Early Childhood & Sibling Loss; The truth about what children need from adults when they are grieving with Special Guest Michelle Benyo

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Whether you are at your wit's end or you want to have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Finneman. Welcome back parents. Today I have a very special guest with me. Her name is Michelle Benyo and Michelle is here to talk to us about how to help young children with grief, including how young children grieve, the truth about what children need from adults when they're grieving, the fact that childhood is actually the best time to learn about grief, and she's going to share some specific tips for adults to help young children who are grieving. She's also going to share her personal experience and some things that we can do for the parents who have lost a child and also for the siblings. So I want to give you a little bit of background about Michelle. She's a mom of two, a certified grief recovery specialist, an early childhood parent coach, and the founder of Good Grief Parenting. After her six-year-old son died of cancer, her three-year-old daughter said,

Mommy, half of me is gone. This heartbreaking statement defined Michelle's life purpose. Her mission is twofold, to help parents through the unimaginable challenges of parenting while grieving the death of a child, and to help parents meet the unique needs of a child who has lost a sibling in the early childhood years. The desire of Michelle's heart is to see families live forward after loss toward a future bright with possibilities and even joy.

Welcome to the show, Michelle. I am really honored and happy to have you here today to talk all things about grief and how to really prepare our kids and talk to our kids about grief. So thanks for being here. Thanks, Jackie.

I'm happy to be here. I appreciate the invitation. So let's start with a little bit about your story. I shared a little bit in the intro, but what can you tell us about your story and why you became a certified grief recovery specialist?

Yes. Okay. Well, I was an early childhood parent educator, working with families of children of that age here in Minnesota. We have that program in all of our school districts. And so I had my own two young children. My son was four and a half. My daughter was 15 months.

And I got to go to work every day and spend time with other families of children their ages and do make good things happen for young children in their families. And at that age, then my son was actually diagnosed with cancer. And this was an area of raising children that I had no experience in, of course, and was a whole new ballgame for me. And after two and a half years of going through that cancer journey, he actually died. And my daughter then was three and a half years old. And she said to me at that tender age, Mommy, half of me is gone.

and that was more devastating to me than my own loss because I knew that in I knew that in a sense it was true for her as a three and a half year old whose whole life had been her and her brother they were very close all of those years those years that he was in the hospital we kept her with us in the hospital and so they had continued to develop a deep bond and he was gone and she said half of her was gone with him. And so three and a half. Wow, three and a half. I mean, it's just amazing. The connections. Oh, my heart goes out to you. And yes, I mean, it was it was devastating for me. And to this day, her loss is the piece that is most devastating to me, because she had to grow up with that with that with that loss, and I didn't know how to help or grow up. And so I thought, well, I'm in this field, I'll just find the resources that are out there. And there weren't any. This was 21 years ago. My daughter just had her 25th birthday last week. And there we didn't have the internet, we didn't have the resources. And so me being an educator at the time, I thought, okay, I'm going to have to create this if it doesn't exist. But first I needed to get through it. And I found over the years that I really wasn't able to step into the helping space while I was on my own journey. I really needed to wait until she was grown and then I could take all of the information. And I've said to her many times, I wish I knew

then back in the beginning, everything that I know now so that she could benefit from everything I've learned because I've learned so much, not just from our journey, but from really researching early childhood loss and sibling loss, because it really is such a strong bond and such a unique loss. Oh yeah. And so from that years later, you started good grief parenting and really your focuses is on how to help those young kids. And including how, how to grieve how learning about how young children grieve, which is different than adults, right? And, and so what do you mean, you started good grief, counseling, what do you mean by good grief?

I mean that grief is a fact of life. It happens to all of us. It's a normal natural response to loss or even change. And we don't like it. It's painful, but it happens.

happens. And actually what I learned when I started this grief journey, I knew nothing about it. I hadn't experienced a significant loss prior to this. And I learned that as much as we don't like grief and want to avoid it, we don't even want to talk about it. It really is how we heal.

