Jenna Wimmer is a mother of three in our community, and a nurse practitioner.
There have been a lot of articles written lately about adults going through feelings and experiences we have never had to go through in our lifetime. All these experiences are new, and everyone reacts differently. Recently a sermon by Ryan Adams helped me name that for myself as grief and I’ve been able to flesh out what it is exactly that I am grieving:
The loss of actual human life.
The anger at the government for not taking this seriously, costing our country hundreds of lives.
The loss of my kids having a ‘normal’ school day.
The loss of my own personal space and all that does to keep me sane.
The loss of my sense of control over my life and my deep need for predictability.
The loss that I can do NOTHING well in my life and realizing that my value and worth come from that.
The list goes on! Naming those things and taking them to the feet of Jesus and asking him to reveal his truth for me, has changed me. I was holding on to them and it was coming out as anger, frustration, crying, yelling and feeling shut down. It has allowed me to see where I am flawed, where my control ends, where I am in need of something greater than myself. I can’t hold myself together. I need Jesus. I am still very aware of the needs, the sadness, and the loss in my life but I am also not alone holding it all in. I have released it to the only One who can actually speak healing into those feelings and experiences.
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On Monday, as I started to go over some math problems with my daughter and she started crying. I asked her what was wrong (I can be terribly blunt and harsh even though I don’t mean to be so I was just assuming it was my behavior). She didn’t know what was wrong and after a few minutes she said, “I just really miss my friends, my school and my teacher”. I realized – my kids are grieving too, and they don’t know how to name it. If they can’t name it then they certainly don’t know how to work through it.
I think, just like adults, each kid’s grief will look differently. For my daughter (8) she cries when we do school work and refuses to pay attention to the help I’m giving her. For my son (6) he just yells and is defiant against doing a sheet that should take him 4 minutes and I know he knows how to do it. These aren’t normal behaviors for my kids. For both of them, they have been having nightmares almost every night. They are waking up, asking for prayer before bed, and feeling afraid in the dark. These things were only sparingly happening before the Covid-19 outbreak.
So, I wanted to share some things that we are trying that I hope will help as we all navigate this time. My kids have not had to deal with major grief in their life, so I am sure parents of children who have had massive loss may have better or more insight. I am also not a psychiatrist or mental health practitioner, so this isn’t scientific. I’ve been praying for wisdom from Jesus and this is what I have heard.
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1. Allow the kids to cry and get upset. We put limits on this because everyone needs to learn to control their emotions. We don’t want them to feel shame over them, but they need to learn what is appropriate and not appropriate when expressing them. Example: It is ok to cry and be mad, but you can’t hit me or your sister. You cannot scream in my face, but you can go scream in your bed and punch your pillow.
2. Ask them what they are feeling. Pull out the old feelings chart. Give/Show them some examples.
If they can name it, you can see if they know why they are feeling that way. Maybe they can’t name them but offering space for them to say it can be helpful.
3. Giving them a few minutes to think about what is going on inside them, and then coming back together in 3-5 minutes could help them think about it. Maybe they even need a different environment (outside, on porch, etc.)
4. Praying with them. Leaving space for them to pray if they want to as well. We need to teach our kids how to surrender. Sharing with them that, “I have to pray this to Jesus all the time and in fact, I just did this morning”, helps them feel less alone in what they are experiencing.
Questions that can be helpful when in prayer:
1. What am I angry about?
2. What am I anxious about?
3. What am I sad about?
4. What am I glad about?
Both you and your child/children can sit in those questions for a few minutes. If they can write, encourage a journal where they can write down what they are thinking or experiencing while praying (while we do the same), or they can draw a picture of what they are thinking. It may help get to the bottom of some of the things they can’t verbalize.
5. Calmly telling them “you can’t speak to me that way”, or, “I am sorry it isn’t an option for you to finish this”. Helping them realize what they are feeling is one thing, but we have to help shift behavior for next time. I am prone to raising my voice, so I am trying this.
6. Give them a lot of breaks in schoolwork. I often get upset because I know my son can do more when he’s at school in one sitting, but it is just different at home. I am asking them what they think is a good plan for the day and I tell them what I expect.
Example: “You have to get this done by 1pm. How do you think we should get that accomplished?”
Or “You have to do this before swimming. Why don’t you do one page, play for 5 min and then come back and do another? I’ll set a timer”.
Kids need structure and boundaries, but they don’t have to have zero control over what that looks like. This has helped my younger one because he has some control over it. I know I hate it when I feel like I have none, so I think this is helping him.
7. Bending the ‘normal’ rules a bit to help my kids interact with their friends. We don’t do devices in our house normally. Our kids don’t have phones, tablets or social media. But we did download the ‘Kids Messenger’ App through Facebook. We have given them structured times – 20 min in morning and 20 min in afternoon after they have finished their work for that time. We are intermittently teaching them how to have a conversation, how to close out a conversation and time management on who to “chat” with. We are also getting to teach them a little bit about how to use a device safely and with limits. We have set the expectation that this will be very different when we are done with isolation, but for now it is giving them an outlet.
I hope this helps. These are odd times and here we go, learning new things once again. 😊
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If you would like someone to pray or process with you as you’re learning to help your children grief, please reach out to our Greenhouse coordinator, Brandy Lynn Ford, at greenhouse@citybeauitful.ch