How to plan a funeral for a child

Published: 12/08/2009 by FHR Team

Planning a funeral is hard enough. But when that funeral is for your child, or the child of a loved one, it is even harder. After all, children are supposed to bury their parents, not the other way around. However, it must be done, no matter how difficult planning a children’s funeral may be. Funerals are for the living and remembering the deceased, and are an important step in the grieving process.
The following items are designed to help you plan a child’s funeral. If you retain the services of a funeral director, they will be able to do, or assist you with, most of these items to make it easier for you.
• Choose a nearby funeral home. You may be making several trips to and from the funeral home, so selecting one nearby can be a timesaver as well as offer you comfort of being in your own town.
• Pick out a coffin or urn and choose whether, if a casket, you want it open for the funeral, and whether you want a viewing. Also consider small touches like burying the child with a favorite toy, book or blanket
• Contact the church or other venue to arrange for a date and time for the funeral. Your funeral director can also do this for you, but your input is very important.
• Arrange for a time before the funeral for viewing, memorial service, prayer services or any religious requirements
• Order flowers for the casket and grave site. If you arrange this through the funeral home, they may also help you with creative ‘child-like’ ideas such as seed packets or bubbles.
• Call family members to invite them and to ask if any of them wish to speak, sing, or offer a reading at the service. Also ask them to pass the word to anyone you might have forgotten to call.
• Play your child’s favorite music at the funeral. Even its silly ‘children’s songs’- if it was important to them, it’s nice to honor their loves- and for children, sometimes music means the world to them! If they listened to ‘itsy bitsy spider’ 500 times during the day, let them hear it once more.
• Take things one day at a time and use all the support that you can get. Ask for help planning the funeral if you need it.