She's Got It Together
She's Got It Together
Navigating Grief With Children with Caitlin Sigouin
In this episode, I sit down with therapist and author Caitlin Sigouin to tackle the heavy but important topic of helping children understand and cope with death. As a mom who recently lost my grandma and previously lost my dad, I share my own experiences navigating grief with my kids. Caitlin offers fantastic insights on how children process loss differently than adults, and gives practical tips for talking to kids about death in an age-appropriate way.
We chat about using everyday moments in nature to introduce the concept, recommend some great children's books on the topic, and discuss how to balance your own grief as a parent while supporting your child. Caitlin also shares a sneak peek of her upcoming children's book "A Rainbow of Feelings" which aims to help kids express all their emotions.
This conversation gets real about a tough subject, but Caitlin's expertise and compassion make it super approachable. Whether you're dealing with a loss or just want to be prepared, you'll come away with helpful strategies for having these important talks with your little ones. Tune in for an honest, casual chat about an topic we all face eventually as parents.
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Jessica & Samantha
Yeah, so I think when we're supporting kids with grief, first of all it's really important to look at the context. So in this situation, there's the grief of losing the person right now, but there's also the grief previously, so that might be exploring both of those scenarios. And she wasn't involved in a lot of the events prior, so it might be reopening some of that, looking at old pictures of that person, talking about those memories and maybe about those feelings.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, and welcome to a brand new episode of she's Got it Together. I'm your host, Jessica.
Speaker 3:And I'm Samantha. Each week we peel back the curtain on what it really looks like to have it together.
Speaker 2:From the messy moments to the milestones, we're here to share it all.
Speaker 3:So grab your favorite drink, get comfy and let's dive into today's topic.
Speaker 2:A few months ago we lost a very important family member. It was my grandma, my girl's great grandma, and this wasn't the first loss that they had experienced. But it was being old enough to kind of understand what's going on. So today I have brought on Caitlin Sequin and we're going to talk about the heavy topic of death. I mean, it's not a fun topic but unfortunately it's inevitable and everyone is going to experience it. But children seem to experience it a little bit different, a little bit harder for them to kind of digest the whole situation. So, caitlin, she's a therapist and an author of a brand new children's book, a Rainbow of Feelings, which I haven't seen yet and I don't know if it's published yet or not. I think it was coming out this month, but I'm super excited because it's on my list to get. I think it'll be really, really cool for my kids. But before I go into all of that, I want to welcome Caitlin.
Speaker 1:So Caitlin, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. Jessica, it's lovely to be here. Yes, this is, like I said, a heavy topic, but I think it's one that's very important to discuss. So can you give us a little bit of a background? You know, like we know, you're a therapist, obviously an author and things, but where did this piece of you know understanding the grief with children come into play?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's a topic that I focus on in my practice as a therapist. I've had my own experiences with grief throughout my life, starting as a child, of course with grandparents, and then in the last number of years I've also lost a sibling. So that's been quite difficult navigating that, and so professionally I have my training. But navigating that myself as a parent, having children during that period, really shed light on the difficulty that this can bring up and so how to help children with that. So that's a little bit of background about myself, sort of the professional drive behind it as well as the personal.
Speaker 2:Yes, no, that's great. So let's kind of just begin with. You know how do children experience grief? Is it different than adults? Can you kind of just explain? You know how it differs?
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Kids, especially young kids, really struggle with object permanency. When they're really little, of course, if they can't see us, for them we don't exist anymore. Right as they get older they begin to understand that if they can't see something, if a toy is invisible, a person that it still does exist. But I think this concept concept again of something being gone permanently is a really difficult one for kids to grasp. It's not very concrete, it's sort of an abstract concept and kids often struggle with those more abstract concepts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would definitely have to agree with that. So we lost, like I had mentioned, my grandmother this past fall. So that would be their great grandmother and, being someone that we're pretty close with or very we really were very close with that was a challenge, even though it was something that we could foresee coming in in the near future. She was 95. So it wasn't one of those just, you know, spontaneous or just those random. You know, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't like that. She, you know, she was up there in age and it's something that I think as an adult I guess I was prepared for.
