Loss does not affect a family uniformly. Two people in the same household experiencing the same death will grieve differently: at different intensities, on different timelines, with different emotional languages and different needs. When those two people are a parent and a child, the dynamic becomes more complex — because neither one is simply grieving. Each is also trying to manage how their grief affects the other.
According to the Childhood Bereavement Estimation Model (CBEM) — developed by Judi’s House/JAG Institute in partnership with the New York Life Foundation, using CDC vital statistics data — 1 in 11 children in the US will experience the death of a parent or sibling by age 18. Approximately 9.1% of all US children, around 6.6 million, will be bereaved before they reach adulthood.
Grief is not a rare or exceptional experience for families. It is a common one. And the way families move through it together — or don’t — shapes children’s long-term relationship with loss and their capacity to be supported in it.
How Children Grieve Differently
One of the things that surprises parents most about childhood grief is its episodic quality. Children do not grieve the way adults typically expect: sustained, visible, moving through recognizable stages.
Children grieve in what researchers call “waves” or “grief bursts.” A child may be playing contentedly one moment and sobbing the next — not because the grief arrived suddenly, but because children’s capacity to hold sustained distress is more limited than adults’. They move in and out of grief more quickly, and that mobility is healthy, not a sign that they are not taking the loss seriously.
This pattern can be confusing and even painful for a grieving adult. The parent who is barely holding their own grief together may experience a child’s willingness to play as a sign that the child doesn’t understand or doesn’t care. Usually it means the opposite: the child is processing at the pace their system allows.
Children’s developmental stage also shapes how they understand and express loss.
Toddlers and preschoolers may not understand the permanence of death and engage in repeated questions (“When is Grandpa coming back?”) or in magical thinking that the person will return. This is not denial in the adult sense — it reflects cognitive development.
School-age children often ask concrete questions (“How did he die?” “Will I die?”), seek factual information, and may channel their grief into increased anxiety or academic disruption. They are old enough to understand that death is permanent but may not have the emotional vocabulary for what they are carrying.
Adolescents often pull away from the family in grief, turning toward peers or internalizing. They may express grief through anger, risky behavior, or withdrawal rather than overt sadness. Their need for autonomy can make the mourning feel solitary even when the family is willing to be present.
What Makes Childhood Grief Harder
Several factors tend to complicate children’s grief:
Silence and secrecy around the death. When adults avoid talking about the person who died, or change the subject when children bring them up, children often conclude that grief is a topic too heavy to be handled — that they must manage it alone or suppress it.
When the death was sudden or violent. Traumatic loss carries additional layers: not just grief, but shock, disrupted safety, and sometimes intrusive thoughts or images that complicate normal grief processing.
When the surviving parent is overwhelmed. The child’s ability to grieve is significantly affected by the emotional availability of the surviving caregiver. A parent who is deeply submerged in their own grief may unintentionally communicate that the child’s grief is an additional burden rather than a shared experience.
This is not a criticism. A grieving parent cannot simply produce availability they do not have. It is a reason why support for the whole family — rather than only for the child or only for the adult — matters.
Parents Grieving in Front of Their Children
One of the most common fears grieving parents express is that showing emotion in front of their children will be harmful — that children need them to be stable, and that displaying grief undermines that stability.
The research on this is actually reassuring. Children who see a parent grieve and then recover — who see that the adults in their life can feel profound sadness and continue to function — are not harmed by that observation. They are given a model for how grief is survivable.
What is harder for children is prolonged parental unavailability, or the message that grief must be hidden. Children who learn that grief is something adults manage by performing fine often learn to do the same — which produces the appearance of adjustment without the actual process.
The goal is not to hide grief from children. It is to express it in ways that are honest but not overwhelming, and to communicate — in words and in the parent’s continued presence — that the family is going to come through this.
What Family Therapy Provides
Family therapy for grieving families is not about making grief end faster. It is about creating a space where grief can be present without anyone having to manage it alone.
Children can say things in therapy they cannot say to a grieving parent: “I’m scared you’re going to die too” or “I don’t know if I’m allowed to feel happy anymore” or “I miss them but I also feel angry.” These are real thoughts that children carry, and they are often unsaid because a child does not want to add to a parent’s burden.
Parents can access their own grief more honestly in a structured therapeutic space. They can also learn what their children are actually carrying — which is often both more and different than the parent assumed.
Emotional trauma in children often overlaps with complicated grief, particularly when the loss was sudden, violent, or occurred in a context of existing instability. Family therapy during major life changes addresses grief as one of the central transitions that can reorganize a family for years if not adequately supported.
Child therapy provides individual space for a child’s grief. Family therapy holds the grief of the whole system. At Carbajal Counseling & Consulting, EMDR is also available for trauma-related grief, serving families in Kaysville, Ogden, and Syracuse, Utah, with telehealth throughout the state.