Grief and Loss with Young Children with Taryn Kaplan

On this episode of Children Deserve Better, Dr. Jasmine Moses is joined by Mx. Taryn Kaplan, director of Heights Cooperative Preschool, for an honest conversation about grief, loss, and what it means to support children through hard things.

Together, they reflect on their own experiences with grief after the loss of people they love and explore the many ways children experience grief, too. They discuss why grief is about more than death, how children experience loss when routines change or people leave, and why adults need to stop shielding children from difficult truths.

Mx. Taryn shares what it looked like to navigate the death of their best friend while continuing to support the children in their classroom. Dr. Jasmine Moses reflects on talking with her three-year-old daughter after the death of her mother and what it has meant to grieve alongside her child.

This episode is a reminder that children notice more than we think they do. They deserve honesty, support, and space to ask questions. Together, Jasmine and Taryn discuss grieving out loud, the importance of allowing children to see grown-ups express emotion, and why there is no timeline for grief.

In this episode, they discuss:

• Why grief is about loss and change, not only death
• Honest, developmentally appropriate ways to talk with children about grief
• Why children need to see adults grieve and express emotion
• How to support children through grief at home and in the classroom
• Why grief has no timeline and why children deserve ongoing support
• Resources to support the discussion

Where to find Mx. Taryn:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hey.mx.taryn/

More About Heights Cooperative Preschool: 

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heightscooppreschool/
• Website: https://www.heightscooppreschool.org/

Resources for Grief and Young Children: 

• Goodbye: A First Conversation About Grief
• The Invisible String
• Explaining Death to A Three Year Old
• Helping Toddlers Cope with Grief and Change

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Children Deserve Better Podcast, where we unpack the big issues shaping our children and communities. I'm your host, Dr. Jasmine Moses, a toddler mama, anti-biased, anti-racist educator, and advocate for building a better, more equitable world for all. Here we dive into social justice, community challenges, and those taboo conversations, breaking them down into real talk that makes sense for children or even actionable steps for the adults guiding them. Children are ready, you can do this, so let's dive in together. I am your host, Dr. Jasmine Moses, and today on the show, we are talking about a heavy but so important topic. We're focusing on grief and loss on this episode. Now, for me personally, this is something that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about and living through this year as I grieve the loss of my mother who died in January. And as I navigate that loss, what it means to me, how different my life looks now. I've also been having many conversations about grief with my three-year-old daughter as she grieves the loss of her Nana too. And all of this, the conversations, hunting for resources has reminded me that children experience grief in so many ways. Grief is not only about death. It can come with change, it can come with routine shifts, missing someone, or trying to make sense of the world while it feels different. Children experience loss, heartbreak, and sadness too, even when they do not yet have the language to explain what they are feeling to their grown-ups. Today on the show, I am joined by Taryn Kaplan, Director of Heights Cooperative Preschool. Taryn and I have both experienced significant losses this year, and together we are talking about what it means to support children through grief with honesty, care, and community. I am really grateful that they are here for the conversation. Taryn, also known as TK, is director and lead pre-K teacher at Heights Cooperative Preschool in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where they are known to students and families as Mixed Taryn. With more than 15 years of experience in early childhood education, TK is passionate about creating learning environments where children feel valued, curious, and connected to their communities. Their teaching centers on play-based learning, empathy, and supporting children as they navigate big emotions and questions about the world around them. Taryn believes children deserve honesty, respect, and spaces where their voices and experiences are taken seriously. A significant part of TK's work focuses on helping adults better understand how young children experience loss, change, and grief. Taryn advocates for honest, developmentally appropriate conversations with children about difficult topics, including death and major life transitions. They are also committed to creating inclusive spaces where all families, identities, and ways of belonging are respected and reflected in the classroom. TK believes that when adults show up with openness and compassion, children are far more capable of processing hard experiences than we often expect. Through their work with families, educators in the broader community, Taryn hopes to help create a world where children feel supported, understood, and empowered to grow into thoughtful, empathetic people. Heights Cooperative Preschool is a school that is really near and dear to my heart, and it's a community that deeply values children and believes in learning environments where children are respected, listened to, and supported as full people. I am so excited to have Taryn with me on the show to hear more about their work, to hear more about Heights Cooperative Preschool, and to talk all about grief and loss with young children. Enjoy the show. Taryn, thank you so much for being here. I am really looking forward to this conversation. So let's dive in. Who are you and how do you make the world better for children?

