Supporting Children Through a Family Member's Hospice Journey
When a patient faces a life-limiting diagnosis and must engage in care solutions such as hospice, family support will go a long way to smoothing their end-of-life journey. But an extra level of support is needed when your family includes children.
Figuring out how to explain hospice to a child can be daunting, especially if you’re coping with your own grief and stress about the situation.
Below are a few tips to support your kids through a family member’s hospice journey the right way.
Explaining Hospice
The first step to supporting your young family members through this difficult time is helping them understand what’s going on.
You may be tempted to leave them in the dark to spare them the hardship, but this can create more emotional and family problems later on. Go for full, if gentle, disclosure with these tips on how to explain hospice to young family members.
Find Out What They Already Know or Understand
Is your child aware that their family member has been feeling poorly? If so, you may need to start with this before moving on to the concept of death and the end of life.
A child’s understanding of death will vary depending on their age and maturity, according to Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. A preschooler may understand that death is something to fear, but not that it is permanent. A school-aged child will have a more realistic understanding of death but may have many questions you’ll need to be prepared to answer. That’s why it’s important to take age and maturity into account when explaining hospice to a child.
Be Honest
Breaking your child’s trust in you will only worsen an unhappy situation. You’ll need to take on the hard task of explaining your family member’s hospice journey to your child—what is death, what is hospice, family support expectations, why hospice care is needed, possible scenarios during visits, and more.
Explain the Situation Clearly in an Age-Appropriate Manner
Try not to use euphemisms to explain death to a child, as younger children may have trouble understanding that death is permanent. Hearing that a grandparent went to sleep or went away, they may think their relative can wake up or come back.
You can explain the physical aspects of death and that your family member will be free from pain and difficulty. The American Academy of Pediatrics outlines four key points to help kids under 5 years of age understand death:
It’s permanent.
Death ends suffering and all body functions and feelings.
Death comes to all living things.
No one is to blame, especially not your child.
Let Them Ask Questions in Their Own Time
You may need to have several follow-up conversations with your child when explaining about death, hospice, and the family member in hospice care. Encourage your child to ask any questions they can think of, and do your best to answer—even if it means telling them you don’t know the answer yourself. Allow them to come to you with their questions without being pushy, but gently remind them that you are here for them if they do have anything to ask.
How to Support Your Child Through a Family Member’s Hospice Journey
During your relative’s hospice care, family support from everyone, including young relatives, is very important. But this will also mean supporting the rest of your family during this time as well. Here are tips on helping kids through this process.
Encourage Them to Express Their Emotions
Bottling up feelings of fear, sadness, anger, and other negative feelings won’t be healthy for your child, so encourage them to express their emotions. Lead by example—don’t try to stifle your own emotions, either. It’s okay to tell your child you’re feeling sad or frustrated.
Bring Them for Visits and Arrange Phone or Video Calls
Seeing a beloved family member undergoing palliative care can be painful, but having them abruptly disappear from your child’s life can be just as harmful to their emotional well-being.
Schedule visits and phone or video calls with your relative in hospice; family support at this time will do everyone a world of good, even if you’re still explaining what it is to your child. Don’t skip holidays, either. It offers the patient comfort and reminds them they’re loved. Your child will also get to say goodbye to them and get used to the idea that they won’t always be around.
Let your Child’s Educators and Caregivers Know About the Situation
Your child may act out during this period. Let the people in your child’s life who are charged with their wellbeing, such as their school or daycare, know about the emotional upheaval in your family. They may even be able to offer support in terms of counseling or an easing up on schoolwork or rules as the end draws near.
Seek Professional Help to Cope
Don’t be shy about seeking help in the form of therapy or counseling to help your child—and the rest of your family—through the challenges of hospice. Family support counts for a lot, but so does psychological and spiritual support.
A therapist or counselor may be able to help you decide how to explain hospice to your child and find activities that allow for healthy emotional expression. You may even seek help from the hospice service providers to explain what they are doing and how they are caring for your family member.
There isn’t an easy way to support your child through the grief of a beloved family member’s hospice journey. But there are healthy ways to do it. Engaging a trusted, compassionate care provider like A & H Hospice allows you to focus on your family during this time, instead of the mechanics of your relative’s day-to-day care.
Call (818) 751-0700 to learn more about our personalized hospice services, available in various areas of Southern California.