Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan, Second Edition

82 Grief and Loss Across the Lifespan

worked with Nathan and his family stressed the importance of interventions

that improved motor control in the nonaffected portion of Nathan’s brain.

The family system had been forever changed and Melanie, Frank, and

Lina were emerging from the fog of learning that they would be raising a child

with chronic motor impairments, cognitive deficits, and potential behavior

problems. Melanie repeatedly found herself feeling guilty and wondering if

she could have prevented her son’s stroke. Bemister, Brooks, Dyck, and Kirton

(2014) report that such feelings are common among mothers with fathers far-

ing only somewhat better than mothers in terms of psychological concerns.

Melanie decided to contact her former therapist and made two visits after

Nathan was home from the NICU. The therapist recommended family therapy

for Melanie, Frank, and Lina, explaining that family systems work focusing

on their marriage, parenting and overall family functioning and well-being

would be the most effective way to offer treatment. Melanie and Frank took

this recommendation and continued over the next year to join other support

organizations as they continued to learn about Nathan’s development.

SUMMARY

The role of a primary caregiver is a critical component of infants’ and tod-

dlers’ ability to develop in optimal ways. Although loss of all-encompassing

caregiving is a normal maturational loss as the caregiver provides “optimal

frustration” to encourage the infant’s evolving self-care, other forms of loss

of the caregiver in nondevelopmentally appropriate ways (through depres-

sion, separation, or death) can have extremely detrimental effects. Parents also

experience losses of their private relationship, of the idealized baby and child

they thought they would have, and of the potential for independence they had

hoped for when a child is born with conditions that will limit their indepen-

dence. Assuring gentle, attuned, and empathic caregiving for youngsters and

support for their caregivers is a critical aspect of care.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. A friend calls and says her cousin’s 18-month-old son has just lost both of
   his parents in a car accident. After talking briefly with your friend about her
   own feelings, she says she thinks you need to accompany her to the home
   and “start to do therapy” with the child. What is your response and why?


2. You work in a day care setting and one child’s mother just gave birth to trip-
   lets who are in the Intensive Care Nursery at the hospital. What concerns
   would you have for the 4-year-old child and how might you help her?


3. You are a hospital social worker and a young woman approaches you after
   the death of an elderly person on your unit. She explains that the deceased
   was her mother and that her 3-year-old son was very close to his grand-
   mother and she wants your guidance on how to tell her son about the death.
   What do you say?