll get a hand to the face. Maybe my hair will get pulled, and Fiona will be laughing the entire time.
Now without context that can seem like some sadistic, Joker-level behavior. But it’s because she doesn’t have the words. She reacting to an icky feeling inside of her she can’t explain.
I have to remind myself that every behavior is a communication. And sometimes just saying what I’m thinking out loud is enough to help Fiona calm herself.
“I wonder if you’re feeling mad because of ___blank___?” Or “I wonder if Fiona is feeling worried about. ____blank____?”
I also put the feeling on myself. “Sometimes when I feel mad it makes me want to throw things.” “Sometimes when I feel sad it makes my stomach feel tight or my head hurt.” Then I have to remind her that even though we’re feeling mad or sad, it’s not okay to hurt other people or ourselves.
Acknowledging feelings. In ourselves and in others.
What a concept, eh?
I’ll go into some strategies or things you can do with your students. Or at least some things I have done in another post. And I’ll leave some links to the books I’ve used. I’ve added them to my bookshop.org account.
This is such a huge topic. Remember, I’m just one teacher, one parent sharing some of my experiences. I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know if any one person does. But I think together we can build and share some resources and successes to provide opportunities for our kids to learn how to manage some of these complex emotions.
Thank you for the work you do with children. Thank you for not hiding your emotions from children, and thank you for not expecting our children to hide theirs. I don’t remember this being the job of teachers when I was in school, but it is a more complicated world now and our job has become much more complicated as well. And as we know more, we’ll do more.
It’s important work you do with children, helping them understand their feelings. Even as we are trying to understand our own. Take a moment to be proud of yourself for taking on his hard work. I certainly am proud of you. And I’m thankful you spent time with my thoughts today. Keep up the good work. The kids deserve it.
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