Hi,
I’m alternating Q&A and 2-min videos. This week’s question is about kids and grief.
Warm wishes,
Q: My father recently died. He was a very loving and involved grandpa for my kids. My 11-year old is very, very sad. My 8-year old mostly seems confused, but I know he’s going to miss his grandpa terribly. How can I support my children, especially when I’m grieving, too?
Please accept my sincere condolences. It’s so hard to lose someone we love.
Here are some ideas that I hope you’ll find helpful.
Let your children grieve in their own way
There are various models of stages of grief out there, but the truth is that grief is a very personal thing. People skip stages and do the stages backwards and make up their own stages… Grief can also be unpredictable. A situation that you think is going to be horribly difficult might turn out to be not so bad, but then you might run across a paper clip that your loved one used and the grief hits like a gut punch.
There is no one right way to grieve. If your child doesn’t cry, don’t assume they are “holding things in” in an unhealthy way or that your child didn’t really love the deceased. If they ask anxious but morbid questions about dead bodies, or keep asking the same question, or become worried about their own death, or just seem confused… this is all common. They’re just trying to figure things out.
There are developmental stages in how children understand death that can impact how they grieve. These are general trends, so of course individual children may or may not fit them.
Children are also concrete thinkers, so they may ask about practical issues that impact them, such as “Who will pick me up from school, now?” Answer as best you can or tell them when you’ll figure it out. They’re not being selfish; they’re trying to understand the implications of the loss and deal with uncertainty about how their world works now.