How to Deal with Trauma and Loss

We've had traumatic, we've had a traumatic summer with a lot of loss, change of home, and a loss of grandparents and a cousin. What can I do to help my fifth and seventh grader? Okay. So, uh, uh, wow. Uh, again, this is one of those questions. There's a lot of depth to it. Uh, my first of all, my heart goes out. That's a lot of loss. And so my heart goes out to you and, um, and your children and, and the family. I mean, we, we have to understand the grieving process is real. And then I'm gonna say, let's see, a fifth and seventh grader. So a fifth grader is, um, what, somewhere between nine and 10, maybe ish. And a seventh grader is going to be more like the 12 to 13 ish. Okay. All right. So I'm trying to put that in age. So developmentally, uh, the older child, uh, might have a little bit more understanding, may have had a little bit better relationship with, with the grandparent, um, or other family members. I, I, you wanna look at them independently because they're gonna probably experience these things a little bit different, even though they're just a couple years apart, uh, apart. A child who's, you know, going seventh grade is also going probably into a new school, unless it's a middle school. Um, the so, so in every change is gonna be a little bit more difficult. The best thing you can do is create as much other consistency in their life as you possibly can. So friends, interaction with family members, positive interaction with the people around them. So one of the core things that we do know is that the more connected they are, because when you've lost people, sometimes there's a fear that I'm gonna lose everybody who matters to me. So helping them connect with friends, helping them have play, uh, opportunities to, to go do things with their peers. Those are some really good things. So you might ask some of their peers that they have that, or parents to have them come over, play some games, do some things, because as normal as that can be, um, you wanna normalize. And that's having fun with peers. So that's one starting point. The other thing is parents is, uh, there's a message. Not everybody dies. And that's, I say that because if we were to anticipate the potential challenge, the potential challenge is I'm gonna hold back from relationships because everybody I've known has left. And if they, if they can't make sense of death and dying, then, then there's gonna be a lot of question marks. And so that one right there, depending on how they're adjusting, I would probably say, I might actually consider seeking a professional just to just get some feedback and some specific ideas, uh, to help your child adjust. Now if they're adjusting and you don't see a whole lot of problems, then probably not. But if you see them, you know, holding back from people, being isolated, uh, maybe they're not, not as happy, they're consistently down. And then if you see them especially pulling away from you or from family members, that's when I'd say I would probably seek professional counseling. Uh, you don't know necessarily what to do with that. And that's one of those things that I would wanna be careful and cautious about. So I think that's a great question. Uh, my only other thing that I would add to this is, as a parent, you have to step back and look at it, how you are dealing with it, what, what has that loss done to you? Because part of what your messaging is to your child, it really comes from what, what, what do you, what's your messaging? So I would step back and I'd look at my own messaging and say, what, how am I making sense of this loss? What's it done to me? And I think that kind of authenticity will help you be more, um, authentic and real with your child and be able to communicate more effectively. I'm feeling this way, how are you dealing with it? And that might be how I would approach this situation. But, but really it starts with self-awareness. So you can communicate authentically with your children.