Speaker 2:But I didn't realize that my kids weren't necessarily, even though we talked about it and we'd visited her, you know, often in the nursing home and things like that, it was still still a huge struggle, Um, a little bit more than I had realized it was going to be.
Speaker 2:But then, going even further back, um, about six years ago, my dad passed away suddenly. So my youngest was too young, she, you know, at the time I think she was four so she didn't participate in, I guess, the funeral and things like that, Because she just didn't understand that part. But my oldest at the time would have been about 10. And she did go and she did, you know, the burial. There's a lot going on with it because I thought it was important for her to experience it because they were both close with him. But it was very interesting to see how now my youngest reflects back on that, now that she's older and we've just had another loss. She reflects back on that original one and is kind of overcome with grief now, Like she's almost re-experiencing the grief which I was not prepared for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's actually a really common thing to have happen. Often grief we don't necessarily realize because we think each instance of grief is sort of a separate thing, but actually it's, they're all connected. So when we experience a new grief, feelings that we have from a previous loss and it doesn't necessarily have to be the loss of somebody either If we've had the loss of, you know, moving houses, changing schools, friendship, the loss of somebody can bring up those same feelings of grief. So when we haven't had a chance to sort of express the emotions and move through it, absolutely those feelings and those emotions are going to come back up with a new loss.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I mean, that's essentially what happened then. It was very surprising because I guess to me I'm like that was compartmentalized event.
Speaker 1:You know, and it was already dealt with.
Speaker 2:And now, because we were trying to navigate this as parents and without being upset like you know, what are you doing here? What's going on, you know, still being, you know, aware of her feelings, but then also trying to figure out is this are we having some shenanigans here? Are we trying, you know, you never know, with kids sometimes? It was quite an interesting situation, because I don't feel as though adults have that, because we seem to have grieved during each event. I don't know if maybe that's just me, maybe that does come up for adults too, where, you know, it's kind of that residual comes right back up. But as far as kids, it just seems like it was, um, like the event was new, like it had happened again, um, so how would you navigate through something like that? Or, you know, like, what are your suggestions for something?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think when we're supporting kids with grief, first of all it's really important to look at the context. So in this situation, there's the grief of losing the person right now, but there's also the grief previously. So that might be exploring both of those scenarios and she wasn't involved in a lot of the events prior, so it might be reopening some of that stuff, looking at old pictures of that person, talking about those memories and maybe about those feelings.
Speaker 1:With little kids, they often act out things in their play. So you might notice kids, of course, if they've had a recent loss once, they're sort of processing it, so it may not happen right away. It might be like six months later we might see them playing with their dolls and they're like oh, you're dead, oh, you're in the hospital and you're dying. This can be really jarring as a parent. Yeah, you know we're like, oh my gosh, do I need to know what's going on, right, right. But it's really important to let them act those pieces out.
Speaker 1:It can also give us information about what are the pieces that they're hanging on to. What are the messages. So if the kids are focused on enacting out pieces of you know, I'm at the hospital and I'm sick and now I'm dying. We can understand that those are the messages that are sort of stuck in their brain that they might need help talking about. So we might want to go back to them and say you know, do you remember when grandma was in the hospital? Do you remember going to visit her and helping her talk out, sort of have a narrative about it. If there's a piece that's coming up almost as a fear, sort of exploring that too, right. So if it's, you know they're now afraid of getting sick or going to the hospital, you know we can connect that maybe for them, going to the hospital or getting sick might imply that something's going to happen. So, reassuring them that you can be sick, you can go to the hospital, most people will walk out of the hospital, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's. That's very enlightening to think about it that way, I suppose because I don't think that is well. My mind, I guess, wouldn't necessarily go that direction, right, but yes, it does. It does make sense when you, when you break it down like that, so do children, I mean, when they experience a loss. Can they, I mean, are they understanding the situation? Is there like an age where you would say that the comprehension of what has happened sets in, or is it just, you know, person to person, child to child?