SPEAKER_01 4:07

I am Taryn Kaplan and I am the director of Heights Cooperative Preschool. I've spent the last uh like 15 plus years working in early childhood education. My work truly centers around creating spaces and environments for children where they feel respected, curious, and emotionally safe. And that's really the big one is you know, just providing safe spaces for children. Children deserve honesty, their questions deserve answers, their experiences should be taken seriously. And a big part of my work is helping children navigate big emotions and life experiences in ways that feel safe and supported and natural.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Well, I am so glad to have you on the call today because this conversation is such an important one, especially as we both navigate grief in this stage of our lives, but also how children are navigating grief in so many different ways at so many different points of their lives. That actually leads us into the next question. When we talk about grief, many people only talk about death. But how do you define grief, especially when it comes to young children?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

Sure. Um, I think that like most adults, when we hear the word grief, we center it really around death. That is the big, the big grief. But in early childhood, grief is really about loss and change. It doesn't have to be about death. I feel that children experience grief whenever something meaningful in their world shifts. Um, that could be a person that's gone, um, it could be a change in routine, it could be a friend moving away, or it can be someone that they care about being sad. For me, in the classroom, grief doesn't always show up as this like big emotional moment. Like sometimes it can be truly just the shift in an experience for a child and really paying attention to how they are navigating that and how we are able to support them in navigating that is really the big important thing for me. I feel that often adults try to protect children from grief, but what we really need to do is learn to sit with them in it and walk them through it.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

I think that is hard for grown-ups. Like I know that that has been difficult uh for me as I navigate the loss of my mom and with my daughter. It's really hard to, or I'm finding it really difficult to sit with her in grief. And also for me recognizing that of course her grief looks differently, even though we're grieving the same person, it can look different. So I think adults really struggle like with this idea of like holding this space to sit, and as much as we want to, it is just hard because I think for me, no one has ever taught me how to sit in grief. And I'm sure a lot of adults feel the same way.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Absolutely. I I genuinely feel that we are creating a generation of emotionally aware, empathetic children, and this is something that has never really been done before. I feel that people have often saying things like, you know, millennial parents are raising the most emotionally aware children, and they're doing it without a foundation to do that. So it's really like radical parenting at this point, and I use the word parenting um as kind of an all-encompassing term of just raising children. We are doing this without a roadmap, but I think that the stakes could not be higher for raising empathetic humans um in general.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

And sitting with grief is such a big part of that, and it's interesting that as I was looking for like resources right when my mom died to support my daughter in conversations, there's not very many, especially for that young age, like she's three. So there's not very many resources out there. There's some books, but they don't necessarily all hit on the topic in the same way. And I know we'll discuss some resources later, but for something that is so universal, it's so strange that there's not that many resources in order to talk about it. So it's that's really, really interesting to me for sure. I think that leads us really well into our next question. I mean, you talked some about it in your conversation about grief in the beginning and how you defined it, but can you just reiterate some of the losses that children experience that adults don't always recognize as grief?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Absolutely. So I had said missing someone when someone is not there. So one of the things that I often tell families is that your child's world is so small and their experiences are so limited that even something that might seem small for us, that's a huge chunk of their life. That's their only experience with this. So when we're seeing, you know, children experience the loss of a friend, it might be a friend that they met two months ago, but two months of a three-year-old's life is a significant chunk of time. So just really realizing that their experiences that they are having are the only ones that they've had so far. They don't have any, you know, anything to pull from. They're experiencing and growing and learning everything in real time.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

