LITTLE ROCK — A friend endured a terrible loss last year when a family member died suddenly. This was the third such loss in three years for his family. Shortly before the holidays, Marc and I spoke with him. Several times he used the word “perspective.” He was struggling to keep perspective on things, he said, so he could give his elementary school-age children some kind of reassurance to keep them from worrying so much.
The books on explaining loss to a child are on his shelves already, he noted. And he and his wife got counseling the last time this happened. They may go again. But when tragedy keeps happening, well, who has any answers then?
Who indeed? When our children are small, we are their world. Our absolute love for them is mirrored in their adoring love of us. To them, we’re everything that matters and we can solve all problems. As they get older, their perspective shifts. Friends matter, teachers matter, other relatives matter. We’re no longer the center of their world but we still anchor them. As they become more independent, we become less perfect. Everyone’s perspective shifts.
Part of our parenting work is to help our children gain a perspective that allows them to appreciate what they have. Habits of saying please and thank you become character traits of gratitude, kindness and compassion. As children get older, complexity becomes part of their awareness. They find out thathard things happen and that suffering exists. They learn that not every problem has an easy answer, and that their mom and dad can’t fix everything.
The more mature they are, the more they understand this. Accepting complexity builds perspective. They may not understand why things happen, but they glimpse the interconnectedness of things. If every-thing is interconnected, then small acts of kindness matter, and so do love, laughter, silliness and thoughtfulness. After all, we want our children to care and act. We don’t want the complexity of problems to overwhelm them.
Compassion motivates children to do more than just accept or ignore a troublingsituation. Perspective guides them to understand that the simple act of helping is the difference that matters. In addition to stability and safety and knowing they can talk to their parents about their feelings, when children suffer loss, they also need to know that goodness and kindness still exist, and that small actions can be powerful.
From long-term studies, we know that children who have opportunities to help othersbenefit tremendously from those experiences. Acts of service, generosity and compassion provide a long-term boost to well-being that can improve decision-making and last a lifetime. In particular, teenagers who help others during their teen years tend to be healthier, happier adults.
This Christmas, our friend stayed close to home. He has run out of reassuring things to say, but he says them anyway. He sees how much his children worry that something will happen to him or his wife, and he talks with them about that. “They think that’s what happens in our family,” he said, “because to them, it does.”
If the complexity of repeated loss challenges him, how can he expect his children to understand it? They have a perspective on loss which he can’t change, so he and his wife are tackling it a different way. They’re making a specialeffort to volunteer as a family.
Every time they pick up trash, or spend a day volunteering to sort cans of food, it helps.
Why does it help? Because it puts things in perspective, a perspective even children can understand. Bad things can happen, and we can still be good people. Other people have been hurt, too, and we feel better when we help them.
Write to Jennifer Hansen at Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, P.O. Box 7,Springdale, Ark. 72765. E-mail her at:
Family, Pages 32 on 01/23/2013