Speaker 1:I think it definitely builds as kids get older. I think, as parents, one of the things that we often shy away from the topic of death with kids. I mean how often you know, even outside, if there's a bug. You know, we've heard people say oh he's just sleeping.
Speaker 1:Right, you know he's fine, he's just asleep, instead of saying you know that that bug is dead. Because, again, we think we're going to be frightening our kids by giving this information. But those are actually really great learning opportunities for them to begin to understand what death is and what death looks like. So we really want to take those opportunities and give them that information. So correct information, really simple words. Right, we don't need to go on these big, long explanations about what's going on. We don't need to go on these big, long explanations about what's going on.
Speaker 1:But if we have a pet at home that dies, we really want to be honest with the information that you know. Our dog, you know, died. We brought him to the vet, right, he died. We want to give that information. Right, he was surrounded by love. We loved him so much, you know. Do you want to look at pictures of him? Would you like to talk about a nice memory? But we do want to give accurate information. One of the things that we really want to avoid, too, is using these sort of terms like oh, he's gone to sleep, he's in a bed. Yeah, right, because again, give kids, yeah, those confusing messages, okay. So if I go to what's going to happen to me, right? So we really want to be clear with the language, but kids are often more able to understand things than we give them credit for.
Speaker 2:Yes, I would. I would believe that I definitely so. I mean, that kind of brings me to my next question Can children truly understand death? I mean, is it a matter of us explaining it correctly to them or, you know, is there some type of built-in mechanism, you know, that has kind of created, I don't know, just the ability for them to understand what has happened?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think every child is different that way. I would say definitely with younger kids, even if we've explained that the person has died, they're not coming back, that they're still at some point going to be searching for them, right? Those are the opportunities to sort of remind them of what happened, you know, and again use it to talk about, not to shy away from. So we don't want to change the subject, we don't want to redirect, you know, again, we really want to be able to talk about it with them and to say you know, do you remember? We visited grandma at the hospital, we said goodbye to her, and now she's gone.
Speaker 1:So, you know, if you are, this is where we can bring in sort of beliefs too, if you have particular beliefs to talk about where you believe the person is, or you know sort of what they're doing right now. If we ourselves aren't necessarily sure, we can even say you know what, some people believe this, some people believe this. You know, what do you think is happening? And then it also gives them sort of that little control of saying you know, yeah, I imagine that they're doing this now, or I imagine they're here and it's a really nice way of them being able to sort of engage in that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I like that and make the decision for themselves, cause I know I feel like we're always, you know, telling the kids what they need to be thinking or how they need to be feeling, and I've found that as a big mistake. I have a very strong willed, young and boy. Will she bark back? She'll tell you what she's thinking she will, and you know her logic is always spot on, so I can't argue with it.
Speaker 1:But yeah, that is a really good point. I think sometimes our intention as parents, of course, is to protect our kids, right, we don't want to scare them, we don't want them to have pain, uncomfortable feelings, but we need to remember that these things are going to come up in their life right. So what we want to do is give them tools and support in those situations so that, when they're older, we're setting them up to be able to navigate and manage as adults, as teens, going on in life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely yeah. So do you have any tips that you would want to give today to kind of you know how to start that conversation with your, with your child, and how to navigate it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. I really think nature provides us with so many wonderful opportunities for this right. You know again, know again. Like I said, we're out for a walk, there's a bug that's dead there. There's, you know, a little worm that's come out after the rain, that's squished, and you know, we can use these opportunities again. If we have pets, we can use this opportunity when it happens with grandparents same type of thing to talk about death. I I mean, even in the fall, with nature, as the leaves die and fall off the trees, we can use this as an opportunity to really talk about you know what? This is just the season changing, there will be new leaves growing back, but these leaves that were there now are gone, they're dead. And use that. And again, to use simple language, there's so many wonderful resources I can share too that I have here as well.
Speaker 1:So you know one of the things as parents, if we don't know what to say, we're uncomfortable. It's always okay to say you know what. But that's a great question. Can we talk about that tonight? And then you, as a parent, can go and look at your resources, right, right, right, get a bit informed so that then, when we're talking with them, we know how to navigate, because absolutely sometimes it catches us off guard. You know we're driving in the car and they're like right, why did grandma die?
