Helping kids get to know a deceased sibling they never knew
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Heather Spohr, Mom & Blogger, shares advice from experience after losing a child of her own, on how help kids get to know a deceased sibling they never knew
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My oldest daughter, Madeline, died before my younger daughter, Annabelle, was born. And it’s been a very large priority for me and my husband to make sure that Annabelle knows Madeline. So we’re very… we try to do it very naturally. We have her pictures up all over the house. And we point to them and say, “That’s Maddie, that’s your sister.” The same way that we point to pictures of our parents and say, “That’s your grandma, that’s your grandpa.” So we try to make it a very natural thing. We talk about her like we talk about anybody else.
We just are very cognizant of the fact that she’s not a secret, she’s something that we want to keep from her. It’s going to be an uncomfortable subject at some points when she asks questions that we don’t really know how to answer. But it’s her sister and she deserves to know her as much as she possibly can.
So we just make her part of our lives every day. And we don’t force it, it’s just if it comes up – she sees a photo – we just say, “That’s your sister.” And we’ll show her a video sometimes and just keep it very natural and organic and hopefully that’s going to, down the line, let Annabelle know who her sister was.
Heather Spohr, Mom & Blogger, shares advice from experience after losing a child of her own, on how help kids get to know a deceased sibling they never knew
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Heather SpohrBlogger & Mom
Heather Spohr is a writer and philanthropist who blogs at the award-winning blog, "The Spohrs Are Multiplying". She is a top fundraiser for the March of Dimes and the President and Co-Founder of “Friends Of Maddie,” a charitable organization that supports the families of critically ill babies in Neonatal Intensive Care Units. She has spoken at numerous conferences, on CNN, and before members of Congress.
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