Nigel Bavidge looks at help for bereaved children

Making rainbows
THERE is something tragic about an 8-year-old, whose mother left her soon after her birth, who says, "I should never have been born" and in the 6-year-old who asked "If I had been good, would my Daddy have stayed?"
These statements came from two children who have taken part in "Rainbows for All God's Children", a programme designed to help children and young people who have been bereaved through parental death or family separation.
Usually we associate bereavement with adult life, but this is not the case for everyone. There are children who have to fate the death of a parent and a growing number who experience the loss, or partial loss, of a parent when one or other of their parents leaves the family home.
Just like adults, these children have to go through a grieving process and have to adjust to the new situation in their lives. Just like adults, they need trusted and loving friends to help them through this pain-filled time. Yet, too often, the pain of these children is left untouched. Perhaps because we, the adults, are so unsure of how to handle the grief of a child, we side-step the issue with statements such as "they're resilient, they'll bounce back".
More and more, however, we are beginning to realise that this is far from the truth. Children and young people may learn to bottle-up or suppress their grief and, on the surface everything may seem fine, but what is going on deep in that child or young person?
Grief in a child, which is suppressed and unresolved, is a time-bomb waiting to explode. It can explode in many ways. It can show itself in under-achievement at school, in various forms of anti-social behaviour, in chemical or drug abuse, in severe depression, in mental illness or in an inability to form relationships.
Many of these results of unresolved grief do not show themselves immediately, they may take many years to come to the surface. It is, perhaps, because of this gap between the bereavement and the symptoms that it is all too cosy to imagine that the bereaved child or young person is coping with the loss which has taken place. Too often, however, the child is painfully grieving but in silence.
"Rainbows for All God's Children" is an organisation, set up in America 10 years' ago by Suzy Yehl Marta, to help children and young people to work through the grieving process With the help of books, activities and games which have been devised, children are helped to face their feelings and come to terms with their loss. "Rainbows for All God's Children" allows the children to talk, often for the first time, of what is going on inside them. They speak of pain, of anger, of guilt, of depression things which they may have been carrying for months or even years.
Through the support of other children who, because they too are experiencing similar feelings, can accept and understand what is being said, and with the support of an adult listener, can begin to deal with what is going on inside.
In the last few months "Rainbows for All God's Children" has begun to operate in England. While still at the very early stages of development, there are many encouraging and hopeful signs that it is meeting a real need.
The children are reassured that the pain and sadness which they feel will ease and that there is always the hope of a rainbow. Further information can be obtained from the Leeds Diocesan RE Centre, 62 Headingly Lane, Leeds L56 2BU.