How to Help a Child Through Grief: What the Research Says

Grief is one of the most challenging
experiences a child can face — and
one of the experiences where parental
response matters most. Research consistently
finds that children can and do grieve
genuinely — even very young children —
and that how the adults around them
respond significantly affects whether
children move through grief in healthy
ways or whether grief becomes complicated
and lasting.

This article covers what the research
shows about helping children through
grief — what childhood grief actually
looks like, what helps, and what parents
can specifically do.

What Childhood Grief Actually Is

Research on childhood bereavement —
including significant work by William
Worden at Harvard Medical School —
finds that children grieve genuinely
and significantly — but that childhood
grief looks different from adult grief
in several important ways:

Children grieve in waves —
not continuously. Research finds
that children — unlike adults —
typically grieve in waves rather
than continuously. A child may
be intensely distressed and
then playing happily minutes
later. This is not denial or
lack of feeling — it is the
characteristic pattern of childhood grief.

Children revisit grief at different
developmental stages. Research
on childhood grief and development —
including work by David Schonfeld —
finds that children frequently
revisit grief as they reach
new developmental stages and
develop greater cognitive capacity
to understand the loss. A child
who seemed to cope well at
six may show renewed grief
at ten as they more fully understand
the permanence of the loss.

Children’s understanding of
death develops over time. Research
on children’s understanding
of death identifies developmental stages:

Under five — limited understanding
of death’s permanence. May
believe the person will return.
Ages five to seven — beginning
to understand permanence but
may have magical thinking about causation.
Ages seven to eleven — understanding
permanence, universality, and
biological causation.
Adolescence — adult-like understanding
with heightened existential concerns.

What Childhood Grief Looks Like

Research on childhood grief presentation
finds that grief looks different
at different ages:

Young children (under five):
Regression to earlier behaviors —
bedwetting, thumb-sucking, baby talk.
Separation anxiety — increased
clinginess with remaining caregivers.
Repetitive questions about
the deceased — “where did
they go?”, “when are they coming back?”
Play that incorporates the
death — playing at funerals,
playing at being dead.
Physical complaints — stomachaches, headaches.

School-age children (six to twelve):
More adult-like grief responses —
sadness, crying, missing the person.
Difficulty concentrating at school.
Behavioral changes — withdrawal
or acting out.
Anxiety about their own death
or the death of other loved ones.
Guilt — “did I cause this?”
Anger — at the deceased for
leaving, at the surviving parent,
at God or the universe.

Adolescents:
More adult-like grief — with
the added complexity of adolescent
development.
Turning to peers rather than
parents for support.
Risk-taking behavior as a
response to grief.
Existential questioning —
about the meaning of life and death.
Depression and anxiety associated with the loss.

What the Research Shows Helps

Honest, age-appropriate communication
about the death. Research on
childhood bereavement consistently
finds that honest, clear, age-appropriate
communication about what happened —
using direct language rather
than euphemisms — significantly
supports healthy grief.

Research finding: euphemisms —
“passed away,” “gone to sleep,”
“lost” — can confuse young
children and produce additional anxiety.
Direct, gentle language —
“died,” “death,” “dead” —
is more developmentally helpful.

Age-appropriate explanations:
For young children: “Grandpa
died. That means his body
stopped working and he can’t
come back. We will always
love him and miss him.”
For school-age: More detail
about the cause of death —
appropriate to what happened.
For adolescents: Full honest
information — with space for
questions.

Maintaining consistent routines.
Research on grief and routine
finds that maintaining consistent
daily routines — mealtimes,
bedtimes, school — provides
the structure and predictability
that grieving children particularly
need. Routine communicates
safety and continuity when
the child’s world feels uncertain.

Allowing and validating all
emotions. Research on emotional
expression and grief finds
that children who are allowed
and encouraged to express the
full range of grief emotions —
sadness, anger, guilt, fear,
even relief — show significantly
better grief outcomes than
those who are told how they
should feel or whose emotions are dismissed.

“It’s okay to feel angry.”
“It’s okay to feel sad.”
“It’s okay to feel happy sometimes too —
grief doesn’t mean you have
to feel sad all the time.”

Staying connected and available.
Research on attachment and
grief finds that the most important
factor in childhood grief outcomes
is the quality and availability
of the surviving caregiver —
the child’s felt security that
the remaining attachment figures
are present, available, and
will not also disappear.

Answering questions honestly
and repeatedly. Research on
children’s grief questions finds
that children frequently ask
the same questions repeatedly —
not because they didn’t hear
the answer but because they
are processing it gradually.
Answering honestly and patiently —
every time — is important.

Maintaining connection to
the deceased. Research on continuing
bonds theory — including work
by Phyllis Silverman — finds
that maintaining a continuing
bond with the deceased — through
memories, photos, stories,
rituals — significantly supports
healthy grief in children rather
than impeding it.

