Children's Encounters with Death, Bereavement, and Coping. Charles. A. Corr, & David. E. Balk, (Eds.). 2010. New York: Springer Publishing Company. EISBN: 978-0-8261-3423-3. 488 pages.

Children's Encounters with Death, Bereavement, and Coping was prepared by editors Corr and Balk as a resource for caregivers, including professionals, parents, family, and friends, "who seek to help children as they attempt to cope with death-related issues." (p. xxiii) The comprehensive nature of this excellent work is evident in the selection and content of the twenty-two chapters, sorted by salient themes.

Part I (Background) addresses the developmental characteristics of children and adolescents (including the child prodigy) and how each cohort copes with death and bereavement. Additionally, the editors have sought to include ethical considerations regarding the treatment of children and adolescents and the attempt to do research on the matter responsibly.

Part II (Death) covers infant deaths, unintentional injury (replacing the notion of "accidental injury"), homicide, infectious diseases and life-threatening and life-limiting illness.

Part III (Bereavement) presents the similarities and differences among parental death, sibling bereavement, death of a friend, death of a pet, and traumatic deaths.

Part IV (Intervention) offers nine chapters on a variety of approaches to death, bereavement, and coping, including how to talk with and educate children and how to help families help a child. The section includes a chapter on families' managing the devastating destruction that HIV/AIDS has brought to the sub-Saharan region of Africa. Camp-based, peer-support intervention opportunities, along with resources available for accessing such opportunities are included. Then, a very moving chapter on the work of an art therapist with a family who had lost their mother and was in the process of losing a sibling gives the reader a good look at a service that requires professional competence and compassion. The unit concludes with chapters on the unique work appropriate with children who have developmental disabilities, on palliative and hospice care, and, finally, on psychotherapy.

Of special significance is an annotated appendix with over twenty pages of books to be read by or with children.

The motif throughout the book may be lifted from Chapter 16 on helping families help bereaved children: "When a child's grief is lovingly supported…, he or she can come through the experience transformed in healthy ways and can be restored to wholeness and emotional health." (p. 311)

Themes reverberating throughout the book include the significance of listening carefully to the child, without interrupting, and understanding that the child actually knows how to grieve and the adults' job is simply to facilitate that's happening. This reviewer tries to impress upon his supervisees that we do not need to fear being unable to respond to a patient's words, rather, if we listen very carefully to the patient, he or she will tell us what to say next. The same is true of our work with children.

Data are presented regarding cause of death by age as well as the mortality rate by race and culture. It is gratifying to see that the editors address losses to children occurring outside the realm of death, including the loss of a valued toy, a move to another city or part of town (with a concurrent change in schools and friends), and a change in routine due to family income loss.

Families are encouraged to have open, honest and informed communication with their children about the loss or losses experienced, and it should allow for the parent to say, "I don't know; I'll see what I can find out," when that is the case.

Children's grief, it is noted, will often come in "bursts" after which they might go outside to resume play. Interestingly, they might experience more grief two years after a loss than after four months or a year.

The impact of an infant, child, or adolescent death upon other members of the family is clearly significant for parents but often overlooked when it comes to siblings and grandparents. The term disenfranchised grief is widely used to describe the experience of those who are expected either to hold their grief inside or to get over it quickly.

In the chapter on life-threatening or life-limited illnesses, the author has included a section entitled, "What Dying Children Say to Their Families and to Us." Although dying children do not always know their actual health status, it seems that, more often than not, they do. Even when parents insist that the child does not know, the child might have already shared that "secret" with a teacher, a sibling, a close friend or a trusted neighbor.

A child's first experience with death might actually be at school with a classroom pet. Of course, the death of a child's own pet at home will also be likely an early experience with grief. It is recommended that the approach to that death mirror the approach to any other death, including truth telling, use of the word death and not sleeping, and being clear that the pet's death is irreversible. In regard to traumatic death, the editors make sure that the reader does not presume that trauma is not singularly relegated to a sudden-impact event, but can represent the sum total of a child's witnessing a parent's or sibling's body deteriorate due to a protracted illness lasting months or years.

In the extensive section on intervention with children, it is suggested that the caregiver not overly explain and not ask, "Do you understand." Rather, it is preferable to ask, "Tell me what you understand." It is also important that the child be reassured that he or she was not responsible for the death and could not have prevented it.

Age and developmental level are among a number of important variables affecting a child's ability to cope with loss. However, the reader is reminded in the chapter on helping families help bereaved children that "the single most influential variable in a child's bereavement is how his or her parent(s) and other adults who care for that child cope with their own grief." (p. 314)

Suicide, understandably, is a very difficult death to grieve well. An important consideration, from this reviewer's experience with teenagers, is that teens will sometimes seek resolution of their confusion over a friend's suicide with suicidal ideation of their own, looking for a kind of mystical reunion with a lost friend.

Death often changes much of the landscape surrounding a child, including, as mentioned earlier, a possible physical relocation, including a new school and community, perhaps a step-parent who might bring children of his or her own into the mix. The child's resilience is severely tested and must be handled with special care.

Children's Encounters with Death, Bereavement, and Coping is a very well researched document and well written by an impressive cadre of scholars. From a personal standpoint, this reviewer wishes he had read the book 50 years ago when he began his work with children who were facing illness and death. Even for the seasoned psychotherapist and even though the book, overall, is extremely well written, it is not always an easy read. That is to say, that while reinforcing therapeutic decisions well-made, it also casts a light on those decisions that could have been better made.

The book is a must read for marriage and family therapists, clergy, and pediatric care givers whose work intersects the lives of children and the social and environmental systems in which they live.

Reviewed by Thomas H. McGloshen, Ph.D., CFLE. Dr. McGloshen is a Professional Clinical Counselor and Independent Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice in Dublin, Ohio. He is a Clinical Fellow and Approved Supervisor in the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, a Certified Group Psychotherapist and Certified Family Life Educator. A retired Presbyterian pastor, he began his experience with ill and dying children 50 years ago as a student at McCormick Theological Seminary during his Clinical Field Education at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, IL.