

While you can’t protect children from loss and the pain it may cause, you can play a major role in helping them feel secure and cope in the healthiest way possible. It is likely that you, too, are grieving and trying to deal with your own emotions. Knowing what to say and how to support children during this time isn’t easy. As children get older they may begin to understand more, but will still need help from their parents and other caregivers on how to process and cope with loss. It is also normal for a child to feel angry at the person who has died (or someone else entirely). On the other hand, they might not seem too concerned about it, or even go from crying one moment to wanting to play the next. They may worry they have done something to cause the death. Young children may not even understand what death means, or that people who have died won’t be coming back. It is a fact that children grieve differently from adults. This can come down to personality as well as developmental age.

If you have several children, you may find that they express how they are feeling in surprisingly divergent ways. We all cope with death and grief differently.
