Many children won’t show grief unless they feel protected, loved and have reassurance that their needs will be met.

Unfortunately if death is portrayed to a child as based on fantasy and sprinkled with inaccuracies such as, “Oh, it’s like she went to sleep,” this can lead to a complication of their understanding of death.

They need accurate age-appropriate information.

There were times in my volunteer work at Hospice that I had to explain to a child what death means:

The dead person’s body has stopped working and it will never again work the way it used to. The person’s body will not see or hear and won’t talk, move or breathe anymore. When a person’s body dies, the person doesn’t feel anything anymore.

You can explain that love does not die when a loved one dies. The spirit of someone you love does not die but lives in your heart and your memory. It belongs to you always and is your treasure.

In order to help a child, you need to find out what they believe about death and talk about death with them, sometimes by being the first to verbalize what the child is feeling and that you feel it too…

“I know you miss Nana very much. I really miss her so much too.”

It’s important for a child to see you express your grief on occasion—explain that people cry when they feel sad and that it’s OK.

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My Friend
Read an excerpt now
The unsolved mystery of the death of Cindy James