Help the child express his or her feelings and concerns. Take time to assess your own feelings, especially if you or those you know were involved in the crisis. Sharing your feelings with a child can help him or her feel connected to you and show them it is OK to express feelings and concerns. Let your genuine concern and caring show, don't be afraid to let them see you cry or express your sadness. Find ways of helping the child express his or her grief. For example, you may ask the child how and why he or she has received this Teddy Bear, or how the Teddy Bear has been helping him or her, or use it in creative activities such as role playing. Allow the child to talk about the crisis he or she has experienced or a loved one who may have been injured or died.

Foster a sense of consistency. Crisis often shatters a child's sense of security and safety. Younger children fear abandonment and older children fear loss, so try to reestablish a sense of security and control by: answering their questions; helping them express their feelings and concerns; allowing them to talk about the events or lost loved ones; providing frequent attention and verbal reassurance; providing or maintaining comforting routines such as those around bedtime, regular soccer games, or sleep overs with friends; etc.

Avoid putting undue pressures on children. Avoid too many "shoulds" and "oughts". Children will require more patience and tolerance. Relax expectations at school or at home, but remind the child that this relaxation is temporary.

Anticipate the child's reaction, try to show confidence in the child's coping skills. However, intervention by a professional therapist may be necessary when symptoms form a pattern, are intense, and/or interfere with day-to-day functioning. Do not view this as a sign of your or parental failure. Look out for irrational behaviours, including the possibility of suicide; even young children attempt suicide. It is not unusual for children who have experienced a crisis to exhibit many reactions.

This is not necessarily cause for alarm. Expect anxieties and fears, a preoccupation with dying; apathy and depression, a drop in self esteem, difficulties concentrating in school, aggressive, antisocial and destructive behaviour designed to gain attention, sleep difficulties and/or night terrors and when a loved one has been lost, a desire for a reunion so strong that the child expresses the wish to die.

Children also tend to feel both anger and guilt when bad things happen. Along with sadness and fear, children often feel they are somehow responsible for the tragic events, that their behaviour or thoughts caused the tragedy. They may be angry at a dead loved one and view the death as an act of abandonment. Younger children may regress to thumb-sucking, bed-wetting, speech difficulties, change in appetite and immobilizing fears and so forth. Older children may exhibit many of the same reactions as well as rebellion, refusal to do chores, loss of interest in peer social activities, anger, denial, etc. Sometimes sadness, anger and fear are expressed indirectly as medical complaints (e.g. upset stomach) or repetitive or compulsive behaviours. Understand and accept these reactions for what they are, a predictable backlash to unspeakable shock and grief.