Strategies for Parents
Adapted from the American Schools Counselor Association

The primary source of support for grieving children will be their family. Based on the understanding of how children conceive death, the stages of grief, and the tasks of mourning, the following are some activities and strategies that parents can utilize:

• Tell the children about the death with clear, honest information;

• Correct any misconceptions;

• Encourage children to express and share their feelings;

• Empathize with anger and reassure that it is part of grief;

• Provide comfort;

• Allow children to participate in memorials, funerals, or other ceremonies associated with death. Prepare them for the experience by explaining what may happen;

• Maintain consistency and predictability of home and school routines;

• Encourage projects such as collected writing, drawings, and pictures into a scrapbook of memories;

• Help the children create and send sympathy cards.

Children and Reactions to Death
Adapted from the National Association of School Psychologists

A child’s need to ask the same questions about death over and over is more of a need for reassurance that the story has not changed rather than a need for factual accuracy. Children also seek adult reactions so they can gauge their own reactions. Emotions may be expressed as angry outbursts or misbehaviors that are often not recognized as grief related.

Common reactions for children can be:
• Anxious/fearful
• Sad
• Lonely/vulnerable
• Guilty
• Angry
• Confused/scared
• Withdrawn
• Act aggressively
• Poor attention span/lower grades
• Act like it never happened
• Nightmares/sleep disturbance
• Appetite changes (over or under eating)

Suggestions for parents to support children:
• Answer and encourage questions about illness, death, divorce, disaster, hospitals, etc.;

• Encourage them to talk about their feelings. Use reflective listening;

• Share your grief reactions in order to normalize theirs;

• Read books about death/loss/divorce, etc.;

• Encourage them to seek out other safe, familiar adults when unable to discuss your grief/fears/concerns;

• Encourage physical activities and play;

• Maintain routine and provide good nutritional and sleep patterns;

• Give hope. Children need to know they will enjoy life again;

• Talk about the person who dies/the loss in everyday conversation.

Developmental phases in understanding death
Ages 5-9
This is the age when children begin to understand the finality of death. Death is seen as an accident rather than inevitable. Death is often seen as something that will happen to others not to ourselves.

Ages 10+
Children have the mental development and emotional security to express an understanding of death as a final and inevitable event.