Hello. Are you struggling with how to help your child with a death of a pet? That's a scary, frightening thing for a child. So, I'm Dr. Felicia, and I'd like to share some important tips with you, on how to help your child through this process at the death of a pet. The first thing you want to do is, recognize that this is very meaningful to the child. Very often when they lose a pet, it brings up all the losses that they might have. For instance, if a grandmother or a grandfather had just passed away, or if they had lost a friend who moved away, or if they had a previous pet who passed away and died, that also brings up that loss all over again. So you're really dealing with compound sense of loss for a child. One of the things is insecurity that comes from loss. So what you want to do is, make the child feel as secure as possible, participate in a formal ceremony for the burial of the pet. For instance, in our society, ceremony serve a purpose, they have closure. It allows the child to formalize in their own mind the fact that the pet is gone, it won't be back again. So what you might do, is some people actually prepare a special box, a special habitant for the pet, and then if you decide to bury the pet in the ground, you might have a little ceremony and say some pleasant words, and let the child know that the pet is in pet heaven. And those are things that are reinforcing to a child, and they take away a lot of the fears, because they share their grief with the family members in the process. So remember, you do it as a family unit, let the child participate in the formal ceremony, and allow that serious closure to happen, because it's very necessary. That should help your child get over the death of a pet. But of course, the next best thing, is to get back out there and find your child another pet that they can share their love with, and that helps tremendously. I wish you good luck on helping your child through the death of a pet. This is Dr. Felicia signing off. God bless.
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