Speaker 2:Most random question yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so I can share the resources if you'd like. So this is one. This is actually the French copy, but it is available in English as well. So Le Fil Invisible, but in English it's the Invisible String. Oh, I like that. This is the translated version. I also speak French, so that's why I have it. This is a lovely book and it's not necessarily just grief about death and dying, but it is a wonderful story for that. It's about two kids, twins actually but a boy, and girl.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so connection with your family. Yeah, they're scared in the thunderstorm and so they want to sleep in their mom's room. And their mom is essentially telling them you know what, even if you're not with me, we're all connected by an invisible string of love. And so she goes on to give different examples, and, of course, examples of people dying. So beautiful story to read with kids.
Speaker 2:And that's a great way to prepare them to, you know, through a story as opposed to an actual event. You know, it's just casually bringing it up.
Speaker 1:And again, if we don't know the right words to use, how to talk, the book sort of gives us that language to use, right, which is really nice as well, and then we can refer back to the book. Do you remember like in this book we read they still were able to talk to their grandfathers. Yeah, yeah. This is another one that I really like Okay, why do things die? And what I really like about this one is that it's question and answers, but lift the flaps.
Speaker 2:Oh, those are so sweet.
Speaker 1:I love those. So engaging for kids too. Right, and I mean it's one again that you're not necessarily going to have to read all in one sitting. You can flip to different parts Kids can kind of explore, but it's a concrete one that gives really accurate, simple language but factual information and ways to talk about it to kids. So the language to use. You know how to present these concepts to them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh nice, those are great resources. I love that. I actually will be checking those out because I think my youngest could use a couple stories.
Speaker 1:Definitely, it's always nice to have. I mean, as you know, I'm a big fan of books.
Speaker 2:I am too, yeah, no, I like the idea of a book because it is that more of a casual conversation, not something really heavy, not something planned, and it can just kind of go where it goes through the story, where it goes through the story. You know, you're just letting the questions fall out, basically, instead of dropping one in the car on the way to who knows where, and wrong line frame. Yeah, like what yeah?
Speaker 1:Which again are often when they come out, and again, sometimes kids don't necessarily want to talk about these things. So what we can do too if something's happened and we say, you know, did you want to talk about this? And they say, no, we can just sort of say something like you know, whenever you're ready, you know um, you know you can also talk to. And we can name a few other safe people that they might want to talk to as well, to give them options.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so that definitely is an issue when they don't want to open up, but it's understandable, because as an adult, I don't want to talk about it either.
Speaker 1:No, so it's yeah.
Speaker 2:So going back to the parent for a minute now how can a parent grieve while still trying to help their child through the situation? I think that was personally my biggest struggle, especially with my dad. But it's important as a mother that you're still there for your child and kind of prioritizing the needs. But is there a way that is better to do this? I mean, I'm sure there's not an easy way, but what kind of advice can you give when it comes to that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd really say, you know, sometimes, again, we want to prevent our kids from seeing us upset but it's okay for that, for our kids to see that you know again, if we're crying because we've lost somebody, that's a normal reaction, right? We need to be letting those feelings out so our kids seeing that is not a bad thing for them. It's a time to give ourselves a little bit more grace, in the sense that maybe it's the time where we order out more food, maybe we eat chicken nuggets a lot more than what we're used to, but it's really the time to say you know what? This is a period where maybe I don't have the mental capacity to do the things that I was normally doing as a parent. So it's okay if it looks a bit different right now. You know, it's a time where maybe we're going to be using more screen time again because maybe we don't have the capacity to sit and play with our kids the way that we normally would or engage with them in different ways.
