Parental Engagement in Grief Programming Is Related to Children's Outcomes.

A multivariate model was used to study outcomes of childhood bereavement. The model included exogenous factors such as engagement and within-person resilience factors. Sixty-two parent-child dyads were recruited from a local children's grief center and completed measures of engagement in the programming, resilience and grief. A complex model was revealed in which parental engagement in the grief program was related to child engagement and the child's control beliefs which in turn were significantly related to the child's grief symptoms. These variables existed within a system, rather than within an individual.

Factors Underlying the Relationship Between Parent and Child Grief.

The death of a parent in a child's life is a significant risk factor for later mental and physical health problems. While much has been written about the surviving parent's functioning and its effects on their bereaved children, little work has been done to look into factors underlying this effect such as how the parent copes. The present study recruited 38 parent-child dyads from a community-based grief support center. Parent and child, independently, completed various measures of emotional functioning, including grief symptoms and coping such as social support and locus of control. The results indicated that parental coping did have an impact on children's grief symptoms. This represents a unique view of adaptation in bereaved children: Parental coping strategies can have an impact on the child, independent of the child's coping strategies. By focusing on parent coping, we have highlighted another possible pathway through which parental functioning affects children's grief.