Teaching Our Children How to Suffer Loss
Loss- we’ve all suffered it or will suffer it. It may be the loss of a parent, the loss of a marriage, or even the loss of your relationship with your adult children. It might be the loss of a job or business that failed. It may be the loss of our health. Maybe you consider last week’s election results to be a loss. Many did, and the desire to go back to a time when things were different- simpler, saner, and less combative is real.
Our children aren’t immune to loss either. For them to learn to handle it in a healthy way, it helps them to see us do it first and regularly. Not that being a good example guarantees that they will. Sometimes a bad parental example works as well to convince them to avoid habitual mistakes and bad choices.
Looking back and appreciating happier times is normal. My grandchildren beg me to tell them stories about when I was a kid. They also like to hear what their parents were like when they were their age. In particular, they like stories about times when their parents, as kids, got into trouble. They want the details. It’s fun to remember the past, the “good ol’ days” as the saying goes.
The danger is longing for a repeat of the past to the point of obsessing and fixating on it. This is especially true when the loss of something significant is involved. Disappointment with the present often leads to discontentment which in turn leads to denial of how things really are. The endpoint is paralysis. Becoming stuck. Unable or unwilling to move forward. Think of Lot’s wife.
I know, as I read what I’ve written, that I’m oversimplifying. Consider this to be me thinking out loud. In addition to the story of Lot’s wife (Genesis 19), consider the children of Israel complaining in the desert (Numbers 11) or the Babylonian Captivity (2nd Kings 24-25). In all three cases people had to deal with significant loss.
A Facebook comment I read posted just after the election was, “I never thought I’d live to see the world we currently are living in.” True.
A few thoughts on what to teach/model before your children:
- The desire or urge to look back is normal.
- Letting go is hard
- Pain, resentment, anger, are valid and normal emotions which we will likely experience when we suffer loss. They should not be suppressed. Our children should not be made to feel they need to get past them quickly, to “get over it.”
- Our children’s understanding and conception God is impacted by their daily experiences. It is also impacted by our responses to the events that take place in our life, how we handle loss or outcomes that are opposed to what we want.
- Memory is selective. All of us know the pain of wishing things were the way they were in the past. And maybe in the past they were actually better. But the point is we live in the present and for the present to eventually become a good and fond memory, we’ve got to live in the “here and now,” in the present. We’ve got to avoid the temptation to remember only the good things while ignoring the not so good things.
- The new normal can be really hard. Teach your children that hardness is relative.
Your normal day is someone else’s dream. So be thankful every day.
~ Mindful Awareness Substack
- The way forward is not to fixate on the past to obsess on returning to it.
- Where we find ourselves now is often a result of our own decisions.
- Sometimes finding ourselves where we are is a result of others decisions and actions for which we had no control.
- Sometimes the place we find ourselves is a result of unexplainable circumstances. God does not necessarily tell us why or what is behind them. Consider the life of Job, and the backstory taking place.
The serenity prayer sums up the way to move forward. Memorize it, say it, meditate on it, pray it, live it with your children.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.
Thanks for reading
Curt Bumcrot, MRE
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