When I was a school social worker, a teary-eyed father once came to the school to tell his 4-year-old daughter’s teacher that the child’s mother had been in an accident. He did not speak to his child as she looked on but simply relayed pickup arrangements to the teacher, before he hurried to the hospital.
One of my roles at this time, in 2015, was helping teachers and administrators respond to preschool students’ social and emotional needs. I have never forgotten the sad, confused look on that young child’s face as her father left without looking in her direction.
Grief is part of the human experience and can occur at any time.
Recent data indicates that 1 in 11 children in the U.S. will experience the death of a parent or sibling by age 18.
A caregiver’s response to painful experiences of loss during a child’s early years can have lasting implications for how children navigate future losses.
Loss generally refers to the end of an attachment bond, which could be with a person, place or thing. Grief is defined as the subsequent internal, emotional response to that loss.
As a 10-year-old, I migrated from the Caribbean to the United States. I navigated conflicting emotions as I left my routines, friends and some family behind to live in a new country. But those feelings were not affirmed or validated. Everyone around me told me this new change was for the best.
This made me feel isolated, and I ultimately remained silent about my grief.
In recent years, more people have recognized that grief can come not just from death but various other experiences, such as moving, or the loss of safety and community that people experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, many families and educators do not always know how to talk about grief and loss, especially with children.
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How children show their grief
Younger children are particularly vulnerable to having their grief overlooked, ignored or complicated by mixed messages from adults.
Adults often underestimate a child’s capacity to understand loss or death, so they avoid the topic entirely, perhaps out of fear of causing further hurt.
Children can sometimes handle loss in ways that adults find challenging or disruptive. In some cases, adults then respond to children’s behavior with disciplinary action rather than therapeutic care and emotional support.
A child experiencing loss or death may forget previously mastered skills, such as toilet training, or revert to earlier developmental stages, such as thumb sucking.
Children might also experience a loss of appetite, sleep disturbances or physical pain, such as stomachaches. They can have more frequent outbursts and intense crying fits, or seem irritable. They may stop doing activities they typically enjoy.
Preschool-age children process and express grief differently than older children. Because young children often view death as temporary or reversible, their symptoms may come and go. Younger children may also exhibit their grief or loss in their play, such as acting out an illness and death with their toys rather than actually saying how they feel.
Challenges for caregivers and schools
A single death can force a bereaved family to navigate multiple intersecting losses. When one family member dies, remaining family members might experience a sudden loss of income, childcare or healthcare insurance, for example.
Scholars call this the bereavement multiplier.
Grieving caregivers may struggle to balance their own emotional realities with the new practical demands of day-to-day life.
Schools, meanwhile, are often considered one of the most important places to support children’s mental health and well-being. However, I have found that many educators report feeling taxed and emotionally overextended as they attempt to respond to the needs of young children.
To address this gap, I developed a pilot study in 2026 to explore what happens when you give preschool educators additional resources and information on loss and grief in children.
The four-week program with 26 preschool educators from a large, urban school district in the Northeast aimed to help adults feel more comfortable responding to kids’ grief and loss. After completing the program, the educators said they felt significantly more knowledgeable about these topics and more comfortable discussing them.
Some educators said they now realized that grief is not only a response to death. When we asked why they signed up for this voluntary program, many shared both personal and professional reasons. Some had experienced their own loss. Others had previously struggled to help a child navigate grief and desperately wanted better tools and resources to support them.
How to support grieving kids
As families and educators help children talk about loss and grief, they could consider a few different approaches.
First, the language they use with children to talk about grief and loss is important. Using simple, consistent language can provide a sense of safety and comfort for grieving children. Simple and truthful explanations build the psychological safety necessary for children building trusting relationships.
Young children are typically concrete thinkers. So using phrases like “He’s in a better place” or “She went to sleep” to describe a person who has died can be both confusing and frightening for children. Children may wonder, “Where is this better place?” or, “Will I wake up if I go to sleep?”
Talking about the life cycles of trees, plants, insects and animals in nature, for example, can be used to discuss what it means to be alive versus dead. The best time to have these conversations is before the crisis happens.
When involving children in funerals or burial services, caregivers can prep them on what they will see and hear, and establish a contingency plan – such as a designated adult to step away with them – if they become overwhelmed.
Finally, it can be helpful to read developmentally appropriate stories to help familiarize children and families with loss. The book “I Miss You: A First Look at Death” could be a good pick for children ages 3 to 5. The book “My Family is Changing: A book about Divorce” is another option for young children whose parents are separating or getting divorced.
Caregivers and educators could consider the book “When Children Grieve: For Adults to Help Children Deal with Death, Divorce, Pet Loss, Moving, and Other Losses.”
No one is immune
Thankfully, the support team I worked with several years ago helped the preschool teacher support the young child and her father after what turned out to be the sudden death of the child’s mom.
We will all eventually face loss. As a school social worker who has worked with students for more than two decades, I have learned that silence in the face of loss and grief can be harmful, and lies can erode trust and stability at a time when both are most needed.
