Children's construction of a deceased parent: the surviving parent's contribution.

Constructing a connection to the deceased is helpful to children in adjusting to the death of a parent. Using interview data from a subset of a larger study of childhood bereavement, this paper describes ways in which parents help children, ages 10-12, build this connection, provides case examples contrasting parental attitudes and behavior that are helpful and those that are not helpful to the child, and offers implications for clinical practice.