Information Session for Parents

Rainbows is an international non-profit making organisation that fosters emotional healing among children, adolescents and adults who are grieving a loss through a death, divorce, or any other painful transition in their families.

Children are a most precious gift who carry a message of hope and continuation of life. A child’s first teachers are parents who teach not only words and physical movement but also how to relate, how to care for others and how to love self. As the child develops physically and emotionally, they also develop feelings of security within the family. It is in the family situation where a child’s personal identity is formed.

Children grow up assuming that the parents will always be there, providing them with protection, keeping them healthy and emotionally secure. When the death of a parent occurs or one parent moves out, separates or the divorce of parents takes place, the entire world of the child comes crashing down.

They do not know what will happen next or who will care for them or if they will be abandoned by the remaining parent. They cannot imagine what their lives will be like in the future. There is a real need for caring adults to help these children through their grief, provide a safe place for them to meet new friends who have shared similar experiences and come to an acceptance of what has happened in their family.

If the pain caused by death, divorce or painful transition is left unaddressed, it can lead many young people to experience serious emotional, psychological, social and educational difficulties. It is quite natural for parents to want to protect their children from painful events. Consequently, they often do not communicate what is really happening in the family. Yet children have ears that overhear and eyes that see the faces of their parents. Children are innocently perceptive and keenly aware of tension, sadness, and anger. There is nothing more difficult for a child than feeling that something horrible is taking place, yet no one will talk to her/him about it. Therefore, the child attempts to make sense out of what is happening around her/him by filling in the gaps with their own imagined explanations.

The grief people feel as a result of bereavement, separation and divorce needs to be told and retold in order to bring the person to accepting that the future can still hold a hope of fulfilment and that the pain will not last forever. There are many people who need a presence in their isolation and grief. They need someone’s ears to hear their cry, someone’s eyes to see their distress. They need someone just to be there.

Rainbows seeks to address these problems by training volunteers to run the programmes created by Rainbows to help children and young people through the grieving process which inevitably follows any significant loss. Most of our work takes place in schools. This means that the support is readily available and continues even after the programme has concluded. RAINBOWS IS A DIFFERENT KIND OF HELPING... * It is not counseling or therapy but can be therapeutic in its results; * It does not diagnose or solve problems; * It is a group sharing freely rather than client & clinician; * It deals with the normal feelings that are associated with a stressful event - grievous loss; * The experience is dependent on the relationships of those participating; * It is a curriculum of prevention and/or intervention Participants are involved in weekly meetings structured in such a way the participant’s story can be shared in a loving and accepting environment. The obvious goal is healthy resolution and healing of the loss experience. Since each person’s healing is unique to themselves, they may participate year after year, for as long as they chose.  

How Rainbows can help… Help the participants engage with their own grief Provide a safe setting to share their feelings with trained listeners Allow a shared experience, identify with other’s feelings Provide materials – journals, games, activities Enable the children to name, understand and come to terms with the many emotions they experience Supports participants to adjust and adapt to their ‘new’ situation – reassuring the children who have anxieties or feelings of guilt Supports the rebuilding of self-esteem, trust, confidence and resilience

Goals Work through the grief process Increase self-esteem Better standards of attainment Improvement in behaviour Inner contentment

Questions asked by parents Do they have to say anything if they don’t want to? My child is worried that everyone will know about his private thoughts if he talks to people in school. My child isn’t keen, should I try and make them go? My child shows no signs of distress since her father and I split up – does this mean she doesn’t need Rainbows?