Children in Families Affected by Illness and Death

الكاتب اخر تحديث
All children, in the normal course of their development, learn about being sick, and most, by the time they enter school, have at least rudimentary understanding of the word “dead” through the experience of seeing dead insects and animals. However, when a young child lives in a family in which a parent has a recurring illness such as cancer and/or in which an older sibling dies suddenly of a drug overdose, the child’s confusion and anxiety about his or her own personal survival and that of the well parent are entirely understandable. In the case outlined here and described throughout this chapter, we see that this was the family context of illness and death in which young Sabrina completed kindergarten and entered first grade. Mrs. Rossi had been married previously; her first husband had died of a heart attack at the age of 45, when John was 14. She stated that her husband had a history of depression and alcoholism and that they had been separated since John was 2½. Neither she nor J...
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