Funeral director Asha Dooley believes the long-term benefits for children far outweighs the morbid and uncomfortable topic and will ultimately allow young people to have a stronger grasp on death and be better equipped to deal with the inescapable grief that death will cause throughout their lives.
It’s a belief that leads the current president of the Funeral Directors’ Association Australia to call on education departments across the country to consider formalising education around the natural cycle of death and dying to help young people learn how to process their grief, shock – and sometimes their existential fear of this inevitable, yet ‘unknown’ event – in the healthiest way possible.
“Death doesn’t discriminate – every single person is going to experience it in various ways, either with warning or as a shock, and whether that’s a family member, friend, acquaintance, teacher or even a pet, when someone close to you passes, grief and pain are inevitable, and more often than not, many of us are ill-equipped to deal with the pain it causes, especially younger people who many not have any experience with death, like most adults do,” she says.
Dooley is the Co-Owner and General Manager of the family-run Grace Funerals in New South Wales and told EducationDaily she sees the pain within families first-hand – an experience that has led her towards a push for greater grief education within the primary and secondary school curriculums.
According to Grief Australia, due to a limited understanding of death, primary school-aged children may have an increased fear in regard to their own death or feel responsible for the deceased’s death.
Feel the Magic also states that each year in Australia, around one in 20 children will experience the death of a parent before age 18.
“To put this statistic into perspective, at least one child in every school classroom is grieving the loss of a parent,” Dooley says.
She points to information from the National Centre for Childhood Grief that states bereaved children often feel different and alone in their grief, leading to social withdrawal and isolation.
“They may have difficulty staying socially and academically engaged. It is also common for bereaved children to experience anxiety due to the dramatically changed circumstances at home,” she says.
“So, it begs the question – why aren’t young children and teenagers taught at school about how to navigate death, coping mechanisms and how to talk to those around them about their feelings, the trauma and anxiety death can cause?”
Creating conversations helps people process grief
Dooley joined her father in the funeral business in 2013, following a 10-year management career within the hotel and events industry in the USA, UK and the Middle East, and has drawn on this experience to introduce many innovations and technology to her own leadership position in the sector.
But, although she can advocate for a change to the curriculum, she knows real change will only happen with the support of families and educators – and that’s a change she says starts with creating what she knows can be an uncomfortable conversation about a finality we all eventually face.
“Death and dying is something all of us experience, but for children, they are often left scared and unsure because it’s not really talked about it until the trauma of it happening to someone close to them,” she told EducationDaily.
“If it was taught openly in schools, it would be a positive way to help young people cope with their own feelings and reactions to the grieving process – and that’s positive for emotional and mental well-being.”