That is so, so important. There's so many things that can center grief. Like in the classroom, I know there was a lot of conversation around like divorce, right? Or family makeups, or like you said, if you're missing someone, if your neighbor moved away, I know I've experienced a lot of things um with children who are trying to navigate that in those types of conversations.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

I think that apart from um the losses that children are experiencing, whether it be a physical person, grandparents, a friend moving away, their routine changing, um, I think that there's a broader kind of loss that children right now are experiencing. The world that we're living in, children are really slowly losing pieces of their innocence, their sense of safety. And we need to give children the space to process those things and also recognize that they're happening. The childhood that children are having right now is very different than the childhood that we experienced. Um, and you know, maybe the safety that we felt in a lot of spaces. And so just really recognizing that because children notice way more than we give them credit for. They're constantly trying to make sense of the world around them. They hear conversations, they observe this tension, and they see things happening in their communities and in the world. And, you know, so many people consistently treat it like don't talk about it around the kids, don't say it around the children. But you are, you are saying it with, you know, body language, your stress. Um, so you know, acknowledging that they are real little people with the capabilities of hearing these hard truths, they are having these experiences right alongside us and we're acting like they're not. When we're experiencing a loss and we're having a really heavy feeling, they're seeing that and they're trying to make sense of it and they're trying to, you know, piece it together. We need to be able to step up and realize they're trying to piece it together. And if I don't help them, if I don't give them the tools for it, then they're just gonna try and do it on their own, and it's not gonna make sense for them.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

Do a lot of, of course, conversations like this one in terms of what we talk to children about, how we talk to children about it, and recognizing their humanity, um, and having these important and tough conversations that adults sometimes shy away from. And it's interesting because I, of course, talk a lot about social justice, and we talk a lot about race, we talk a lot about all the things, right? But when it came to navigating grief in this way and like the death of a grandparent for my daughter, but also the death of my mother, it was really, really tricky for me to find ways to navigate those conversations. So I say that to say I also recognize that though it is a needed conversation, it is sometimes so difficult to have. Yeah, absolutely. Especially when you are right on the inside. Um, and so if there's anyone that's listening or watching that is navigating that same space, just because a conversation is hard for us to have doesn't mean we shouldn't have it. And that makes it more imperative for us to have it, even if our personal connection might make us more emotional, might make it more difficult for us to navigate. I always tell people it's so important for children to see our raw emotions, right? Like it's developmentally appropriate for them to understand that we are navigating these big emotions too. Um, I've been on this earth a little bit longer than you. I have a little bit more lived experiences, but when something hurts me, it still hurts. Yeah. And so I'm still navigating that. And that conversation came up a lot as I navigated how I told my daughter about the death of her nana with like family members or other folks like outside of our family, just how we were trying to figure out like how we would tell her and what we would say. And I think the conversation of, oh, she shouldn't hear about that, came up a lot, and so it really continued to ignite my fire in terms of like, ooh, like these are conversations that still feel hard for people to have. I'm a social justice educator, I'm an anti-biased educator, like, but it's still so hard for me to have the conversation about grief when I'm also navigating it. So just because something is difficult to have, it actually makes it more important for us to have it. I encourage folks to use your resources as I would tell people and other focus that they would have and just make sure that you are still continuing to center that conversation because children deserve better and they deserve to be able to have these conversations with their grown-ups. Absolutely. Um, so we have both experienced major losses this year. And when death enters a child's world, what are some of the ways that adults can talk about it honestly while still supporting the young children that they came to support?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

