Messages to first responders from a bereaved parent

INTRODUCTION: This article describes the use of autoethnography to explore my experience as a bereaved parent in relation to the traumatic loss of my 12-year-old child in 2009.METHODS: Employing an autoethnographic approach, this research articulates and investigates personal narratives associated with experiences of the death of my young child. Narratives offer a rich description of the event and allow data analysis where emerging themes stream from a personal experience.FINDINGS: Professionals taking control and the caring role of the community are main themes identified and analysed from these personal narratives. The findings advocate for an understanding of the needs of grieving parents at a time of extreme confusion. This article concentrates on professional first responders taking control and guiding traumatised parents when their child has a fatal event. Bereaved parents experience disorientation and traumatic confusion at the sudden death of their child. Emergency responders need to offer active listening skills and guidance.IMPLICATIONS: Professional first responders need to take control of the bereaved parent’s early journey of grief as they are likely to be in a state of deep traumatic shock, where disorientation leaves them vulnerable to lowered cognitive ability. The use of active listening skills and sensitivity can direct traumatised parents, thereby assisting the short- and long-term welfare of the family by addressing their initial needs at a time of crisis.

‘Writing about our adoption’: A qualitative study on intercountry adoptive parents’ narratives during the first post-adoption year

Intercountry adoption requires adoptive parents to assume their parenthood as well as to acknowledge the cultural and ethnic origins of their child. Narratives are effective means to help individuals cope with non-normative transitions, including adoption, as they allow them to make sense of and legitimise their experiences. This qualitative study sought to extend knowledge about the value of using narrative methods with adoptive families to explore how the language they employ determines the ways in which they perceive situations and vice versa. It uses the word-driven textual analysis software T-LAB to identify key topics highlighted by parents and analyse them in relation to specific variables. Child characteristics, such as gender, age at adoption and birth country, and family variables, such as mother’s and father’s narratives and first or not-first parenting experience, were considered. From the 37 narratives sampled, those parents adopting from Asia and Eastern Europe, mothers and first-time parents faced the most challenges.

The Socialization of Young Children’s Empathy for Pain: The Role of Mother– and Father–Child Reminiscing

Objective Empathy for pain allows one to recognize, understand, and respond to another person’s pain in a prosocial manner. Young children develop empathy for pain later than empathy for other negative emotions (e.g., sadness), which may be due to social learning. How parents reminisce with children about past painful events has been linked to children’s pain cognitions (e.g., memory) and broader socioemotional development. The present study examined how parent–child reminiscing about pain may be linked to children’s empathic behaviors toward another person’s pain. Methods One hundred and fourteen 4-year-old children (55% girls) and for each, one parent (51% fathers) completed a structured narrative elicitation task wherein they reminisced about a past painful autobiographical event for the child. Children were then observed responding in a lab-based empathy task wherein they witnessed a confederate pretending to hurt themselves. Children’s empathic behaviors and parent–child narratives about past painful events were coded using established coding schemes. Results Findings revealed that parents who used more neutral emotion language (e.g., How did you feel?) when discussing past painful events had children who exhibited more empathic concern in response to another’s pain. Similarly, children who used more explanations when reminiscing about past painful events displayed more empathic concern about another’s pain. Conclusions Findings highlight a key role of parent–child reminiscing about the past pain in the behavioral expression of empathy for pain in young children.

Problematização das narrativas infantis sobre alimentação e meio ambiente nos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental / Problematization of child narratives about food and environment...

O artigo discute as narrativas de crianças dos Anos Iniciais do Ensino Fundamental no que diz respeito à alimentação em uma sociedade que procura caminhos para se tornar mais sustentável. Foi utilizada a metodologia de investigação narrativa para a produção e análise das informações, como forma de entendermos como se estabelecem as relações e inter-relações dos sujeitos com o meio em que vivem. A análise das informações foi orientada pelo seguinte questionamento: Como as crianças estabelecem relações com a alimentação em uma sociedade que busca a sustentabilidade alimentar? Foram problematizados os conhecimentos das crianças com relação aos seus hábitos alimentares, bem como a produção e consumo dos alimentos. As crianças puderam expressar suas vivências e experiências, ao debaterem algumas de suas hipóteses na produção de novos entendimentos.Palavras-chave: Alimentação; Educação ambiental; Sustentabilidade alimentar. ABSTRACT: This paper discusses narratives of nourishment – in a society that searches for ways to be more sustainable – produced by children who attend the first grades in Elementary School. A methodology of narrative investigation was used for producing and analyzing data as a way of understanding how relations and interrelations between subjects and their environment are established. Data analysis was guided by the following question: how do children establish relations with nourishment in a society that searches for food sustainability? Children’s knowledge of their eating habits, besides food production and consumption, was problematized. Children could express their experiences when they debated some of their hypotheses and, thus, produced new knowledge.Keywords: Food; Environmental education; Food sustainability.

Understanding the Experience of Functional Abdominal Pain Through Written Narratives by Families

Objective Although functional abdominal pain (FAP) is one of the most common pain problems in children, there is a lack of qualitative studies on this topic. Our aim was to increase knowledge in this field by testing an innovative written narrative methodology designed to approach the experiences of children with FAP and their parents. Methods We analyzed the FAP experiences of 39 families who completed a written narrative task (children and parents separately). Some of the families (N = 20) had previously completed an online psychosocial intervention, whereas others had not, because a complementary objective was to explore possible differences between parent and child narratives, and between those who had and had not completed the intervention. Results Families wrote about abdominal pain (characteristics, triggers, pain consequences, and coping strategies), their well-being, the diagnostic process, future expectations, and the positive effects of an online psychosocial intervention. Children tended to mention pain characteristics more, whereas parents tended to write more about triggers and the diagnostic process. Conclusions A written narrative methodology was found to be a useful approach for understanding families’ experiences. Results confirmed that FAP affects families at the emotional, behavioral, and social levels and that an online psychosocial intervention can help families.

The Holocaust in Pictures: Maus and the Narrative of the Graphic Novel

This article examines the effect of comic conventions and the depiction of characters as anthropomorphic animals in Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, a pivotal piece depicting the Holocaust and its impact on the survivors and their children. The article will claim that instead of the graphic medium being a hindrance, Spiegelman uses the comic conventions to his advantage, allowing the reader to identify with the characters and narrative in a unique way. In this way the graphic narrative underlines the verbal, demonstrating that the medium of the comic and graphic novel is not purely preserved for fiction or child narratives.