Wednesday, 20 November 2019

How to help child cope with stillborn brother


I was due to have a baby boy this past summer. We wanted this baby so bad and were very excited to welcome this wonderful addition to our family. Unfortunately, we were heartbroken when I had a stillborn at 6 months. This was a very heartbreaking and traumatizing experience for me and my husband as adults. We also have a 7 year old son that has had difficulty coping with this situation. He is a very anxious little boy to begin with, and has had problems with anxiety for years. We try our best to support him. His anxiety is so bad he tends to throw up. I like to say he is very intuitive, the times he gets sent home from school for throwing up due to his anxiety, bad things immediately follow. For example, he got sent home from school the morning we found out our baby had passed. I was out of town for work, so the poor thing had to drive 2 hours with his father to pick me up at the ER. In the following days I was induced and delivered my little boy. My son was too anxious to go to school and had to go to the funeral home with us to pick out an urn.My son seemed to be strong and handle the situation well when it happened back in March. But recently, he has been getting very upset about it. He says he is sad about his brother and he loves him and thinks about him all the time. The thing is, the only time this ever seems to bother him is when it is time for bed. In a way it is understandable, he is laying in bed and has time to think. But my husband feels our son is doing this for attention. Just about every night our son is up late crying about this and he is not getting enough sleep. My husband says our son is trying to get attention and I’m enabling it, but I am just trying to be supportive and not be dismissive about how he feels.I have looked into counselling but unfortunately haven’t had any luck finding a child counselor in our area.I am looking for advice in how to handle this with my son. Again, I want to support him and help him, but I’m not sure how to. Is this how children grieve? How do I help him cope?Thanks! via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2O48mab

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