Bart Speaks Out

Breaking the Silence on Suicide: An interactive Story for Children.  

by Linda Goldman

I have written this interactive story book, Bart Speaks Out, for young children. It is my way of giving a voice to the silence of the subject of suicide in today's world. Throughout my research and collection of children's resources on issues of grief and loss, suicide is the only subject where I could not find a child's storybook or workbook.

Counselors, therapists, educators, parents, and other caring professionals must explore the topic of suicide openly if we are to break through the barriers of shame and secrecy that accompany this topic, and create fertile ground for the resolution of this complicated grief situation.

It is normal for children to grieve the death of someone who is a significant person in their lives. Suicide, however, (and other complicated grief issues such as homicide, AIDS, violence, and abuse) creates a set of traumatic emotional issues that tend to separate the child from the normal flow of grief. So often a child can not say that their special person died because they would have to say how that person died. These unexpressed and unresolved life issues, these frozen blocks of time, create a wall of ice between the child and his or her grief and it is up to us as caring adults to help melt down that wall. Hopefully this book will serve as an effective tool to begin the meltdown process.

 

We, as caring adults, need to achieve an openness about this previously disclosed topic of suicide by:

1. Stressing the underlying belief that we always need to separate the person who died from the way that person died to truly grieve the person's death.
2. Defining suicide to children in simple and direct language that eliminates judgement

By helping children put their feelings outside of themselves through the use of this interactive storybook, we can help in facilitating their healing. Sharing feelings helps to diminish their hurt. Bart serves as a role model in expressing his story and feelings, giving voice to the children and caring professionals, and providing the words to use with this difficult topic of suicide. By speaking out about his own personal pain "in his own words," Bart's vulnerability invites the child to join him in his grief.

 

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Children entering this new millennium are faced with life issues that were unspeakable to us growing up as children. Death related tragedies such as suicide, homicide, and AIDS, and non-death related traumas such as divorce and separation, foster care and abandonment, bullying and terrorism, and abuse and violence have left our children sitting alone in their homes, unfocused and unmotivated in their classrooms, and terrorized in their
communities. They are overwhelmed with their feelings and distracted by their thoughts.

Survivorship of these traumas creates for any child a loss of their assumptive world of safety, protection, and predictability. The role of the media as a surrogate communal parent and extended family further creates
this same traumatic loss of this assumptive world for many if not most of our children.

Children naturally assume their world will be filled with safety, kindness, and meaning as they attempt to answer the universal questions of who am I and why am I here. All too often these qualities seem to disappears into a nightmarish universe of randomness, isolation, and unpredictability. This leaves many of todayıs young people immersed in a new assumption: There is no future. There is no safety. There is no connectedness or meaning to my life. By joining together as a global grief team, caring adults can co-create an assumptive world that again provides a childıs birthright to presume love, generosity, and value will be integral parts of their lives.

We are raising a segment of our youth that are numbed, disconnected from their hearts, their minds, and their consciousnesses, and choosing all to easily, other alternatives such as drugs and alcohol, crime and violence as ways of coping with the loss of their assumptive world. In yesterdayıs world we may have protected ourselves from trauma by having fire drills in our schools. In todayıs world our kids protect themselves from danger in the schools by having gun-fire drills. Too many of todayıs school children are grieving children. So many of our boys and girls are born into a world of grief and loss issues that live inside their homes and lay waiting for them outside their doorsteps, on their streets, schoolyards, and classrooms. Increasingly, children are traumatized by prevailing social and societal loss issues in their families, their schools, their nation, and their world.

Text adapted with permission from Life and Loss: A Guide to Help Grievng Children, Breaking the Silence: A Guide To Help Children With Complicated Grief: Suicide, Homicide, AIDS, Violence, and Abuse and Helping The Grieving Child in the School Healing Magazine (Kidspeace)and Growing Up Fast (NES).
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