Book Report: Helping Children Cope with Loss and Separation

This is a report I wrote while attending graduate school.  It is written by Claudia L. Jewett, The Harvard Common Press, 1982.  Claudia Jewett was a pioneer in large adoptive families, and thus providing a home for older children.  I don’t know what foster care caseworker and adoption workers read these days, but I feel her books should be required reading.  I am reviewing this book report to remind myself in my daily interaction with my children, who each struggle with separation in their own way.
This is the second book I have read written by Claudia Jewett.  Her other book, Adopting the Older Child, has been accepted as a basic text for people thinking about adopting and for adoption workers.  This book compliments her earlier work fairly well and I feel will also be accepted as a basic text for child care workers and parents who deal with children suffering from loss.  The ideas, thoughts, treatment methods and experiences have helped me gain a greater understanding of the grieving process involved with a loss and how to help a child work through a separation. 
Each chapter deals with a different aspect of loss—from telling a child about the loss, to finishing the grieving work and moving on.  The first chapter deals with telling a child about a loss.  Jewett feel the person closest to the child should tell her about the loss.  The message should be as strait forward and honest as possible.  Any possibility of the lost person returning should be explored realistically and any questions should be answered. 
In the second chapter the author presents an outline of the grieving process.  She includes three stages: early grief, acute grief and subsiding grief.  Each of these stages has several substages. 
Under early grief Jewett includes shock and numbing, alarm, and denial.  This stage includes the initial shock and reaction to the loss.  Quite often the child withdraws or behaves in a robotish fashion.  Feelings of vulnerability and fear of another loss are also included in this stage.  Another thing to look for in this stage are physical reactions to the loss—sleep and eating patterns, muscular tension, and hyperactivity.
The second stage of the grieving process is acute grief.  It includes: yearning and pining, searching, strong feelings, disorganization, despair and reorganization.  This stage includes fantasies that some way things will work out for the better (I’ll get them back some way); searching; dealing with feelings of sadness, anger, guilt and shame; despair with the reality.  This stage finally includes a step in the right direction, reorganization of the child’s life.
The final stage, integration of loss and grief gives the child a sense of mastery.  The child realizes the worst possible thing happened and she survived.
The third chapter of this book deals with working with feelings.  Often times a child has difficulty expressing feelings because of family norms which indicate feelings are not acceptable.  Jewett suggests several techniques to help children come to grips with their own feelings.  The most notable is the five faces technique.  The worker identifies five basic emotions: sadness, anger, happiness, fear and loneliness.  The child is encouraged to draw pictures of how she looks when she feels these particular emotions.  Several games can then be played using these emotion cares—What feeling is this?, When do you feel this way?, storytelling and several more.
The child’s need to make sense of the loss is the topic of the fourth chapter.  An important concern is the child’s tendency to blame herself for the loss.  A worker can assess this problem in a child by asking directly, observing developmental behavior or asking indirectly.  The author also gives suggestions for talking to the child about specific reasons for the loss—abuse or abandonment, mental illness, imprisonment, incest, parental immaturity, neglect, alcohol or drug abuse, physical illness, and parental rejection.  This section is a good reference. 
This chapter also includes an important section on helping the child understand their own personal history.  She suggests several different methods; using a time line for younger children and a time graph for older children, storytelling with doll figures or puppets, and using a life story or history book.
The fifth chapter deals with the child’s loss of self esteem as a result of the loss.  It is very easy for a child to feel negatively about herself after a loss.  To explain this concept Jewett uses the bucket comparison.  In the bucket we contain our self esteem which is filled by what others say of us and how they treat us.  In the case of separation it is very hard to fill the bucket because of the losing a caretaker and needing a person to fill the bucket.  Many children resort to negative behavior to get attention.  To combat this a worker can teach positive ways to fill the bucket, use praise to restore self esteem and teaching the child to make good choices for herself.
The final chapter deals with letting go.  Because the child has already experienced loss, the termination of work with a child should be a gradual process.  In the final meeting the worker should be as open as possible about her own feelings, “I am glad you’re doing so much better, but I’m sad I won’t be able to see you anymore.”
This book is a useful tool for working with children experiencing loss.  As a future child caseworker I can see how a periodic review of this book will enhance the services I might be able to render.  The philosophy and ideas presented are an important part of the knowledge needed to be an effective caseworker.
The professor, Orla Shaw added this note: The age of the child makes a great difference in what you do! “Younger” and “Older” are not specific enough.  I would have liked more of your own ideas.  I’m glad to know about the book which I have not read.