Is taking children to a funeral a good idea?

“I am not sure if I should take my children to the funeral. What do you think?”

Can I take my child to a funeral?

It’s a question parents often ask me as a funeral celebrant. If prepared well, attending a funeral can be a healthy, healing and positive experience for children. The following feedback from a parent explains how attending a funeral has helped a 5-year-old girl:

“The person it all helped the most was Chloe. She’s been sleeping better and talking much more openly about it all. Seeing that so many people feel the same helped ‘normalise’ her pain and confusion. And the focus on happy memories helped her to think about her dad with more lightness.”

For The Celebrant Directory, I wrote an article in which I explain why attending a funeral can be a healthy, healing and positive experience for children. I also provide some advice and ideas on how to prepare young children for a funeral and how to include them, tailored to their age group.

Including children in funerals can help them in their grief

Children are wise, resilient and very creative. They might surprise you positively with their views on death and their ideas for a funeral. Including them in a funeral will not only help them in their grieving process, it will also help everyone else to see the beauty, hope and light that life, even in death, brings.

Read the full article on children and grief here.

Five tips on how to include young children in funerals

If you are looking for specific examples of how to include children in funerals, you may find this blog interesting. It discusses a variety of ways children can be included, from choosing music to drawing a picture for the order of service sheet, reading a funeral poem, and more.

I would like to thank Anna Groot and Sacred Stones Ltd for allowing me to share their photos, and the families for the case studies that are included in the article.

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