How do you deal with your child missing the other parent?

Keep reminding him and yourself that you will eventually be reunited with your missing other. Meantime keep the door open for someone to step in and take over the work.
Peace to you.

Good question... and i was hoping to get some advice from the answers, but i see we don't have much at the moment... Did you mean only for widows though?

How does divorced parents do it?

How does unwed/abandoned parents do it?

At the moment my son's still too young to ask much about these things, but i'm sure he'll start soon enough and then advice would be pretty handy...

I made a scrap book for my daughter as well. She is 13 y/o and lost her dad when she was 13 months old. I tell her when she acts like him. I also let her know what features she has that are his. I love sharing stories with her and watching home movies.

I think there is a huge difference between a child whose parent has died to parents being divorced.

For children whose parents have died-- I think lots of pictures and reminders of the times they had.. even watching home videos is great.

For me and my children( I am divorcedx8 years) The kids have pictures in their rooms allow with I gave them all the wedding pictures videos and stuff.
At their age now I leave it up to their father to keep them updated on pictures and stuff. they also email and IM with him occasionally.

With death I think you have to keep a living memory of that person-- I know I do of my gramma.

With divorce there is a thin line..I mean you wnat your children to not harbour the feeling of getting back together and all.

And every child-- every situation is different.

Good Luck!

I agree there's a huge difference when the other parent is deceased other than just not involved with them. I deal with disbelief that he can be so shallow and pray that she ( my daughter) forgives him as she ages. I keep her involved with family and my boyfriend whom she loves. It helps for her to know she is loved and the person who is her biological father is not able to live with us due to sickness I tell her. As she gets older she will understand more.

I wish I knew how old your son is. That would make it easier to answer you.

I was a teenager when my father died suddenly, and very unexpectedly.
I needed things around me that reminded me of Daddy. Pillow cases that held the scent of his after shave. His favorite hand-tied flies for his fishing rod.

I needed to be able to talk about him without adults changing the track of the conversation. If I was in the mood to cry over missing him, I needed to be allowed to cry. If I was in the mood to laugh about a memory of him, I needed other people to laugh with me.

Sometimes I needed to talk about how and why he died.

It was wonderful of you to make the scrapbook. If you have any other pictures at all, you may want to make copies of them, or scan them on a computer, and let your son arrange them himself.

If there were special things he did with his father, help him keep doing them. I was hysterical when I found out that someone gave away Dad's rifles and fishing reels. It was like another loss. When my Uncle heard that, he came and got me, with Dad's best friend, and took me fishing with them, like Dad and his best friend used to do.

When my children were young, their great grandmother passed away. She was a woman they loved very, much, and she had lived near us. I noticed that my son was especially withdrawn, and he was very little. I took him by the hand one day, for a walk, and he started crying. I realized that it was the same walk his G-G took him on. So I asked him if he missed her. He said yes. I asked him if he wanted to see her flowers. He nodded. We went to her house, and I asked the couple there if they minded if my little boy visited G-G's flowers. They understood, and agreed.
He went out into her yard, like he did with her, drug me from flower to flower, and then pulled up an Iris, and handed it to me, all smiles.

I said, "G-G loved you a lot."
He nodded and said, "Love G-G, but G-G gone gone."

I said, "Remember G-G's train?"
He nodded, I said, "Let's get a train like G-G's!"
And we went to the toy store and bought a toy train like the one she had kept for him at her house.

For days he played with it, then slept with it.