So the way that that the way that that question is worded is honestly so important. The when death enters a child's world, because we're talking about, you know, like I I said earlier, their worlds are so small. So when it when death enters their world, it really is a major part of it. Um it is a sometimes it is the first time that's that they have experienced death. One of the most important things that I think adults can do is resist that instinct to hide it and to shield them from it and to just make like everything is okay because they know that it's not. They they can they can feel it. They they, I mean, children care about the grown-ups in their lives just as much as the grown-ups in their lives care about them. Um, and I think that, you know, we don't often give them the credit that they deserve for how big they are feeling these feelings. And then also just helping them be able to navigate those feelings. You may have experienced loss before as you know, a person in your 30s, a person in your 40s, but like this four-year-old has never experienced this before. They are extended living the same experience as you. You lost someone, but she lost someone too, and her routines are changed entirely because of that. And I think that that is also something that you know we really need to give ourselves more grace with. That we are really we're navigating on a different timeline. And, you know, realizing that the rest of the world may not be on this same timeline as us right now, but like really um understanding that like your village is, you know, like we are aware of the losses that each other have experienced. For me, I lost my best friend in February after a long battle uh with breast cancer. She was a uh just an incredible part of my my village, my community, and you know, very, very deeply rooted in the school that I uh am a director at, you know, to the point where families and children um, you know, knew of her. They knew her by name. I truly believe that um, you know, grief should be shared, it should be spoken out loud. And so as my friend was going was going through her battle with breast cancer, I I didn't hide this from you know the board or the the children. Um we talked about it and um and and she remained a huge part of the school community. She still she followed our newsletters, she made donations to fundraisers, she kept up with what was going on. So it felt really important to me that we really honor just all of her in the classroom. And as I said, children notice when something in their world changes. Apart from being the director, I also teach pre-K. And when we when we got the news that um Celia was in the hospital and that she would not be returning home, I knew that I needed to be there with her. And so I took an indefinite amount of time out of the classroom, but it wasn't really going to be an indefinite amount of time. We knew going in it would be a shorter period of time, but my other teacher was able to be in the classroom. So I was able to focus entirely on that space and that goodbye that I needed to have. But when I came back, my kids were going to be aware of why I was gone. So I really needed to think ahead about how I was going to process that with them and how we were going to talk about it. What we did was just honor the, we honored the full experience. Um, we made a very intentional choice not to shield the children from our grief. Instead, we included them in conversations. We created space for honest and developmentally appropriate conversations about what had happened and why Mixterran was gone and why I was going to be feeling a little bit different when I came back. And I made sure that I had uh the support that I was able to take space if I needed to to really feel that grief. But there were plenty of moments where my kids were really sitting in it with me and they were noticing my sadness. And we talked about it. Um, we read together, we talked about what it means to love someone, you know, fully. And um we talked about how loving someone so so fully when they're not a part of your life anymore, that love turns to grief. And we talked about what um, you know, we talked about what grief feels like in your body. Um we talked about how we can support each other and how we can how we can talk about it and how we can ask questions. Um, we really allowed them to to set the tone. Um this wasn't, you know, this wasn't me grieving and going into the classroom and every day talking about how sad I was. This was me allowing children to ask questions and to hold space when they were able to.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Isn't it so beautiful how children are able to navigate a lot of these things so seamlessly? So effortlessly. Yeah, it's really, and as you were talking, it just like you know, I knew this episode would be a bit uh emotional because it's still new for both of us. Um as we grieve like these people who were who are very important in our lives, and it just made me think a little bit about like the grieving process that I have that I'm continuing every single day feels like a a new day. As I, you know, miss my mom every single day. Um navigating the conversation with my daughter, like I originally went into it. First of all, of course, uh it's me. So I I called you and asked for book resources and dug myself into a research hole on the internet about how I can talk to this three-year-old. And when I didn't find much, I was like, okay, I guess it's time to uh make up my own path in terms of the ways to talk about it with her. And I just remember like sitting on the couch, and me and my husband like made this big um to which now feels like a big to-do and a little silly of like you know, cutting down the music and all coming together and sitting in the same space and telling her, like, hey, I have something really important to tell you. And now I was very sick and she died, and when someone dies, that means that their body stops working, and just kind of went into the spiel of like, you know, we will miss her, and um if and when we do, we can look at photos and we can talk about her and we can say her name out loud and we can remember her. And my daughter looked at me and was just like, You look sad. Do you want to have a dance party? And so we danced it out in the middle of the living room, and I was grateful with you know how the conversation went the first time, but I knew that it would be a continuous conversation. I like to say that I was practiced for my mother's real best friend, which is my daughter, and so they have a really um, they had a really solid relationship as my mother was like our primary caregiver. Um, and so I knew that it would be something that uh my daughter would continue to, you know, wonder about, question about, and not a day goes by without her, you know, wondering about um like my mom. In the beginning it was, are we gonna see her? Like it felt almost like, you know, I said that we wouldn't see her again, but are you sure? Like, are you sure she's not coming back? Yeah. And then now it kind of is if we do something at my dad's or if we do something that we used to do with my mom, my daughter will be like, Oh, I'm really missing Nana. Like, I, you know, it'll be me. But I really miss Nana too. So it it is interesting the ways that children also can manage these things. And I didn't hide from her. I think in a developmentally appropriate way, like you mentioned, if tears come to my eyes, or if I start to cry, or if someone else is crying around me, like I'll let her know that, like, you know, it's it's hard navigating this, and people might feel sad, and grief is heavy, and it it is um a hard feeling sometimes, and so people will cry, and that's okay. Like, it's okay to express yourselves in that in that way. Um, and she I think understands it, but it's still something that she's navigating. But what I do know is that I've never seen adults that I trusted in my life navigate things like this, like they never did it in a way that was out loud or in a way that like actually showed us the depths uh that we will go through when we navigate things like this. And I've lost grandparents, I've lost friends who were my age, I've lost teachers, I've experienced loss in so many different ways. I've never seen the adults in my life just openly grieve heavy loss, even though you know my grandparents were my parents' parents. So I know now from experience it it was horrible and gut-wrenching and heavy, but I never saw them process that. So if the listeners are taken away, like just a few key things, one of them is even giving the space for children to be able to see that and understanding, yeah, to witness it, and also understanding that they might need to hold space for it too. Just like we need that space, children need that space as well. And when we allow them into our space or when we create that space where we all can then grieve together, I think it's an important process and something that they will take with them as they get older.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Absolutely. I just wanted to share one of the things that we did following the loss of my friend in the classroom. Um, so she passed um just before Valentine's Day, and we spent a lot of time in the ICU. I really wanted to be able to give back to those nurses what they gave to us, and that was, you know, just so much peace and um comfort during that time. So we did a Valentine's project with the kids where we talked about how we were going to make Valentines for the nurses that took care of Celia and that um and for the patients that were still there. We we were talking about, you know, making them for each of the different nurses that were there. And one of my students said, Well, are we gonna make one for Celia? And I said, No, we're well, you know, Celia passed away, so we're not going to make one for her, but we're going to um we're gonna do this in honor of her to show the people um that took care of her that we appreciate them. And he said, Well, we could still make one for her and put it somewhere special. And I think that would be nice. And we could also make one for the people that she loves because she died and she can't make Valentine's anymore. And so just him, he really, you know, he realized like, okay, this is why we're doing this. This person isn't here anymore. There are still people here that they love. What can we do to make them feel better? And so just teaching empathy, just at that early age, because really when you're in those initial stages of grief, what you need is community. Um, and just teaching kids to be good members of the community and that we, when someone is sad, we we reach out a hand, we take care of them. While the the kids worked so hard on those Valentines, like they were so incredibly creative with them. They turned out beautiful. And I distinctly remember while they were making them, one of my kids stopped and said, McSterin, this is important work we're doing. I was like, This is important work. Absolutely. It makes my heart feel really good. So we're showing children that, you know, being kind and having empathy feels good. It feels good in your body, and we're letting them have that experience of what it feels like. So we showed the kids the whole process of, you know, preparing those Valentines, bringing them to the nurses, and we talked about it with them and we talked about how excited they were that they got them and how happy they were, and how, you know, they the the nurses looked at each one and were so grateful. So I just think that really bringing kids in and letting them be a part of that whole experience, because whether or not you are actively including them, they are experiencing it as well. They're they're experiencing it right alongside us.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

