How to Help Children Through Grief and Loss: What the Research Says

Grief is one of the most universal
human experiences — and one of the
most difficult to navigate as a parent,
particularly when the person grieving
is your child. The death of a grandparent,
a pet, a family friend, or — in the
most devastating circumstances — a
parent or sibling; the loss of a
home, a school, a friendship; the
grief of family separation or divorce —
children encounter loss in many forms,
and their capacity to navigate it
is shaped significantly by the support
they receive.

The research on children and grief
is more specific and more hopeful
than the popular conversation typically
acknowledges. This article covers
what grief actually is in children,
how it differs from adult grief,
what the evidence shows helps, and
what the daily practices are that
support children through loss.

What Children’s Grief Actually Is

Grief is the natural human response
to loss — the emotional, cognitive,
physical, and behavioral experience
that follows the loss of something
or someone significant. Research
on grief across the lifespan establishes
that grief is not a pathology —
it is a normal, healthy response
to loss that serves important psychological
functions.

Research by William Worden at Harvard —
whose tasks of mourning model is
one of the most influential frameworks
in grief research — describes grief
not as a passive experience that
happens to people but as an active
process involving four tasks:

Accepting the reality of the loss —
moving from intellectual acknowledgment
to genuine emotional acceptance
that the loss is real and permanent.

Working through the pain of grief —
experiencing and processing the
emotional pain of the loss rather
than avoiding or suppressing it.

Adjusting to a world without
the deceased or the lost thing —
developing new ways of functioning
in the changed reality.

Finding an enduring connection
with the deceased while embarking
on a new life — maintaining a
meaningful inner relationship
with the person or thing lost
while continuing to engage with life.

How Children’s Grief Differs
from Adult Grief

Research on children’s grief
identifies several important ways
in which it differs from adult grief —
differences that have significant
implications for how parents support grieving children:

Children grieve in puddles,
not waves. Research by David
Crenshaw on children’s grief
describes one of the most
important differences: while
adult grief is often experienced
as sustained waves of intense
emotion, children’s grief tends
to come in brief, intense episodes —
“puddles” — followed by apparent
return to normal functioning.

A child who is crying about
a grandparent’s death and
then asks to go and play
fifteen minutes later is not
showing insufficient grief.
They are showing developmentally
normal grief — processing in
the doses that their developing
regulatory systems can manage,
and returning to play as the
primary business of childhood
between grief episodes.

Children’s understanding of
death develops gradually. Research
on children’s concepts of death —
including foundational work
by Maria Nagy and subsequent
researchers — finds that the
full adult understanding of
death as permanent, universal,
inevitable, and involving the
cessation of bodily functions
develops gradually across childhood:

Under age five: Most children
do not fully understand the
permanence or universality
of death. They may expect
the dead person to return,
may ask repeatedly where
they have gone, and may
engage in magical thinking
about the death.

Ages five to eight: Children
develop an increasingly complete
understanding of death’s permanence
and universality — and this
developing understanding can
produce intense anxiety, including
fear of their own death and
the death of remaining loved ones.

Ages eight and above: Most
children have developed an
adult-level cognitive understanding
of death — though the emotional
processing of significant loss
continues to develop and deepen
across adolescence.

Children may grieve the same
loss multiple times. Research
on children’s grief and development
finds that children often
re-grieve significant losses
at different developmental
stages — as their cognitive
and emotional capacity to
fully understand and process
the loss deepens. A child
who lost a parent at age
three may grieve that loss
again at seven, at twelve,
at sixteen — each time with
the understanding and emotional
capacity of their new developmental stage.

Children’s grief is expressed
through behavior as much as
emotion. Research on children’s
grief presentation finds that
children frequently express
grief through behavioral changes
rather than direct emotional
expression — increased aggression,
regression, withdrawal, physical
complaints, changes in sleep
or appetite, difficulty concentrating,
and school refusal.

What Helps Children Through Grief

Honest, age-appropriate communication.
Research on children’s grief
and parental communication
consistently finds that honest,
clear, age-appropriate communication
about death and loss produces
better outcomes than euphemism,
avoidance, or false reassurance.

Using clear language — “died,”
“death,” “dead” — rather than
euphemisms — “passed away,”
“gone to sleep,” “lost” —
helps children understand
the reality of the loss without
the confusion that vague language produces.

Answering children’s questions
honestly and at their level —
including difficult questions
about what happens when we die,
whether it hurts, whether others
will die — is consistently
associated with better child
adjustment than avoidance.

Maintaining routines. Research
on children’s grief and adjustment
finds that the maintenance
of predictable daily routines —
consistent mealtimes, consistent
bedtimes, consistent daily structure —
is one of the most protective
factors during bereavement.
Routine provides the predictability
and felt safety that grief disrupts.

Allowing and validating all
grief responses. Research on
grief and emotional support
finds that children need permission
to grieve in whatever way
feels natural to them — whether
that is crying, anger, silence,
humor, or apparent indifference.
The parent who communicates
that all grief responses are
welcome — that there is no
right or wrong way to grieve —
provides the emotional safety
that genuine grief processing requires.

Sharing your own grief —
appropriately. Research on
parental grief disclosure and
child adjustment finds that
parents who share their own
grief — honestly, at age-appropriate
levels, and with appropriate
self-regulation — help children
understand that grief is normal,
that it is shared, and that
adults can experience intense
emotion and still function.

“I miss Grandpa too. Sometimes
I feel really sad about it.
And I know that we will
be okay, even though it
is really hard right now.”

