Additional Needs
The Monster We Live With
by Carolyn Voisey
on 4th December, 2023
Understanding loss with a PMLD child
In the last few weeks we had two big losses in our family.
Ethans great grandma on my side and his grandma on my husbands side.
We have no idea of Ethans understanding on death and loss.
We included Ethan in the chats we had with the girls.
We read a lovely story about a grandpa who dies and how the little girl is sad and misses him.
They make pictures and remember memories spent with him.
We then told them about my grandma and how poorly their grandma was.
When their grandma passed away we spoke again about the book but didn't read it this time.
Ethan fell asleep during this conversation so I'm not sure what he understood if anything.
We have spoken to him again since as we remember Grandma and all the special times we shared with her.
When people who are close to Ethan go on holiday or don't see him for a period of time he notices that.
When they return he will ignore the person and make them work really hard to regain his smiles!
We've explained where the person is and when they return he sees them again.
When someone dies he obviously won't get that return to then see them again.
Does he just think they are away and will be back soon or does he realise he won't see them again?
The answer to this is that I really don't know what he understands.
We've been outside to look for Grandma in the stars, lit a candle and talked about memories together.
We all spoke of Ethans memories and we've shared photos too.
He's really been included in the process but I have no idea whether he understands.
Ethan has different emotion reactions to his own feelings but how far this understanding goes I'm not sure.
He also picks up on when we are feeling different emotions and is very intuitive of that even if he doesn't understand the reasons why.
We are going to explore some more books about feelings as this is the only way I feel I can give him the tools to maybe understand.
We will continue to include Ethan in all our talks about loss and death and adapt to his level.
For books we use on this journey head to our Instagram livingwithmyhero.
