The hard days in the year

The sheet

After a death: the days in the year that may be hard, planned ahead together, with what you’ll do on each and who else needs to know.

To fill in together · A4 · One page · PDF, 50 KB

How it helps

After a death, some days in the year bring the loss back: a birthday, the anniversary, a festival, a day when families come into school. Planning ahead means the days don’t take your child by surprise, lets them choose how each one goes, and gives the people around them, including their teacher, time to be ready.

How to use it

1. Sit down together at a calm time and go through the days on the sheet, adding any of your own.
2. For each day, let your child choose what happens. Some children want to mark a day, and others want it to pass like any other.
3. Write in who needs to know, and tell your child’s teacher about any date in term time. With an older child, agree together what the school is told.
4. Keep the sheet, and look at it together each year, because grief often comes back around these dates, even years later.
5. The sheet says when to talk to your child’s school or your GP, and what to do that day if something they say worries you, including any talk, even in passing, of wanting to join the person who has died.

How to get this sheet

This sheet comes with a subscription. It is also yours with its chapter, if that is the chapter you read free, or if a teacher or therapist sends it to you. School staff and therapists signed in to their shelf can print it too.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full, with its sheets. This one goes with When a Child Is Grieving and The Conversations Parents Avoid.

Free to print

These are free to anyone, with nothing to sign up for.

• A plan for a bad dayTo fill in together · A4
• Before you ring the schoolFor a call or a meeting · A4
• What to say: school and friendsCards to cut out · A4, eight cards to cut
• Before the SENCo meetingFor a meeting · A4
• Three reports, side by sideFor a meeting · A4 landscape
• The return-to-school meetingFor a meeting · A4
• The move to secondary school, for a parents’ eveningFor a parents’ evening · A4, five pages
• The last half-hour before bedFor the fridge · A4
• The worry ladderTo fill in together · A4
• Before you see the GP about your childFor an appointment · A4, two sides
• A record of what happenedFor a call or a meeting · A4, two pages
• The people I can tellTo make together · A4, two pages

Every sheet, marked free or with a subscription, is at theparentbook.com/printables.