The taunting of parentally bereaved children: an exploratory study.

This exploratory study addresses the rarely mentioned, minimally investigated topic of peer taunting of parentally bereaved children. It suggests that social support cannot be adequately conceptualized or measured on an essentially one-dimensional scale from high to low support. The data are derived from lengthy semistructured transcribed research interviews of bereaved children. Using conservative criteria, 7 of the 35 children were found to have experienced direct, raw taunting about their loss. The varied forms of taunting experienced are described, as well as a range of victim reactions. Suggestions of foci for future research are presented.

Predictors of perceived negative impact in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.

Mothers of 110 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were interviewed with the Child and Adolescent Impact Assessment when their children were approximately 9 years old. Regression analyses revealed that African American mothers reported lower levels of perceived negative impact of having a child with ASD than did Caucasian mothers. Higher repetitive behavior scores on the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised, lower adaptive behavior scores on the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, and less perceived social support were also significant predictors of higher perceived negative impact. Identifying predictors of perceived negative impact is an important first step in designing interventions to support families and target parents who may be at risk for experiencing higher levels of stress.

Parent suicide: pathways of effects into the third generation.

There is a slim, slowly emerging literature addressing the impact of parent suicide upon children. By contrast with some other potentially pathogenic contexts for children (e.g., physical abuse), there has been virtually no exploration of the effect of a parent's suicide upon his or her children's parenting, that is, the transmission into a third generation of the sequelae of the original parent suicide. Based primarily on clinical and preventive work with adult "children of suicide" and their families, this paper begins to map some of the paths, direct and transparent or subterranean and disguised, that such experiences take into further generations. Patterns described include massive indulgence, communication of dire expectations, vicissitudes of family secrets, life-blanching living down the shame, defensive barriers against depressive affects, as well as dread-filled avoidance of producing a third generation.

Meeting the needs of parentally bereaved children: a framework for child-centered parenting.

This article describes the development and deployment of a framework for measuring parenting capacities in the context of bereavement. Grounded theoretical analysis of interviews with a community sample of 41 bereaved spouses with school-aged children elicited a set of nine bereavement-specific parenting tasks. A corollary coding system (covering all nine parenting tasks) was created to transform interview materials into quantitative data, thus permitting systematic empirical investigation of the parenting capacities of bereaved spouses. Parenting behaviors were coded on a 5-point scale ranging from least child-centered to most child-centered. Sex of surviving parent and circumstances of death proved to be significant mediating variables: mothers were more child-centered than fathers, and parents surviving sudden deaths more child-centered than those surviving anticipated deaths. Lengthy illness was associated with less child-centered parenting. The more child-centered the parenting, the less symptomatic the child as measured by parent report (Child Behavior Checklist) and child self-report (Children's Depression Inventory, Revised Child Manifest Anxiety Scale). Child-centered parenting was associated with more positive and fewer negative perceptions of the surviving parent by the child as measured by the Parent Perception Inventory. Implications of findings are discussed.

Facilitating attachment between school-aged children and a dying parent.

A qualitative, community study of 58 parentally bereaved children and their 35 surviving parents illustrates how families take advantage of forewarning of death to foster connections between children and dying parents and prepare for youngsters' continued attachment to dying parents after the death. Children and parents displayed strong yearnings to remain connected during terminal illness, but fostering connections for attachment after the death was less intuitive and more emotionally fraught as it undermined coping strategies based on denial of impending death. Thus, although some may benefit from interventions aimed at anticipatory relationship facilitation, clinicians should respect limitations on what family members are psychologically able to bear.

Children of suicide: the telling and the knowing.

Amidst the still limited literature on survivors of suicide, and the particularly scanty literature on children of parental suicide, little focal attention has been given to the special issues surrounding surviving parents telling the children that their deceased parent's death was a suicide. Those few papers that deal with this topic have primarily emphasized the destructive consequences of not telling of the suicidal nature of the death, with imperatives to tell the children the whole truth and do so promptly post-death. Based primarily on clinical and preventive work with children of suicide, this absolutism and one-size-fits-all approach is questioned, the difference between being told and knowing accented and illustrated, and the nature and effects of surviving parent explanatory frameworks for the suicide--the 'why' of it--explored.