We need to go straight through grief in order to heal. People who don't heal are typically people who just really don't even want to give themselves time to grieve. So I learned that there are ways that we look at grief and regard grief and respond to it that really are not healthy and are not good. And then there are ways that are good that help us to get through it better. And so that's what I present in my Good Grief Parenting Program. So let's talk a little bit. I want to get into how kids grieve differently from adults, but I've experienced quite a number of deaths in my life.

Never the loss of a child. And, and yes, I've had a couple of miscarriages, the babies weren't born yet. So for me, I didn't, I didn't hold them yet. You know, I didn't have them yet. So that's a different type of grief experience as well, I believe. But for the friends and the family members that I've supported, sometimes, even though we know better, we don't want to say the wrong things, we say the wrong things, you know, or at the wrong time or something. So what are some helpful hints for people that are supporting other adults who, and people who are grieving before we get into the kiddos? Well, first of all, I do want to say that, that grief over a miscarriage is 100% grief. Grief is 100% whatever the whatever the loss was for whoever has the grief. So I'm sorry that you lost two children too, even though you never held them. And that's one of the things that that as grievers, we sometimes do or as people, we sometimes kind of compare losses. And so I want to just say grief is grief and we need to honor it all.

But as someone who wants to support a griever, I usually point out two things that are kind of counterintuitive in our society. And the first thing is, talk about it with the griever. We often avoid grievers. We don't know what to say, so we don't talk to them at all.

And instead, be willing to mention the name of the person they've lost. Nothing means more to most grievers than having someone come up and speak their loved one's name and say, oh, I remember this about your loved one and by mention them by name and share memories. You're not going to hurt the griever. They're already hurt. They're thinking about this loved one all the time you mentioning it we often think oh I don't want to upset them.

you're not going to upset them, you're really going to bless them in most cases by mentioning the name. And the second thing that I would say to you as a support person is that there really is nothing you can say. And there's nothing you have to say, you can say to the person, I'm thinking of you, I'm here for you. My heart goes out to you, those kinds of things. But you can also simply be a caring presence. And again, not leaving them isolated. A lot of times that's one of the hardest things that happens to grievers is that they lose people who in their prior life were who they considered their support people to be. But those people are so uncomfortable with the loss that they kind of just go away and instead be willing to be there and just sit with them. If they talk,

listen, if they don't talk, just be a caring presence. And that's really all you need to do. And it will mean so much. Yeah, that's I'm so glad you say that. I know in my own personal experience, there's been times with loved ones that have passed, I've said things like I don't want to bother you, you know, you feel like everybody's probably calling everybody's probably stopping by. And I think that's true. Maybe the first few weeks or month or so after the loved one that has passed, but it does kind of fade off. And people aren't sure that what if I call and I'm bothering them or they're just, they're having a good moment. And if I bring it up now, I'm going to set them back. And, you know, we think all these things that, you know,

really probably aren't true, or even if they are, that person can not answer the phone, right? The door. Yes. Yes. Well, I remember many people saying to me, Oh, I've been thinking of you, but I didn't want to bother you. And I would think, oh, I would have meant so much to me to know that you were thinking of me. And if you'd called and I didn't want to talk to you, I didn't have to answer the phone. But But what if I wanted to talk to someone in that moment? And there you were what a what a gift that would have been to me. So again, this avoiding the griever, because we don't want to hurt them is really an unintentional hurt to that griever because they feel isolated.

Right, right. All right. Well, thank you for that. I think that helps. There's so many of us, I think it's very natural to feel avoidance because we don't want to, you know, further harm or hurt, hurt the person, but, but that is really helpful. How do children grieve differently from adults. What are some examples of that? That is just such an important question for all children, but especially for really young children. If my daughter had not said to me, mommy, half of me is gone, I would not have seen her grief because she didn't cry. She didn't act particularly upset. She but children grieve through their play. And when I paid attention to her, you know, if I could hear her playing in the other room, sometimes I'd hear her singing,

Oh, how I wish my brother were here. You know, can you help me down inside, she'd sing and she did this for a couple of years. And but if you had observed her, you wouldn't have known she carried this grief. So children just really do grieve much less overtly than adults do.

