A close relative passed away just recently, leaving behind two young children. I can't begin to describe how heavy this is or how watching an innocent child navigate the world without a parent makes every day feel heavier. I wonder how they are doing with this experience and how it affects their day-to-day lives. Watching children mourn the death of a parent leads to many questions: How do children understand or process death? How can we support children through this process?
Research about childhood bereavement helps add structure to an otherwise overwhelming situation. This research also provides language and patterns that help adults respond to a child with care instead of fear.
A growing body of research seeks to clarify how children experience grief and what kind of support they can provide to them following the death of their parent. Research has established the fact that losing a parent during childhood can have lasting effects on a child's emotional development, school performance and mental health.
While children do not grieve in the manner that adults do, they grieve differently. Children often show distress through disruption in their daily activity patterns; for example, children may be increasingly clingy, withdraw completely, experience anger and/or also have violent outbursts.
Bereavement studies found that children's bereavement outcomes are affected by their immediate environment following bereavement; longer adaptation following bereavement is attributable to their impaired physical environment (i.e., routines disrupted, caregiver changes frequently and adults avoiding the conversation of death with children). Overall, they found that one of the strongest protective factors for emotional well-being was having a stable and clear environment.
Children's knowledge of death and how they grieve will evolve through the developmental continuum. Children in pre-school typically engage in "magical thinking" at this age, believing that they caused the death or are afraid that their caregivers may disappear from them. When children enter school, there is often greater anxiety regarding their safety and future. Adolescents frequently express their grief with anger, silence, risk-taking behaviour, or social withdrawal. William Worden, a psychologist who has been a leader in the study of grief and has stated that grief "re-patterns itself at every level of the developmental continuum" indicating that as children mature, their understanding and expression of grief will continue to change.
The literature stresses the importance of consistent adult-to-child relationships outside the immediate family. Having play opportunities, creative outlets for expression and time for informal discussions provide children with the opportunity to talk about their grief without putting them in an adult-oriented communication relationship. According to Hoppe et al., "Children's grief is unique and dynamic," with unconditional adults providing comfort and stable living environments being critical to children's ability to build resilience.
The quality of a child's emotional support is tied to the practical support, including sleep patterns (regular bedtime), school routines (regular attendance), and the family unit (frequency and shared experience of meals).
There are many case studies in clinical training and practice to illustrate the various means of supporting siblings who have experienced bereavement. In one frequently cited approximately 12-year-old sibling and her 6-year-old sibling have both demonstrated the same behaviour of their dependence, in that the older sibling would use her grandmother as a comfort object while the younger sibling wanted her grandmother to be close at all times. With both children affected differently by the disruption to their routines, the grandmother iimplemented simple memory sharing such as drawing pictures of the deceased parent and a recall of memories through small ritual events, At the same time, she worked to restore daily structure at home and school. By using both approaches of returning to the structure of school and home while also honouring their deceased parent's life, both siblings learned to regain a sense of security, while adjusting their own way.
The authors highlight the significance of the role adults play in supporting children during bereavement. Christ and Worden found that children experience less anxiety and behaviour problems when they receive age-appropriate explanations of death in conjunction with the ability to participate in play and quiet conversations.
The authors noted that using everyday words to describe death and honestly answering the questions asked by children is essential to limiting children's confusion and anxiety following the death of a parent. Having consistent structures to allow children the opportunity to express their grief in a manner that does not disrupt their daily life is important.
There are many schools and community programs that are providing a larger part of the network of support services to assist children and their families during bereavement. Counselling can help identify children whose behaviour is due to potentially unresolved grief. In many situations, child bereavement organisations help restore a child's sense of agency by allowing them to assume many of the same responsibilities such as making their beds, washing and/or folding clothing, etc. that they have historically (or will) performed following the death of a parent.
Hoppe et al. found that community-level interventions improve a child’s overall welfare when they support, rather than replace, stable caregiving environments.
Although grief will never be gone for children, research suggests that children can incorporate grief into their everyday life in a way that enhances their long-term development. Many experts contend that the response to should move away from intermittent support and focus on long-term resources, especially for low-income families experiencing additional burdens such as homelessness and limited mental health resources.
As William Worden noted, adults should not attempt to remove or eliminate a child's grief; adults should assist children in growing up while carrying a deceased parent's memory alongside their own social, academic and emotional development.
References:
Hoppe, R., et al. (2025). When a parent dies: A scoping review of protective and risk processes for childhood bereavement. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2024.2340729
Worden, J. W. (2018). Children and Grief: When a Parent Dies. Guilford Press.
Christ, G., et al. (2002). Helping Children Cope with the Death of a Parent. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.288.10.1269
The Laura Centre. (n.d.). The needs of bereaved children. https://thelauracentre.org.uk/the-needs-of-bereaved-children
Image Credit: create.vista