Help Children Cope with the Devastating Death of a Parent or Sibling

The Children's Room - Center for Grieving Children (Arlington, MA USA ) provides an invaluable service to the most vulnerable when the most devastating event occurs for a child - the death of a parent or sibling. They do this free of charge and with professionals providing a caring and emotionally safe space where kids can relate to each other during a process of grieving/recuperating which the kids are ill-equipped to handle. The surviving parent(s) are of limited help at that time because they, too, are also handling the terrible loss simultaneously. Even good schools are not well equipped to handle this situation.

When my darling daughter succumbed to her chronic illness at the age of 6 my wife and I and our 10 year old son were in shock and really had no idea how to handle ourselves let along our surviving child. The Children's Room provided our son with a group of kids who met bi-monthly and had experienced the same tragedy. The facilitators (fantastic certified/degreed social workers and psychologists who donate their time) ease the kids through the experience with opportunities to use play therapy, art therapy or just a space to cry or talk. Parents have their own coffee/discussion group downstairs while the kids are upstairs. Folks can stay in the program, free of charge, as long as the child needs/wants to (some for a year, many multiple years). This is our third year and most of our group have been going for 3-5 years. It was especially important early on to talk with parents who were 'veterans' of the process.

Named one of Massachusetts Outstanding Charities in 2006! Click <A HREF="http://www.childrensroom.org/documents/SelectedasanOutstandingCharity.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/A&gt; to read more .