Let’s take a closer look at secondary and cumulative losses experienced by children when a person they love dies:
Secondary losses are the additional losses that come with losing a loved one. This could be a physical object, a tradition that involved the deceased, or something else. Often, these secondary losses appear over time rather than all at once. Those grieving see them unfold as they realise the impact the death has on their day-to-day life.
Possible secondary losses
When someone experiences one loss after another, unaddressed grief can compound into what is known as cumulative grief or cumulative losses which can accumulate over years and seriously affect a person’s physical and mental health. Although children are known to be resilient and are often able to recover more readily from a death of a loved one, they do not become desensitised to multiple losses. In fact, with each subsequent death they can emerge more vulnerable to the impact of future losses. Children do not get used to the death of their family members, close friends or peers.
Here’s a Word Search puzzle for you using the words you’ve just read about. See if you can find each of the words in the puzzle. Click on the beginning and drag to the end of the word. They may be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or even backwards. We’ll be timing you…!