I also think another thing that I would add as I navigate grief in this the heaviest way that I ever have had to is that there's no timeline on any of this either. So our society operates in a space where you know you get three bereavement days, and once those bereavement days are done, you better be done grieving because you have to get back to this work that you need to do. And you know, for me, I felt like you know, people's lives just kind of go back to normal after a while, but like there is forever for me um an emptiness that is hard to process, and it it's hard for me to watch everyone go back to their own lives because I miss my mom every minute of the day. Um however, I think it's important for us to teach children um that grief doesn't have a timeline. Um, it is something that you know it could come and go in waves, it can feel heavy in the beginning and still heavy every other day. It is something that maybe feels lighter sometimes and heavier at other times. And it's interesting, like I saw I think I'm on the grief side of the algorithm now. Yeah, same. Which is sometimes great because it's like, yeah, people people see me, and then it and the other times it's like, you know, laughing at videos and like having a good time, and then it's like grief, and then it's right back and it's sitting there with you. Um but one of the things, one of the videos I saw recently is that like um a person said, you know, I'm 75% happy and 25% sad at every single uh point in my life now. I think I'm still in the beginning, so I say like I'm 30% happy and 70% sad that my mom's not here to see a lot of the things that I'm doing. Like this will be something that you hold for the rest of your life. Like the grief is something that you hold with you for the rest of your life, and it's difficult to think about it in that capacity, but also like I just lean into the multiple things can be true. But if it's true for tr for adults, it's definitely true for children.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