Speaker 1:This is also a time, you know, depending on who has passed away. But if we have family members, if we have friends that we can ask for help and that can even look like, you know, hey, can you help with a grocery run, you know, is there any way you could drop food off those types of things, getting them together with their friends, but basically trying to keep, for the most part, their routine consistent, because that's going to ground them. So you know, if they're going to school, still sending them to school, right, unless they're themselves so upset that they want to stay home and that would look a little bit different. But otherwise continuing on with those routines.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what do you think about distractions? So that's one thing that I think I did wrong trying to provide too many distractions, almost so that they won't experience the grief that they need to experience. I think that's just that defense mechanism with mother you know protection mode, but what you know? What is your thought on that? Or is that good, bad?
Speaker 1:So I think we want to balance. If we're using a distraction, right, there's times where that might be helpful in the sense, you know, we have a funeral to go to, we don't have childcare, we need to keep our kids occupied while we're there, so pulling out a screen for them to be on maybe isn't necessarily a bad thing, right? And you know, when I talk about this, it's not to feel sort of this blame or shame about the ways that we've acted in the past. It's to say, you know what, now that we know how to better support our kids, we can do that moving forward. Right, we can always say to them too you know, I realize with your youngest, you know, I realize when grandma passed away, maybe we didn't include you in so much stuff, maybe we didn't talk to you. Would you like to spend some time now talking about and you might get it.
Speaker 1:No, you know, you sort of open that door. Yes, at least the door's open. Yeah, the door is open and there's a recognition of it too, because, again, I think sometimes kids themselves don't realize that maybe the grief they're experiencing now is because of that. So, yeah, helping them to connect the dots too, right.
Speaker 2:They go.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's true, Even if they're shutting us down and shutting us out with it. So you know, I do think that it's okay to use distractions in some senses, but to recognize that anytime we're not giving space for those feelings, they're going to come out in a different way eventually.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean it'll only be buried for so long.
Speaker 1:Exactly, definitely not good, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for being here today. Caitlin, Before we go, because that was an awesome conversation, I know you have a book that is coming out this month. Can you share a little bit about?
Speaker 1:that Absolutely, and so it actually ties in nicely what we were just talking about with giving space to the emotions. This is very much why I wrote this story. A lot of the adults that I work with in my practice really struggle with that and how to support their kids when they themselves don't have the tools or the knowledge. So what my goal is is that, with this story, hopefully adults as well as kids will sort of take away that message that all feelings are okay and that we need to express them all. We can't keep them in.
Speaker 1:My story is about a little boy who is essentially told by different adults, you know, don't feel too happy, don't feel too sad, don't feel too angry. And eventually he stops feeling his feelings and the world loses color, and so he needs to figure out how to get that back. And he's lucky that he has a trusted adult in his life who sort of helps him, through art, discover how to get that back. And he's lucky that he has a trusted adult in his life who sort of helps him, through art, discover how to do that and bring the color back to his world. But you know, I really hope that that takeaway message is that it's okay to feel those feelings and, in fact, important, even if they're difficult and uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a great way, though, to to explain it to a child. I love that going, you know, losing the color, I mean that is, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1:I love that. Yeah, and you know, I do think when we, when we don't feel those hard feelings, we also sort of suppress the ability to feel those really great and positive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You just kind of. I mean, I wouldn't even call it balance, but you're, you're just right, You're just nothing. There's no excitement, there's no sadness, I don't know yeah.
Speaker 1:And, of course, the title of my book, a rainbow of feelings. Very much the rainbow after the rain, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, love that.
Speaker 1:Love that.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well, you know, we will put a link in our show notes to that if we are able to. And okay, awesome, good, I didn't want to say too soon, but you know I'm totally excited for it. So, yeah, we'll share that in there. And then do you want to tell everybody where they can find you, because I'm sure they're going to have questions and I would love them to connect with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. I'm most active on Instagram, on social media, so you can find me at Caitlin Seguin or my website wwwcaitlinseguincom.
Speaker 2:Easy to remember.
Speaker 1:Yes, very easy to remember, and I love hearing from people. I love sharing different experiences, so anybody who would love to connect I would be so happy to hear from you, great.
Speaker 2:Great Well. Again, thank you so much for being here and I hope everyone enjoyed this kind of tough discussion but necessary. Thanks for joining us today on she's Got it Together.
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