Customer Reviews

35 Ways to Help a Grieving Child (Guidebook Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Congratulations to the Dougy Center Staff for creating this book. It is a much needed resource.
I also purchased After the Tears, A Gentle Guide to Help Children Understand Death (video)
The two are awesome resources for children.
Keep up the good work.

As a program director at a local center for grieving children, I utilize this book in many ways. I have it available in our parent/caregiver group room and I have recommended it to local school counselors and teachers. I recommend it to family and friends of grieving children who call our center and wonder how, in addition to possibly utilizing our center's services, they can help the child who has just experienced the death of someone close to them. Each page is full of practical and helpful ways that a grieving child can be supported. This book is easy to read and understand, just what individuals need in the chaotic wake left after someone dies.

This book is written for adults who have a child who is grieving. As a grieving parent with an eight year old daughter I found this book well organized and easy to understand. After the death of my brother from a year long battle with cancer the last thing I needed was a heavy detailed trip into academia. Dealing with my own grief as a single parent and caring for my daughter was exhuasting. This is not a book that is intended specifically to help therapists, it is for grieving people helping their grieving kids. The Dougy Center, with their vast experience and wisdom, has written this to help adults and children. It helped me to help my daughter and myself. I am forever grateful.

While the individual tips are certainly valid and helpful, an overall organizing principle to group tips might increase the effectiveness of the book. The brevity of tips makes the content accessible, but does not provide much depth topic by topic. In addition, the very compelling illustrations that are included in the book are not tied into the text they accompany. More insight into the background or intent of the drawings would be valuable (while preserving confidentiality of course).

I expected a lot more from the Dougy Center, which purports to be the leading organization for grieving children in this country. I created and ran a children's grief support center for more than a decade in addition to working in the field of grief for more than 25 years. I was hoping this book would greatly enhance the work I was doing and was disappointed at many levels. There are significantly better books out there for anyone interested in helping grieving children.

Bought as a gift for a friend when her father-in-law passed away and she said the book really helped her help her daughter

The deaths at the World Trade Center and Pentagon triggered a strong reaction in me, especially when I read how many children had lost a parent, because I lost both parents when I was young (my father when I was 4, my mother when I was 5). Recently I had started a small e-mail group of adults who went through similar parental-loss experiences, and it has been very helpful to meet others who went through this. This book has helped my thinking – children see things differently from adults, and feel things differently, and this book explores all that. As a social worker in a former career, I facilitated bereavement support groups at a major Manhattan cancer agency, and realized the bereavement process is a long one even for adults. One of my desires at this time is to connect with those who lost friends or family members in the terrorist attacks (or those who know them), so that I and those in my group might directly or indirectly offer supportive insights. If we could be of help, please get in touch. ...