So that's something about and teaching them and giving them the tools for that to continue the conversation, explaining that the converse, yeah, that this is a continued conversation. Something that um my partner Emily taught me about grief. Um, is this metaphor of there is a ball and a box, and when your grief journey begins, that ball is huge. It encompasses almost the whole box, everything everything that it touches, it triggers that grief. And eventually the box stays the same size, but the ball gets smaller and it just, you know, it hits every once in a while. But those those are things that, you know, we really need to teach to children that there are days when, you know, something that would not have brought me to tears six months ago, it changes my entire day. It changes the way I, you know, grief changes the way that you see the world. And I think um, you know, we need to acknowledge that. We need to tell that to children. Something that you had said, you know, earlier that it feels like, you know, the world goes on. And I think it's important to teach children that like the world does go on, but it is a little bit different. You know, my universe has shifted. And I think that as we experience things, it will continue to shift. But the world that we live in is shaped by the people that are in it. And when those people are gone, it I mean, it would it would be wild to say that my world is exactly the same because of course it's not. There is such a big part of it that is missing, and learning how to navigate what this world looks like now without this person that you, you know, care so deeply about. I I I think um there were so many times after Celia passed where like I was having such a big feeling and I'd be in the line at a checkout or something, and you know, something would be a little triggering with the cashier, whatever. And I'm like, they didn't just lose their whole world, their world is the same as it was this morning. So, you know, really just making space for understanding that we don't always know what everyone is experiencing, but if we give if we give children and ourselves the tools, the world looks a little different now. And here's how we're gonna navigate it.

