Helping Children Deal With Grief

It's natural for adults to want to protect the children they love from pain and sorrow. However, it's impossible to protect anyone from the realities of life. Inevitably, some sort of loss with impact every child. It might be the death of a pet, a house fire, or losing a grandparent. No matter what triggers the grief, when it happens the children impacted will feel pain, anxiety, and heartbreak. Adults must also manage their feelings about the loss while helping their kids cope.

Offering a Sense of Safety Through Boundaries

Kids thrive when they have consistency. That consistency includes boundaries. Let kids know that basic expectations are still in place. It's not okay for kids to be rude, break things, refuse to do homework, or avoid necessary chores. If a child does start regularly pushing back against boundaries it's usually a sign they aren't coping well with the grief and that they need more support, including professional help.

• Parenting After Trauma: Understanding Your Child's Needs: Children need consistency so they know they can trust the adults in their lives. This is especially true after trauma, including the loss of a loved one.

• 10 Tips for Disciplining Traumatized Children*: Grieving kids need boundaries, but it's important that adults not set up power struggles with grieving children.

• Parenting a Child Who Has Experienced Trauma (PDF): Boundaries are an essential part of meeting a child's need to feel safe and loved.

Letting Go of Expectations

Every child will react differently to grief. Some might bury themselves in homework, while another, who once was on the honor roll, starts failing classes. One child might need to talk about the loss and the grief regularly, and another child might not want to talk about it all. Kids need clear rules and to maintain a normal routine, but adults need to understand that they may need to be flexible with some expectations, within the bounds of consistency and in support of the child's overall well-being. It's normal for kids to experience some behavioral regression, sleep issues, mood disturbances, and problems at school. Stay supportive and seek help if needed.

• When Children Grieve: 7 Strategies to Help Them Cope: It's important to be flexible with expectations. Each child will grieve differently, and some kids will regress. A five-year-old who long ago stopped sucking their thumb will sometimes start again.

• How Grief May Affect Children (PDF): The way a child reacts to grief depends on their personality, their age, and the support they receive during the process.

• How to Handle Grief: It's normal for children to revisit the stages of grief as they hit each new stage of development.

Encourage Children to Express Emotions

Kids do best when surrounded by adults who can model their feelings and how to work through them without burdening the child with caring for them or without losing control of their emotions. Kids surrounded by adults who bottle up their emotions and don't express their feelings about grief are less likely to express and work through their own feelings. How do adults model talking about grief in a healthy manner? By saying things like "I really miss [lost loved one] right now" or "I'm feeling really sad" instead of saying things like "I can't take this" or "Things will never be okay again."

• How Can I Help My Child Express Feelings About Grief?: Adults want to protect kids, but sometimes that means kids don't have the information they need to understand what happened.

• Helping Children with Grief: Adults can model how to talk about feelings honestly and constructively.

• Children's Grief: What Does it Look Like? How Can You Help? (PDF): Children shouldn't be expected to comfort adults, but seeing adults express their grief will helps kids express their own.

Stick to a Routine

During times of grief, plan family schedules may need to be changed and this can be hard for young children who rely on routines to feel safe and secure. When plan needs to change to accommodate important services or activities, talk about the plans and changes to the routine ahead of time. This gives children a chance to process some of the changes. It can also be helpful to include familiar faces, family and close friends, in any necessary childcare during these times, as it can be helpful to maintain important routines. It may be important to a family to have kids be with family and attend events like funerals, however, it's also important to get them back to their normal daily lives as soon as possible so that they understand that their lives must continue.

• Returning to Routine & Structure After a Loss: Getting back to a daily routine is very hard for adults and (children), but is a necessary part of working through grief and resuming normal life.

• Helping Children Deal With Grief: Kids are reassured by routines, and maintaining the basics of their daily schedules will help them cope.

• Helping a Child Cope with the Loss of a Loved One: If necessary, families experiencing grief should reach out and accept help to minimize the disruption of their child's daily routine.

Listen Without Judgment

It's important to listen when children talk. Grieving children may need to talk about all their feelings, their worries, their concerns, and all the ways they are grappling with understanding their loss. It's not helpful to be told not to be upset. The child is already upset. It's more effective to listen and offer reassurance when acceptable. It's also important to correct any misunderstandings the child has about what happened.

• How to Help Grieving Children: Kids should feel free to express all of their emotions and thoughts. One way to facilitate this is by adults asking the children questions about how they are and what they are feeling.

• Tips for Supporting Grieving Children (PDF): Listen to children without offering solutions or giving opinions about what they are saying.

• Grieving Children: Talking to Your Kids About Loss: Telling (children) not to feel sad or scared makes children feel guilty for having these very normal feelings.

Answering Questions: Even The Hard Ones

Children and teens often struggle to understand loss and understand how their lives will proceed. Adults must give age-appropriate answers to all the questions kids have. These questions can be triggering for adults and hard to answer. It's a good idea to consider the kinds of questions a child may have and work on some basic answers before speaking with them. That way kids will get the information they need.

• Questions and Answers about Children's Grief (PDF): Children must be allowed to ask questions about their loss and the grieving process, and adults need to be comforting but honest when answering the questions.

• Questions Children May Ask: Adults can prepare to answer kids' questions by understanding the type of questions children typically ask.

• Hard Questions Children Ask in Grief: One question many children have is if other people they love will also die.