Practical ways to maintain
connection:
Looking at photos and sharing memories.
Telling stories about the deceased.
Keeping meaningful objects.
Visiting the grave or memorial.
Acknowledging anniversaries and birthdays.

Allowing children to participate
in mourning rituals. Research
on funeral participation and
childhood grief finds that
allowing children — with preparation
and choice — to participate
in funerals and mourning rituals
significantly supports healthy grief.
Children who are excluded from
rituals often feel further isolated
in their grief.

Preparation is important —
explaining what will happen,
what they will see, who will
be there, what is expected.

Seeking professional support
when needed. Research on childhood
bereavement and professional
support finds that most children
move through grief without
requiring professional intervention —
given adequate family support.
But research supports professional
support when:

Grief is significantly impairing
functioning for more than six weeks.
The child expresses thoughts
of self-harm or wanting to
die to be with the deceased.
The child shows significant
regression or behavioral change
that does not improve.
The surviving parent is significantly
incapacitated by their own grief.

What Does Not Help

Protecting children from the
truth. Research on information
and childhood grief consistently
finds that children who are
not told the truth — or who
discover the truth from others —
show significantly worse grief
outcomes than those who are
told honestly.

Telling children how to feel.
Research on emotional validation
and grief finds that telling
children they should be brave,
that the deceased is in a better
place and they should be happy,
or that they need to be strong
for remaining family members —
prevents the genuine emotional
expression that healthy grief requires.

Rushed return to normal. Research
on grief and recovery finds
that pressuring children to
return to normal too quickly —
before grief has been adequately
processed — impairs rather
than supports healthy grief.

Try This This Week

Practice 1 — The Memory Sharing Practice
What it is: A deliberate daily
practice of sharing memories
of the deceased — maintaining
the connection that research
finds supports healthy grief.

How to do it: Once each day —
find a genuine moment to share
a memory:

“I was thinking about Grandma
today — do you remember when
she used to [specific memory]?”
Look at a photo together
and share a story.
Tell the child something about
the deceased they might not know.

Invite the child to share
their own memories too.

Why it works: Research on
continuing bonds and childhood
grief consistently finds that
maintaining connection to the
deceased — through memories,
stories, and shared recollection —
significantly supports healthy
grief and reduces the sense
of total loss.

Practice 2 — The Feeling Validation Practice
What it is: A deliberate daily
practice of validating all grief
emotions — building the emotional
permission that healthy grief requires.

How to do it: This week when
your child shows any grief-related
emotion — validate it specifically
and genuinely:

Sadness: “It makes complete
sense that you feel sad. Missing
someone you love is one of
the hardest feelings.”
Anger: “It’s okay to feel
angry. When someone we love
dies it can feel very unfair.”
Happiness: “It’s completely
okay to feel happy sometimes —
even when we’re grieving.
[Person] would want you to
have happy moments.”

Why it works: Research on
emotional expression and grief
consistently finds that children
who feel genuinely permitted
to express all grief emotions —
without being told how they
should feel — show significantly
healthier grief trajectories
than those whose emotions are dismissed or redirected.

Practice 3 — The Routine Protection Practice
What it is: A deliberate commitment
to maintaining consistent daily
routines — providing the structure
that grieving children particularly need.

How to do it: This week identify
the most important daily routines
for your child — and hold them
consistently:

Consistent mealtimes.
Consistent bedtime and bedtime routine.
School attendance where possible.
Consistent physical activity.

Hold them even when grief
makes it feel hard.

Why it works: Research on
routine and childhood grief
consistently finds that consistent
daily routines — maintained
through the grief period —
significantly support children’s
felt security and grief processing
by providing predictability
and continuity in a world that
feels uncertain and unsafe.

The Bottom Line

Children grieve genuinely —
and how the adults around them
respond significantly shapes
whether that grief is healthy
or complicated. The research
is clear: honest age-appropriate
communication; consistent routines;
validation of all emotions;
parental availability and warmth;
maintained connection to the
deceased through memory and ritual;
and patient repeated answering
of children’s questions — together
provide the most important
support for grieving children.

The grieving child who is
told the truth, whose emotions
are fully accepted, who maintains
connection to the person they
have lost, and who has a consistent
warm available caregiver —
has the most important resources
for moving through grief in
healthy ways.

Sources

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

Schonfeld, D. J., & Quackenbush, M.
(2010). The Grieving Student.
Paul H. Brookes.

Silverman, P. R., & Klass, D.
(1996). Introduction: What’s
the problem? In D. Klass,
P. R. Silverman, & S. L. Nickman (Eds.),
Continuing Bonds. Taylor & Francis.

Worden, J. W., & Silverman, P. R.
(1996). Parental death and
the adjustment of school-age children.
Omega: Journal of Death and Dying,
33(2), 91–102.