They grieve in spurts. And it's not because they don't feel the grief. It's because they can't handle the intensity of emotion the way adults have. They don't have any resources to deal with it. They're just learning this. And so a lot of adults say, well, they look fine. So I think they're doing fine. And that's really not the case. So my recommendation to parents, I think the bit or adults, I'd say the biggest mistake that we make with adults is that mistake that caring people make with grievers. And that is that they don't talk about it. And so when our children are sad, and I learned early on, Children's Hospital in Minneapolis had a really excellent bereavement program right at the time of loss. And, you know, made clear to me as a parent that,

you know, let your child see your grief, you know, explain to her that you miss her brother, whatever, don't don't worry about exposing her to it, because sometimes we worry about that. So I knew to share with her when I was feeling sad. But one thing I learned a little bit later that I wish I'd learned earlier was how important it was to ask her, not just to be open about our grief, but to ask her, how are you feeling? Do you think about David sometimes? What do you think about David? You know, how does it make you feel? I'm missing David right now. Are you missing David?

and even conversations like, what do you think David would be doing right now if he were here? Wouldn't he love to be playing this game with you right now? Those are the things that I recommend we all do, you know, around the loved one. Mention her brother to her, which we did. We talked about him. We kept him present. But I didn't do a whole lot of asking her about her feelings and letting her talk about how she felt. And that is a really important thing for adults to get comfortable with with children. And doesn't have to be a complicated conversation, just be willing to ask them some questions to give them an opportunity to respond if they want to. And then they're learning that talking about grief is okay. That's the main thing. They're learning that grief is normal,

and we can talk about it if we want to. Yeah, that's super important. And I think especially with those younger kiddos where they don't, I mean, as adults, if we're having a hard time verbalizing our grief or what we're feeling or our uncertainty over whether we should be talking about it or not, imagine a two, three, four, five, 10 year old, not knowing, is it okay if I bring this up now or what should I say or how do I verbalize it?

So I think that's, that's super important. What, why do you say that childhood then is the best time to learn about grief? It's not, you know, I've, I've, I've looked, I know that you, you talk about, you know, preparing kids. we never really can prepare, you know, no problem parenting. I say step two of my program is prepare for the worst. I don't think anybody can really prepare for death, no matter if you have a loved one that's suffering because of an illness or, or certainly not if it was an abrupt, uh, you know, an accident or something where it was an instant kind of death. But, um, but you talk about childhood is actually the best time to learn about grief. Why do you say that?

I say that because the reason that you and I and so many other people are not comfortable with grief when we are confronted with it as an adult is because we didn't learn about it when we were children. Probably we grew up in families where people brushed it aside, maybe didn't talk about it at all. And we grew up thinking you don't talk about grief, we certainly didn't learn how to handle it. And so one of the what I work with families in my program to do is to honor grief, and it doesn't have to be, you know, the death of a loved one.

My first grief that are my first loss that I remember grieving over was when I was probably five or six, and I was at the beach with a blow up toy a big toy riding toy named Wally the walrus. and I grew up on Lake of the Woods up in northern Minnesota. The lake goes on forever. It's just when you're at the beach, it's just water and horizon. And I fell off Wally and he got away from me and the adults who knew how to swim couldn't reach him and the wind just took him out onto the lake and I had to stand on the beach just helplessly watching him float until he was just a dot on the horizon. And I remember how I felt. And it was grief. Grief is different than sadness.

Grief is when you've lost something that's gone, and he was gone. And adults thought, well, he's just a toy. Oh, come on, you go play with something else. Honoring grief would be to say, boy, that's really sad that you I know how much you love to play with that toy. Oh, it's so sad to just watch him float away. I know you just feel so bad, just honoring it, and making it normal that it that a child would feel that way about that loss, and all of the different losses, you know, that they're going to have growing up. And so I know I didn't learn about it in childhood, it was, you know, you'll get over it, let's, let's go do something fun and not think about the loss. Let's, let's move on. Instead, let's not think about it. When we learn to process it as children and learn that it's normal and natural. And that when we lose something, it hurts.

