Your Kids Can Survive Anything — Even The Death Of A Parent

Children have been known to survive all kinds of awful circumstances: parental substance abuse, physical abuse, chaotic divorce, bullying, and now the death of the parent. A study presented in Honolulu determined that the majority of children who lose a parent don’t experience a long depression after the bereavement period. What’s important about these findings is that they remind us that children can survive close to anything.

Shari Roan writes:

Researchers found that about half the children experienced major depressive disorder two months after the death of their parent, and an additional 25% had a milder type of depression. But those numbers dropped by about half over the next few months. By two years after the death, 5% of children who lost a parent had a major depressive disorder and 11% had a milder type of depression.

Dr. Laurie B. Gray of the University of Pennsylvania, and one of the researchers, noted that the death of a parent is always traumatic. However, even those kids who do suffer major depression eventually improve.  She told The Los Angeles Times that, “most of the children exhibited resilience.”

In our age of helicopter parents, micromanaging mothers, and parents who even want to keep an eye on their kids through social media, it’s worth considering how tough most kids actually are. With so many parents and organizations constantly vying for the protection of our little ones, it’s easy sometimes to think that children have no strength of their own.