Grief Doesn't Wait for Kids to be Ready — and Neither Should We

A child with a mask she has painted to show the grief she is holding inside from the loss of a loved one. Courtesy: Highmark Caring Place in Pittsburgh.

Death rarely offers a warning, and grief doesn’t wait for anyone to be ready — so adults have to imagine and practice how to show up for children when the worst blows come. Nearly 10% of children in the United States will lose a parent or sibling before their 18th birthday. The grief they carry is often overlooked by adults around them — usually because we don’t know what to do with our own pain, writes Keisha Wint, a social worker and professor at Binghamton University in a guest column for The Conversation.

“When I was a school social worker, a teary-eyed father once came to the school to tell his 4-year-old daughter’s teacher that the child’s mother had been in an accident. He did not speak to his child as she looked on but simply relayed pickup arrangements to the teacher, before he hurried to the hospital. I have never forgotten the sad, confused look on that young child’s face as her father left without looking in her direction,” Wint wrote.

Young children are especially vulnerable to having their grief overlooked or dismissed, in part because adults underestimate how much kids can understand about loss and death when given the chance. Grief isn’t only a response to death, either — moving, divorce or even disruptions like the pandemic can trigger the same complex emotions in children, though families and educators don’t always recognize it as grief when it shows up that way.

Too often, grown-ups avoid tough topics altogether to spare children (and themselves) pain — but that just leaves kids alone to carry complex emotions. It’s critical for adults to stay age-appropriately honest and open to the possibility that a child’s grief may not look the way they expect, Wint says. It might show up as regression — thumb-sucking, toileting accidents — or as stomachaches, insomnia or emotional outbursts. The response that works best, Wint argues, is care and support, not reactive discipline.

Moreover, a single death rarely stays contained. Some can trigger a cascade of losses in income, childcare and even health insurance in what scholars call the “bereavement multiplier.” Schools are often expected to help absorb that impact, but Wint has found that teachers, already stretched thin with their academic responsibilities, feel ill-equipped to provide the right support. School districts would do well to provide training to prepare teachers on how to navigate such challenges when they arrive.

Most of all, Wint’s guidance is to be warm and direct: use simple, honest language to discuss whatever happened, not euphemisms — especially in the case of death. “He’s in a better place” or “she went to sleep” can confuse and frighten children, who are often more concrete thinkers. It may also help to introduce the concept of death early, before any person has died, through something as natural as a plant or insect’s life cycle. “Silence in the face of loss and grief can be harmful,” Wint writes, “and lies can erode trust and stability at a time when both are most needed.”