SPEAKER_00 31:18

And they need all the tools, they need the supports of their grown-ups, and even, and this is something that I say within anti-biased trainings is you don't actually have to know everything about everything in order to make an impact with children. Um, and this is one of those things that like I'm really grateful that I get to continue to learn alongside my daughter how this is going to look as I grieve my mother and as she grieves her grandmother. Um, it is an it is very interesting just to like you know see this from like both sides, like seeing how I would maybe coach like another adult in having these conversations with children, but then also to be right in it in my own family. It's definitely a humbling experience, but I think one that there should be more resources, more resources for navigating these things, especially with children that are so young, and two, I am grateful to have loved and to have been in such a powerful way. I ha I have this grief because I was able to love and have been loved in such a way, and so I toggle between just feeling hot, mess, expressed, and sad, and then also that the beauty of having such big grief because that means that there is still love here and that there was such a powerful love that was there before. Are there any other tips that you would give listeners who are trying to navigate either grief on their own or um grief with young children or both?

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Use your village and and truly I I think grieve out loud. I think that if grief is more of a shared experience, that empathy would be too. And I think that we really just need to realize that children are gonna have these experiences whether we support them in it or not, and the difference that we can make by supporting them. With everything, yeah, with literally everything when it comes to the children in our lives, like they're gonna have these experiences whether we choose to support them through it or not. And you know, just get gaining the tools to be able to do that. Um, I I think that this experience that I had this year will not be replicable. I will not have this experience again next year with my next class, but I do have the tools now, and so I am able to figure out how we how we process big feelings like grief in the classroom or in um, you know, in my own family's life.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

And I think too, um, if folks are looking for resources, one of the books that we both were able to use is the first conversations book, uh, goodbye, a first conversation about grief. And if you've listened to this podcast or you have seen my work on Instagram, you know that I am so in love with this whole series. And I think that the goodbye uh book is actually the best book that I've seen so far written on grief for young children. So shout out to the authors, Dr. Megan Madison and Jessica Raleigh, for just an amazing series overall, but also one that helped, I think, grown-ups and children. Like I remember when the book first came and I received it and I read it to my daughter, it was a great experience for the both of us. But then, like, I fielded a lot of the phone calls for my family as they were trying to figure out what was happening with my mom Jihara. But as they called and people expressed their grief to me, like I read them pages of that book. Like, you know, this this is a great book for children, but it is such a great book for adults.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

On my first day back in the classroom, um, I I was greeted by, you know, just such warmth from my kiddos and just hugs. And um, we we brought these books into the classroom earlier in the week to kind of prepare for me coming back. Um, and one of my kids pulled the book off the bookshelf and asked if I could read it to him. Um, and I said, Yeah, of course. Like, do you want me to read it here or do you want to go over to the cozy corner, which is just a special place in our room for quiet and comfort? And he asked if we could read it in the cozy corner. And I said, Yeah, of course. So we went over there and within the first page, my whole class, all eight of them, were over there and just all very engaged in this story. And so we we started it over, and um I I don't think I was fully prepared for how differently that book would hit after this loss. Um, because I had read it, I had read it with you when you were experiencing your loss. I read it and I was touched deeply by this book and how how great it was written. But when I was reading the words to my class and feeling it through my experience, um, it just hit a little different. And we, the language in it was so important because it it is written in a way that is so, so matter-of-fact, but it also opens up for you know for these bigger conversations and for questions that kids might have. Um and it asks questions, but the language in it of um when someone dies, their body stops working. And that was such an important thing for us to be able to say out loud to the kids because you know, when we use euphemisms like um they passed away or they've they've moved on, or they're we lost them. That was one, that was a big one for me. I was like, she's not lost. Like we didn't lose her, she's she's dead. Um, and it's in in saying that out loud, um, it processes differently when you're using that word. So the language was so key. It also opens up the conversation for children to share their experiences. There's a page where it says, we don't know what happens to someone after when someone dies. Yes, we don't know what happens. And to that part, one of my one of my kids was able to say, Oh, this is what we believe in our home. This is what we do for people who have died. Um, he shared an experience of sharing fruit with his aunt who had passed, and um, that they they leave fruit on his mom's altar for her. And it opened the conversation of, well, what was Celia's favorite fruit? And I shared that, and we were able to kind of have that moment where we connected in a real experience. They were able to pull from their lives, oh, this is what we do, this is what my mom does. When someone's sad about my grandma, we talk about this, or we play this game, or we do this. So it really opened it for them to be able to kind of hold the experience as their own and process that in a way that we would not have been able to do, I don't think, without that book. And I think that it is just so important that we have more resources available. Having that book in our classroom as a resource, um, it's still there. This loss happened in February. Um, we've kept it there. The children still ask to read pages from it. Um, they ask me if I want to read it sometimes, if they think that I'm feeling sad. So just having more resources like that would be huge for aiding these children in their development. I'm glad that we were able to have copies of it on hand. I think it's a really incredible series, the way that they are able to um just capture the language in a way that is so clear and easy to communicate to children.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