This kind of honest, regulated
sharing is genuinely helpful.
Parental grief that is uncontrolled
or that places the child in
a caretaking role is not.

Maintaining connection with
the deceased. Research on
continuing bonds theory —
developed by Dennis Klass and
colleagues — finds that maintaining
an ongoing inner connection
with the person who has died —
through memory, through ritual,
through ongoing conversation —
is associated with better
grief outcomes than the earlier
model of grief that emphasized
“letting go.” Helping children
keep the deceased present —
through stories, photographs,
rituals, and ongoing conversation —
supports healthy grief.

Seeking professional support
when needed. Research on
complicated grief in children —
grief that is significantly
more severe or prolonged than
typical — finds that professional
support is beneficial and
that early intervention produces
better outcomes than delayed intervention.

Signs that professional support
may be warranted:
Prolonged and significant
impairment in daily functioning.
Significant regression that
does not ease over time.
Persistent refusal to attend school.
Expressions of wanting to
die or be with the deceased.
Significant guilt about the death.

What Does Not Help

Protecting children from the
reality of death. Research
consistently finds that euphemism
and avoidance — telling children
the person “went to sleep,”
“is in a better place,” or
“went away” — creates confusion,
anxiety, and mistrust rather
than protection.

Rushing the grief. Research
on grief and recovery finds
that grief has its own timeline —
and that rushing children
through it, or communicating
that they should be “over it”
by a certain point, undermines
the processing that healthy
grief requires.

Hiding your own grief entirely.
Research finds that parents
who hide their grief completely —
in an attempt to appear strong
for their children — model
emotional suppression rather
than healthy grief, and deprive
children of the normalizing
experience of seeing that
adults grieve too.

Avoiding mention of the deceased.
Research on continuing bonds
and child adjustment finds
that avoiding mention of the
deceased — out of fear of
upsetting the child — is
associated with worse outcomes
than keeping the deceased
present through story and memory.

Try This This Week

Practice 1 — The Memory Practice
What it is: A regular,
warm practice of keeping
the deceased present through
shared memory — supporting
the continuing bond that
research finds protective.

How to do it: Once each week,
find a natural moment to
share a specific memory of
the person who has died:

“I was thinking about Grandma
today — do you remember
how she always did that thing
with her hands when she laughed?”
“I saw something today that
made me think of Dad.
What do you remember most about him?”
“Let’s look at some photos
of [name] together tonight.”

Invite the child to share
their own memories. Listen
without rushing. Allow tears
and laughter equally.

Why it works: Research on
continuing bonds theory and
child grief finds that maintaining
an ongoing inner connection
with the deceased — through
memory, story, and ritual —
is associated with significantly
better grief outcomes than
approaches that emphasize
letting go. The Memory Practice
keeps this connection alive deliberately and warmly.

Practice 2 — The Feelings Check-In
What it is: A brief, regular
check-in specifically about
the grief — giving the child
a consistent, low-pressure
opportunity to share how
they are feeling about the loss.

How to do it: At a consistent,
calm daily moment — at bedtime,
in the car, at dinner — ask
one simple, open question about the grief:

“How are you feeling about
[name] today?”
“Is there anything about
[name] on your mind?”
“Sometimes I feel sad about
[name] at unexpected times —
do you have moments like that?”

Listen without fixing or rushing.
If they say nothing — that
is okay. The offer itself matters.

Why it works: Research on
children’s grief and communication
finds that children who have
a consistent, reliable channel
for sharing grief with parents
show better adjustment than
those who grieve in isolation.
The Feelings Check-In keeps
this channel open without
pressure or performance expectation.

Practice 3 — The Ritual of Remembrance
What it is: A simple, regular
family ritual that honors
and remembers the person
who has died — providing
the structure and continuity
that grief rituals have provided
across cultures throughout human history.

How to do it: Together with
your child, create one simple,
regular ritual of remembrance:

Lighting a candle on special
occasions and sharing a memory.
Visiting a meaningful place
connected to the deceased.
Looking at photographs together
on anniversaries or birthdays.
Making a recipe the person
loved and talking about them while cooking.
Doing an activity the person
loved and talking about how
they would have enjoyed it.

The ritual does not need
to be elaborate. It needs
to be consistent and genuine —
a regular moment where the
person who has died is remembered
and honored together.

Why it works: Research on
grief rituals and bereavement
outcomes finds that consistent
rituals of remembrance provide
structure, shared meaning,
and ongoing connection that
significantly support healthy
grief processing. The Ritual
of Remembrance creates this
structure deliberately and makes it a consistent family practice.

The Bottom Line

Children grieve. They grieve
differently from adults —
in puddles rather than waves,
through behavior as much as
emotion, and repeatedly as
their understanding deepens
across development. But they
grieve genuinely and they
need genuine support.

The research is clear about
what helps most: honest,
age-appropriate communication;
maintained routines; permission
for all grief responses;
shared memory and continuing
connection with the deceased;
and the warm, stable presence
of a parent who grieves too —
and who shows that grief
can be carried and life can continue.

You do not need to protect
your child from grief. You
need to accompany them through it —
present, honest, warm, and
unafraid of the feeling.

That accompaniment is the
most important thing you can provide.

Sources

Worden, J. W. (2018).
Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy
(5th ed.). Springer.

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., &
Nickman, S. L. (1996).
Continuing Bonds: New Understandings
of Grief. Taylor & Francis.

Webb, N. B. (2010).
Helping Bereaved Children
(3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Childhood Bereavement Network. (2021).
Key Statistics.
childhoodbereavementnetwork.org.uk