Browsing by Author "Tarmo, Eero"

Objectives. Death of a close relative is personal and challenging experience that everyone has to encounter at some point in life. Coaching to face grief and loss is generally seen as one of the basic tasks of children's literature. The objective of this study was to unravel the ways of describing and dealing with death in four Finnish children's books of my research material. According to previous studies the ways of describing and dealing with death in children's literature have been variated from 1600s to the 21st century. Today's models and grievances associated with grieving child and adult's role in research material are made visible in this study. Research methods. My Master's Thesis was a qualitative study and content analysis was used as research method. I examined the children's books of my research material by specifying and finding narrative solutions, similarities and differences between books related to ways of dealing with death. Due to the abstract nature of death as a phenomenon of human life, I took a data-driven, inductive approach to the ways of dealing with death in books I have chosen as my research material. In the end I presented my perceptions connected with previous studies. Results and conclusions. Subjectively experienced meanings were seen as key point of my study. Complexity of the grieving process got highlighted and on the basis of research material, the ways of dealing with death seemed to be clearly connected with development in childhood. The results of my study show that adults should learn how to become sensitive to child's non-verbal signals, recognize grief and individual ways of grieving as well as respect and strive to support child in grief caused by death of a close relative.