You are Not Alone: An Exploration in Familial Grief Processing

Introduction

Death. It surrounds us, permeates everything we do in our lives in some way or another. Despite our propensity to avoid the topic, COVID-19 has shown how mortal we truly are. Globally, 6.2 million people have passed due to this virus. This has left, in the US alone, thousands of children grieving the loss of a close family member or primary caregiver (Wroth 2021). Grief is not simple. It takes time to fully experience and grow from a loss of a loved one. As such, this course is designed with that in mind—helping children, through the media selected, help them feel better about having to say goodbye to someone they held so dear. This curriculum will examine the unique experience of an elementary-school aged child grieving (particularly between the ages of 7-10), as well as research within the field up to this point, before discussing the specific artifacts this course proposes be used as a means of aiding children through this turbulent emotional time.

Problem Statement

There’s no one way for a child to react when a loved one passes. A loss of a parent, especially when a person is young, may result in difficulties developing intimacy, expressing emotions properly, and a higher chance of developing depression and/or anxiety (Finkelstein 1988). For a child to get past this point, they first must understand what has happened, mourn, and finally go on living (Costa et. al. 1994). While this list appears to be a straightforward step-by-step process on aiding a child through these difficult emotions, it doesn’t clearly state how the mourning process never really ends. The person who passed will be missing huge parts of the child’s life—their graduations, weddings, and other major life events (Costa et. al. 1994). The child will live with this tragedy for the rest of their lives. But that doesn’t mean they have to shoulder the burden of this experience alone. A crucial part of the healing process is finding community (professional, familial, etc.) to enhance the wellbeing of the entire family. Nobody should have to suffer alone when they have lost someone dear to them. Fortunately, community comes in many forms these days. The main difficulty is when a child experiences these strong feelings, as discussed earlier, it can be tempting for them to retreat into their own world instead of reaching out to others. That is where this course comes in. Not only will it aid in helping young people see the importance of community in grief, one app will begin helping the child develop that much-needed support system by having one built into the design of the game itself. To better understand this, it must first be discussed how and why media has the impact it does in changing the minds or beliefs of a given individual.

Media’s Impact on Child Psychology: TV and Video Games

Whether it is acknowledged or not, media plays a huge role in people’s lives, especially children’s as they’re learning about the world around them. Child development theory even cites a primary source in developing self-efficacy as learning through vicarious experience (Bandura 2002). Therein lies the potential for television to become a crucial asset in helping a child learn, especially when the subject at hand is so emotionally charged and existentially dreadful. As such, it is imperative that media designed for children be done so with intentionality and care. Programming designed for children must have rich content that repeats at a slower pace in order to captivate the attention of the child and ensure they are learning the intended lesson from the media (Van Evra, 1998). But it is not just about keeping a child’s attention but also ensuring that the media can appropriately convey the message. As Mayer put it, “The design of multimedia environments should be compatible with how people learn. In short, the principles of multimedia design should be sensitive to what we know about how people process information” (Mayer, 2001, p. 42). In order to do this, educational content must be integrated carefully into the media itself by specialists on the subject a show is attempting to tackle (Fisch, 2007, p. 97) This allows for incredibly complex themes to exist in a children’s show but framed in a way that people of all ages can comprehend the lesson. Some shows became so good at communicating to children in a way that they would understand that people would attempt to recreate the formula of it for years to come. One such show was Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.

Championed for its ability to talk to children without talking down to them, the host Fred Rogers would routinely try to make the world easier for the intended audience to understand. He did so by allaying fear, acknowledging that sometimes bad things happened but still using age-appropriate language to explain (to the extent that he could) why given events happened in order to help a child comprehend the world around them (Kelly 2018). He used a form of “motherese” a shorthand for measured dialog meant to replicate total word usage of a child’s language and simplified sentence structure in order to make the information being conveyed easier for younger audiences to understand (Rice et. al. 1986). In doing so, Fred Rogers as able to communicate the assassination of John F. Kennedy, help children cope with the death of a pet, and other emotionally charged moments in a child’s life (Mr. Rogers Neighborhood). Similar shows like Sesame Street would also use a similar format in talking to children about death as well, particularly when the actor of the character Mr. Hooper passed away (Simon, L 1983). Both shows still hold resonance today because of their handling of death and serious subject matter. Children’s shows that shy away from these serious topics ultimately do a huge disservice to their young viewers. Tragedy happens. Bad things will occur. It is how a show chooses to deal with it, to show how a family can come together with the help of their community, that ultimately determines the efficacy of the media and helping a child process complex emotion. Television is not the only media with the potential to aid in children’s ability to process challenging emotions. Video games, too, hold quite a bit of potential on this front.

