Understanding a Child's Grief

Why is it important to understand grief and loss when fostering or adopting children? Because every foster care or adoptive experience for a child begins with a loss. The loss of a family of origin, a home, a school, pets, friends, and more. In order for us to understand the behaviors and emotions, we must first understand the process of grief itself.

Grief is very personal. Each person will go through grief at his own pace, time, and order. It's important to understand the grieving process in children so that we may be better able to meet their needs. The grieving process is the stages of grief.

Developmental grieving, or grief that occurs at different milestones of a person's life, is something that we as foster and adoptive parents have probably all lived through with our foster or adopted children. Sometimes triggered by birthdays or even weekly visits, the child may or may not know the cause or trigger for their emotional response. However, there are a few ways we can parent through developmental grieving.

There are several factors that may influence a foster or adopted child's grief. The length or depth of the grief may be contributed to the type of trauma or even the child's developmental age.

We may feel helpless when foster or adopted children are suffering a loss. There are different ways we can try to help our children grieve.