ABSTRACT
This chapter explains one of the chief “complications” in the grief experienced by children. There are some who must first be convinced that the young people are even capable of grief. As recently as the early 1980s, while presenting a research proposal on sibling grief to hospital administration, the head of the psychiatric service of that major New York medical center actually stated in the meeting that he believed children and adolescents were “incapable” of grief since the superego was not sufficiently developed in young people. The chapter presents an example to examine the plans which educators have developed for dealing with grief in schools. A number of educators have developed protocols for helping grieving students. These include suggestions of how to inform students of a loss, of responses to “community grief”, and of ways to support students as they grieve.