Video games are interesting as therapeutic devices because of their interactive medium. Gee discusses this using the idea of students actively learning a concept where they, “experience the world in new ways, forming new affiliations and preparation for future learning” (Gee, 2012, p. 23). While Gee was mainly thinking of a standard school lesson, this same concept can be applied to aiding children through bereavement. By experiencing the world from a new perspective, and one designed specifically to touch upon the ideas of death, these kids can begin to recontextualize the pain of their loss and begin to move past into a place of acceptance. This is in line with Tawfik et al.’s findings on the efficacy of educational video games in conveying complex themes, “nearly all of the participants noted that one of the most favorable aspects about the video game was the ability to visualize and interact with the abstract

immunology concepts” (Tawfik et. al. 2012, p. 6). While Gee and Tawfik mostly focused on educational games from a curriculum perspective, these same concepts can be applied to games that attempt to teach more emotionally charged ideas. By combining visuals with direct player interaction, as well as applying learning theory with therapeutic design choices, video games suddenly hold the potential to act as wonderful platforms for players to explore difficult themes within the game and within themselves. It is this philosophy that the video games chosen for this curriculum were born.

Proposed Curriculum

Spiritfarer

Spiritfarer is a 2020 game from Thunder Lotus Games about a girl named Stella tasked with being the new Spiritfarer—a position that has her journey around the world to find lost souls. Once she finds them, they ride upon her boat and the player must help them achieve their final wish before they pass on to the next life. It seems rather simple on paper, build a ship with several fun and quirky characters riding on it and attend to their needs with farming simulator mechanics in the same vein as Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing. However, it is when the player must say goodbye to their first passenger that the game’s themes really begin to take form. The spirits, while taking the shape of animals, are people. Often, they are people that Stella apparently had a relationship within life. This allows for players, especially ones who have had experienced loss themselves, to see their own families in the forms of a snake or frog, and it is them who they are saying goodbye to one last time (Eum et. al 2021). By creating characters players can relate to using familiar archetypes of familial individuals, those playing the game can find the solace in being able to say goodbye. To quote one participant from the Spitfarer study, “When you have to let Alice go, that kind of hammered home how much kind of good thing it was that [my grandma] sort of could rest (...) it made me kind of appreciate it more (...) .” (Eun et. al. 2021). No, it is not the same as talking to the deceased loved one. But, games like Spiritfarer show players that it is okay to say goodbye. Often, it is the best thing to do to help the individual move on fully.

Some limitations to the effectiveness of Spiritfarer in this course lie within the intended audience. While Eun’s team certainly highlights the potential benefits of bereaved individuals to find solace in this game that emphasizes the grief community and the need to let go—those studied were adult players. Not children. Due to the complexity of the message and the emphasis of the game on building the boat for the spirits themselves; a child may not understand fully what the game is trying to get across. The easiest way to rectify this is for the child to play the game with a loved one (ideally, an adult) to help explain these themes to them. The game is designed for two players to play together. Thus, making this an ideal bonding experience for the child and their parent(s) and giving the adults in their lives the opportunity to link the media to their real-life circumstances. Even pieces of media designed specifically for children often need adult oversight to ensure the message gets across appropriately, and Spiritfarer is no exception. Fortunately, this is not the only artifact in this course, and combining this game with the other pieces of media will assist in uniting the overall message of creating a community during this bereavement process.

Rugrats: Mother’s Day Episode

When developing this curriculum, there were many great children’s shows that touched on heavy topics that could have been included in this section. Two shows mentioned earlier, Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood are considered some of the best at helping children process grief. However, while it truly cannot be emphasized enough how well these shows communicate to their intended audience, they skew a bit too young for the intended audience of this curriculum. The show had to speak to an older audience while still containing the necessary scaffolding for a child to understand more complex lessons. This is where the Mother’s Day episode of Rugrats came in.

Aired on May 9^th, 1997, this episode centers on the group of children (Tommy, Chuckie, Phil, Lil, and the much-maligned Angelica) preparing for Mother’s Day where it is revealed that Chuckie does not think he has a mom and initially isn’t planning anything for the day. Of course, he did at one point, which his dad (Chas) confirms by bringing a box of her things to Tommy’s house to ask his parents to hid them in their closet due to Chuckie’s increased tendency to rummage through things. In the end Chuckie decides his dad is his mom for all intense and purposes and, through a series of hijinks, Chuckie tries to give the picture of his mother to Chas. This prompts the other parents to encourage Chas to tell Chuckie about his mother, claiming that “it’s time that you shared these things with Chuckie.” And even if it makes Chuckie sad, that they can “miss her together” (Vian, T et. al. 1997).

