Responses to Loss During the Third and Fourth Years

I wept, and nothing happened, and you did not come.

In preceding chapters evidence is presented that shows that the ways in which children and adolescents respond to the loss of a parent differ little from the ways in which adults mourn a parent or a spouse. In so far as there are differences they turn mainly on the finding that children and adolescents are even more sensitive to the conditions that precede, surround and follow a loss than are adults.

The questions still at issue concern how children even younger than four years respond to loss. Do they, given favourable conditions, respond in ways similar to those of older children and adolescents? If they do, at what age do they begin to do so? If they do not, how do we understand the differences? And is the influence on their responses of unfavourable conditions similar or different to their influence on the responses of older children? These, of course, are the very questions with which this volume opened; but now we can examine them in a much broader perspective.

In this chapter we consider children in their third and fourth years of life, by which age they are likely to have a good understanding and command of language, leaving to the next the much more difficult problem of children in their first and second years.

Responses when Conditions are Favourable

In Chapter 16 we saw that, given favourable conditions, children as young as four years are as capable as are adults of retaining memories and images of the dead person and of sustaining repeated recurrences of yearning and sadness. By using their ability to keep their memories of the lost relationship and the intense feelings