I completely agree about the series. I think that this series is amazing. If you have not checked it out, like please do. Um made me reflect so much like while reading it to my daughter. Like I even messaged uh Dr. Megan saying, like, thank you for writing such an amazing piece of work. Like this has been um such a hard experience, but the book made it a little easier to navigate, um, especially with giving that real accurate language and um just the fact that like there's so many different ways that we experience grief. Um, I personally appreciated also the page where it talks about the ways that some people, like some people have funerals or some people have memorial. Like, I thought that that was a really great way to explain it to children. I will never stop raving about these books. So I'm so glad that we were able to utilize this one in back-to-back situations of grief. Please pick that book up and support the authors. It'll be in the show notes, as well as a lot of the other books that Taryn uh brought to my house when I asked them about uh books to navigate grief and loss. I'll link those books in the show notes as well. But we need more of these resources, but until we have them, please pick up the ones that we do have because these conversations are so, so, so important. And I'm grateful that we were able to share this space together today. So, where can people find you and learn more about your incredible work, uh, your incredible school, and everything that you're doing for the community?

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Sure. Well, people can find me at Heights Cooperative Preschool. I am currently working on getting a better social media presence. Um, I in the next couple months plan to have a Substack. Um, with all of the experiences that I'm having and that I have had in the past, I really just want to be able to have one place where everything is able to just be more organized and people can reach out to me and um that I'm able to connect more with people. I think the past couple of years, I've just been really focused on building the school and creating the community that I want. And now that I feel that I have that, there's obviously still more work to be done, but I do feel that I have more of a space to work on reaching a wider community outside of where I'm at.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Great. So, everyone, if you have not pulled out your phones yet while you're listening or watching, please go ahead and give Taryn a follow. They are doing such amazing work um within the community that they are in and such amazing work for children. So I am grateful to be in community with them and to be able to know the school, support the school, but please make sure you're following especially uh teachers and other people who have programs who might be looking for ways to continue these discussions in real time and find resources on how to do so. Heights Cooperative Preschool is a great example of how to do that. I'll include all of the information as well as the website and the social media that Taryn mentioned. But Taryn's doing big things, so make sure that you're following them and staying connected. Taryn, any last words before we wrap up the show today?

SPEAKER_01 42:13

I just kind of want to leave with one final statement of that children are not too young for hard truths. They are too young to navigate them alone. And that is our job as the grown-ups in their lives is to walk beside them and help them navigate these things.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Thank you. Thank you so much for an amazing conversation, one that we as a society need to have more of. Thank you for coming on to the podcast. And for all the listeners out there, thank you so much for tuning in, and we will see you next time. All right, you've just finished another episode of Children Deserve Better. But this is where the real work starts. Take what spoke to you today and put it into action. Change doesn't come from staying comfortable, and better starts with us. If you loved what you heard here on the podcast today, leave me a review. And hey, let's not let the conversation end here. Find me over at the Anti Bias ETE and at Equity and Bloom on Instagram. I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions about how you're making moves. Let's keep learning, unlearning, and growing together. See you soon.