This episode is so special in so many ways. First, it is amazing to see Chuckie’s dad coming to the parents of the other children for support on a day he knows will be emotionally charged for him, thus showing the importance of his friends and community while he is dealing with these tough emotions and situations. This works well with Bandura’s research on vicarious experiences, showing the young viewers how important this kind of relationship is when going through grief, as well as indirectly stating that adults suffer from loss too. After all, one of the main benefits of television as a medium is its ability to imitate real life and help connect the images being seen on the screen to real life situations as the older a child gets, the easier it is for them to imitate what is on TV (Cohen, 2012, p. 195). This argument can be used for why it’s imperative that TV shows be included in a curriculum like this, where the experiences of the child can be mirrored back to them and show them how to begin processing this challenging emotion.

However, this episode only tells the specific perspective of a white middle-class family. It lacks racial nuance (and representation) that may be important to specific instances of familial grief. The loss of the mother is also not the only focus of the show, which may detract from the messaging for some children. It is a careful balance between entertaining to teach and pure entertainment, after all. But in the end, this episode does a wonderful job showing the importance of coming together in grief, thus encouraging the child and guardian to talk about these more painful subjects without being too heavy-handed with that messaging.

Apart of Me

Apart of Me is a mobile game developed by the Apart of Me team, a charitable organization helping people pross loss and trauma (Apart of Me). In some ways, it’s like Spiritfarer. The game has players explore a large world. They are given quests that are intended to help those playing through the grieving process like sharing a fond memory of the departed, While players travel through the virtual world, they can hear the stories of other people who have lost loved ones and have used this app to help them through their grief (Apart of Me). This creates a large community of people sharing their loss, what the person meant to them in life—reinforcing to the player that despite how sad and hopeless they might feel in the moment, they are not. There are so many people; loved ones in their life, people on the game platform, and many more who care about those experiencing the loss of a loved one. What’s more, the game is meant to help create a sense of calm and help the player learn to accept this complex storm of emotion which, theoretically, will provide a therapeutic experience for said player.

The game draws heavily from the educational video game design proposed in Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy as it helps teach children about social practices and emotional regulation in a multimodal way that engages a learner much more than traditional print media (Gee, 2001, p. 15). Due to the nature of the subject matter, there needs to be multiple forms of entry for a student to engage with the media. Whether they are drawn to writing, animation, art, or audio storytelling, Apart of Me offers many forms of engagement that give the student a calm and therapeutic environment to explore their feelings.

This game is proposed for the curriculum focusing on seven- to ten-year-olds, it does not mean that some of the artifacts selected were not intended for other audiences. Common Sense media says about Apart of Me that, “Because of those shared stories and the patience required to work through the quests, it's probably best for older kids, but younger kids could also benefit from it with guidance” (VanderBorght). This is part of the thesis of this course: that no child should have to experience these artifacts alone. That there’s value in the community and family during the grieving process, and ideally, these artifacts are meant for children to consume with a trusted adult alongside them to help explain some of the more difficult concepts.

General Limitations of This Curriculum

While this course has the potential to aid children through their grieving process, all of the artifacts in question assume that the student has access to technology. This limits the audience to those of a socio-economic class able to afford specific tablet/phone/game devices. It is also worth considering Mayer’s theories on multimedia learning, particularly that of limits on cognitive capacity. Mayer explains how there is a cognitive load when learning, some intrinsic due to the difficulty of the material and some extraneous which includes graphics and other visuals that distract from the lesson at hand (Mayer, 2001, p. 50). Unfortunately, aside from Apart of Me, most of the experiences in this curriculum were not designed as instructional media—focusing more on entertainment rather than education. While Spiritfarer and Rugrats do have valuable information to impart on their audiences, the amount of cognitive work it takes to understand that message may be challenging for the intended audience. That is why above all else, this course must be done with the guidance of a trusted guardian.

Conclusion

This is not an easy subject to discuss. Many guardians try and avoid talking about death to their child for a long as possible, only really bringing it up when tragedy strikes. What’s more, they, too, are likely to be going through a challenging emotional time. Therefore, making it harder to want to have this discussion. My course, while intended for elementary aged children, is really meant for the whole family. Together, by completing these games and watching the selected media, they can open a dialog about those who have departed and have a real conversation about how this might impact them emotionally. This is not a replacement for therapy or other forms of grief counseling. This is meant to be in addition to the other normal forms of therapy that allow the whole family to engage in something outside of their situation. Hopefully, once the course is complete, the child and other family members will come out of the experience with a better sense of community, understanding, and togetherness.

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