A Sociocultural Approach to Children’s Perceptions of Death and Loss

Abstract

By employing the phenomenographic approach, the present study explored children's cognitive understanding of and emotional responses to death and bereavement. Participants included 52 Korean, 16 Chinese, and 16 Chinese American children ages 5-6. Thematic analysis of children's drawings and open-ended interviews revealed that most children associated death with negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, and sadness. The majority of children used realistic expressions to narrate death. The core themes from their drawings included causes for death, attempts to stop the dying, and situations after death. This study contributes to the literature by targeting young children who have been relatively excluded in death studies and provides evidence in the usefulness of drawings as a developmentally appropriate data collection tool. The findings also enrich our knowledge about children's understanding of death and bereavement, rooted in the inductive analysis of empirical data with children from culturally diverse backgrounds.

What Bereaved Children Want to Know About Death and Grief

“…A preponderance of questions related to biological concepts, with a focus on the causes, processes, and states of death and dying. This is consistent with the literature demonstrating that children's understandings and conceptualizations of death are largely biological (Harris, 2018;Vázquez-Sánchez et al, 2019;Yang & Park, 2017) and supports the recommendation for death education to be integrated into formal curricula across all education levels (McAfee et al, 2022). Children are likely to benefit from death education that incorporates comprehensive information about the causes and processes of death and dying, with increasingly complex death concepts introduced as their education progresses (McAfee et al, 2022).…”

The Psychosocial Effect of Parental Cancer: Qualitative Interviews with Patients’ Dependent Children

“…This was influenced by arts, drawing, and projective techniques which are used in participatory research to assess children's wellbeing [37] and distress among vulnerable child populations such as those affected by sexual abuse and war [38][39][40]. There is also evidence to suggest that these techniques are efficacious among children from different cultural backgrounds [41]. Informed by principles of play therapy, children were also provided with a series of ageappropriate toys (e.g., spinners and mini footballs) by the interviewer to facilitate discussion and rapport and provide a distraction from direct, face to face conversations [42].…”

Ajudando as crianças a enfrentarem o luto pela perda de pessoas significativas por COVID-19

“…(5,6,15) Para encontrar a melhor maneira de esclarecer em que consiste a morte, é fundamental observar em que momento do desenvolvimento cognitivo e emocional a criança está -entendendo que a abordagem não pode ser a mesma a depender do estágio de desenvolvimento que ela se encontre. (16) Seguindo os estágios estabelecidos por Jean Piaget, é possível encontrar discussões sobre a aquisição do conceito de morte pelas crianças. (5,6) No período chamado sensório-motor, o conceito de morte não existe: as crianças percebem a morte como ausência e falta.…”