As a parent, you can fix most things for your child. A bottle or snack for a hungry tummy, a plaster for a hurt knee. But some things just can’t be made right again, and you’re faced with one of parenting’s biggest challenges. Sometimes it’s impossible to protect your child from the anxiety and sadness that arises through loss, and watching him experience the pain of dealing with these emotions can be very hard. What can help is to know that it’s important for your child to experience loss to prepare for the possibility of other major losses later on in life.
Cathy Rogers, a Cape Town-based psychotherapist with a special interest in working with parents and their children under 5 years of age, explains further, “the losses that children experience are necessary, and although parents attempt to prevent this, loss allows your child to understand what it