But there are things that we can do to help ourselves feel better. Talking about it is good and okay, that's one of the biggest things, then we grow up to be adults who can have those conversations with children and with other adults and support them. And so that's why I say, when my daughter and I face this, I thought, okay, we've got this lemon, we don't want it. I wish I could put it back, but we've got it. And so we can either bite into it and it's bitter and it's sour, or I can put it on the kitchen counter and say, I'm not going to deal with this lemon. I'm going to let it sit there and let it rot. Or I can say, I've got this lemon, nothing I can do about it. I've got it. We're going to slice it up. We're going to add some sugar. We're going to add some water. We're going to make some lemonade and we're not going to ignore the lemon, we're going to find a way to do the best thing that we can with the lemon.

And if we have that attitude with children, and with ourselves as adults, we can really cope with grief and loss so much better throughout our lives. So good grief parenting is about that. There's a quote by an author named Anne Roythe, who wrote a book when her husband died, and she said there are two parts to grief. The first part is loss. And the second part is the remaking of life. And those grief support groups and places where we go to get support when a loved one has died, help us with the loss. But when you have a child, you need to raise them in the presence of grief, I had to raise my daughter in the presence of grief for the rest of her life. And her life was different, because her sibling was not there in person. I call them siblings by heart. And so how was I supposed to parent her very differently than what I was teaching all of my parents.

And, and it was about her whole life, not just those few weeks after the loss. So that's what I do in good grief parenting, I give parents parenting tips for how do you teach your children as they're growing, how to cope with loss, not only at the time of loss, but the impact that it has on life as we grow. So many people dealing with grief, and sometimes we don't realize the impact. So I'm thinking of a family who's the mom's father passed away. And they have three littles at home. I mean, little, little kiddos. And they're not understanding, you know, they know grandpa's gone, but they don't really know where he went or how he died or they can't, but they're just struggling and their behavior is just a bit off. And then the parents are like,

well, is that because, you know, school started or what is it? And so you have sort of a good foundational place for parents to start and you call it the good grief guide. Is that right? Yes. The good grief guide is four simple first steps to help children who are grieving. And it really does start with these beliefs. And then it also talks a bit about how to have conversations with children and how to do it differently than we typically do it. And in this case, with this family, just for the mom, the child is picking up, the children are picking up on the adult grief.

They may not understand it, but they're picking up on it. They know that mom and dad are upset. that they're responding to that. And yes, children often do respond in their behavior.

And thank you for mentioning that because that's another really good way that we can notice kids are grieving is that they're just not behaving like they typically do. And it's not always misbehavior. Sometimes it's a child is, my daughter was as good as gold. She was going through her twos and threes when we were going through this.

And I actually had, we actually had conversations with her saying, Deanna, it's okay to be mad, honey. It's okay to, because she was, she just didn't think she could do anything to rock the boat. So sometimes that's the way they respond. But the Good Grief Guide is a good place to help you as an adult get started on how do you talk to these really young children and just what to be aware of. And it's about that openness and that willingness to have conversation.

And one more thing that I'll offer that is in the guide, but I'll bring it out here, is using the actual words, even though really young kids don't understand what death is or what dying is. We want to use those words because as they grow up and they know the story of grandpa or they know the story of, you know, their brother, they'll know that that's what happened. And as they start to understand the word, then they'll understand what happened.

If you tell them someone's gone away, then they kind of grow up thinking, well, I wonder when they're going to come back. And so we also hate to use those D words, but, you know, they don't understand it the way we do. So it's not traumatic to them. It's factual to them. And that's an important piece for us to get comfortable with as adults as well.

It's really interesting that you say that. And I like that. It's a sensitive subject. And so sometimes saying the words, everybody's so worried about hurting the other person, but facts, especially with kids, you know, I teach in step three of the no problem parenting course, I talk about changing the conversation. Step three is all about changing the conversation. And I talk about the difference between unconditional and conditional praise, or unconditional and conditional positives.

And so sometimes we're so used to being unconditional and we think unconditional is just, you know, unconditional love and no matter what, we use all these praise words like good job or you'll get through it or it's okay and you're good. But really the conditional positive or the conditional praise is factual. And we should be saying more of those factual things before the it's okay or you'll be okay or you're doing good or, you know, those sorts of things.

