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When a parent dies, children feel the pain differently than surrounding adults do. A parent is the whole world to a child, so to have this bond suddenly stop forming instills a deep sadness. After all, they have bonded with their parent since they were born, and are used to exploring the big world with them. Now suddenly they have to try to figure out how to navigate moving forward without their parent. This is not easy for a child to do.
One of the most important tasks surviving family members can take on to help support a child who just lost a parent, along with comforting them and showing them as much love as they can, is to gather everything they can think of that has to do with the late parent—photographs, voice recordings, ticket stubs from a vacation, a favorite scarf, perfume, DVD, or CD, home videos, gifts the parent gave to the child, and more, to help with this transition.
None of these items can bring the late parent back for the child, but they can help take a little of the sting out of the loss. For children are not just experiencing the death of their parent, but a suddenly broken bond they deeply need in their life, the sudden pause in creating any additional future memories together, and so much more.
There are additional helpful tools surviving family members can consider to help support children after the death of a parent. Some companies, for example, can turn a photo of the late parent into a plush doll. Others will upload voice recordings of the late parent and/or photos or videos to help preserve their memory for a child.
Various other coping tools can help comfort grieving children in a practical way, such as bibliotherapy, movie therapy, scriptotherapy, Lego therapy, and more. These help preserve a late parent’s memory and legacy. None of these methods pretend that surviving family members can bring a late parent back; they are just helpful tools to comfort children. Family members can also replay old social media videos of the late parent, or keep the late parent’s answering machine messages to preserve the sound of their voice for a child, just as many of us have for generations kept photographs of loved ones who have passed away.
“A legacy is an opportunity to learn first-hand about a deceased parent through letters, pictures, videos, or a family audiobook. Therefore, transferring some of the memories into digital formats could help to find an appropriate way of keeping memories alive for children. Bereaved children may benefit from having a video or audio recording of the deceased parent, which ‘could capture their appearance and voice.’ …. The importance and difficulties in maintaining memories of the deceased parent go hand in hand. While children desire voice recordings as a means of preserving memories, the creation of self-selected biographical sequences in the form of audiobooks allows dying parents to transcend time and shape their own culture of remembrance. …. Surviving children thus receive an authentic digital legacy whose interpretation, credibility, and reliability are strengthened by the parental voice recording. Research findings provide strong evidence of the potential benefits of digital legacy for children and for motivating and supporting a terminally ill parent to engage in this practice of digital legacy. A further study on the impact of Dignity Therapy on family members identified a positive experience with the legacy document. The digital legacy is regarded as a source of comfort and may potentially help to facilitate the bereavement phase. A further study on the impact of Dignity Therapy on family members identified a positive experience with the legacy document. The digital legacy is regarded as a source of comfort and may potentially help to facilitate the bereavement phase.” (Ateş, Hesse, and Cuhls, 2024)
One of the best things surviving family members can do for a child is to help preserve their late parent’s legacy, as this parental bond is one of the most important a child will have in their lifetime. Preserving their late parent’s legacy can be crucial to the child’s development and overall well-being.
