Helping Children Cope with the Loss of a Pet

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 12 of The Loss of a Pet written by Dr. Wallace Sife, founder of the Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement website.  The APLB is a nonprofit association of volunteers who are trained or experienced in the tender subject of pet death. Its members are professional counselors as well as pet-loving people from all other walks of life. They are all concerned with helping pet lovers cope with this unique and very intimate kind of loss. Anyone interested in this subject is invited to visit with them at aplb.org. In addition to its many other free services the APLB holds four three-hour pet loss chatrooms, every week.


Children and Pet Loss

“There is only one smartest dog in the world, and every child has it.”

Bereavement in children too often has been trivialized or given inadequate attention. We are so involved with our own adult world of complexities and learned associations that we tend to lose some perspective on how and why children feel grief for a pet. We too often presume that it is advisable to shelter them from this “grown-up experience” which we find to be very upsetting. In nearly all applications, that is absolutely the wrong approach. If they are old enough to reason, then they sense very accurately when they are being left out of important discussions about things that concern them. The death of a child’s beloved pet matters a great deal in his or her young life. How this is handled now will remain with the child for the rest of his or her life.

The death of a family pet is often the first death experienced by a child.   Read the full article about children and pet loss here.  

Purchase Dr. Sife's book The Loss of a Pet


Woof!
~Lisa

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