So you're just reminding me of that as you're talking about this. This is a topic where that maybe they're not going to feel okay very soon. And so you're right. I mean, we say that and there are times when that's perfectly appropriate, but they need to understand that if they don't feel okay, that's okay.

That's normal. That's the nature of grief. So yes, that's such a good example of how the truth and the actual words are so important. We're really hurting now. Someday we're going to feel better, but right now we really hurt. That's the truth. And that's giving kids permission to feel the way they feel in the moment.

yeah I think that's so important making sure the parents are modeling their own feeling in the moments that it's happening if they are really sad rather than trying to brush away the tears or you know get to another room and pull yourself together it's okay to just describe and explain what's happening to you and that that's the way you're feeling right now that's really good I like that I really like that you say talk about that person ask what they would be doing if they were here or with us in the moment or that sort of thing. How did your family get through that loss of dreams? I think that's just a really hard thing. I think some of us have survivor guilt where if a friend of ours has lost a child that we still have a child that's the same age and they're doing these things. And, you know, you kind of, it's just that uncertainty of how do I even be happy or feel in the moment when this other person's child died? Yes. I mean, that is such an important question. It's such an important question for the parent because you want to, I mean, I wanted to give Deanna a normal childhood. I didn't want David to be the shadow over everything, even though he was. And so I had to figure out how to parent while I was grieving.

and give her a happy childhood. And we live next door to a family that had four children, my children's ages, we still live next door to them. And so, you know, she was exposed to this, they knew she was next door where her brother had been and was gone. And I again, the healthiest thing for us as a society is to acknowledge the child. And if you don't know what to say, one of the conversations that I've had with some of my clients, you know, when we talk about things they experience is some people get upset if they're invited to a party because they say, don't they know that this is painful for me? Others get upset if they're not invited because they say they're not inviting me because, you know, my son died, but I still have my, you know,

so you can't know what that person feels. But I say that as a society, we want to normalize it. You as a friend say, you know, I can't help but be thinking about David right now, we would really love to invite you to Joe's birthday party. We'd love for you to come. We'd love for you to be included. But you know, I, I'm not sure how you feel about that. It's hard for me to know that your son is missing. Just have the open conversations and admit that you don't know what to do that you're uncomfortable and let that person make the call. But I go back to this. Don't leave people out who are grieving. Let them leave themselves out. I would say err on the side of inviting them and mention to them, I know this could be really painful to you. So if you don't come,

we'll understand, but we want you to come if you want to be there. I love that. That is so that's such great advice. Let the person grieving be in control of what they attend or don't attend. Right, right. What they participate in or don't I yeah that's really, that's really good advice.

Thank you for that Michelle. And so you also offer that good grief guide free on your website so people could just go in and download that right from your site. Is that correct? Yes, thank you for reminding me that I didn't tell people where to get it. Yes, if you go to my website, which is good grief parenting.com right there on the front page at the top there you can request the good grief guide and get it for free.

And I'd love for you to go get it and share it with other parents as well. As I say, this is just first steps for anyone wanting to help children with grief. And grief can, everyone experiences grief, whether it's Wally the walrus or pet dying or losing a favorite toy that they sleep with. Everyone experiences it in childhood.

So this is a good resource for any parent of young children. Specifically, I work with families after child loss, and I have a course called See Your Way Forward After Child Loss, and I do group and individual coaching, and also do some trainings with staff like preschool staff or ECFE staff who work with children. So those are the ways that I help people become aware of good grief, and particularly good grief parenting.

And you also have a Facebook page, Good Grief Parenting Facebook page, right? So Michelle, I'm going to put everything in the show notes so that people can go right in there and click directly to get into your links and get in touch with you and utilize the resources and the support that you have for them. So I really appreciate all that you offer. And thank you so much for being here today.

Yes. Thank you, Jackie. It was great to talk with you and to have this opportunity. Thank you for tuning in to the No Problem Parenting Podcast.

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