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How Children Might Experience Grief

Grief is something that we all experience when someone very precious to us has died. How a child might experience grief may depend on their age and level of understanding. Other factors that might influence how they respond may be whether or not they have had a bereavement before and how the rest of the family reacts.

Some of the ways that children express grief are by:

  • acting out, particularly in an angry way
  • becoming more clingy than usual
  • finding it hard to get to sleep or having nightmares or terrors
  • regressing for example beginning to bed wet
  • withdrawing from their usual activities or friends
  • finding it hard to concentrate
  • eating more or less than usual
  • thinking about death or expressing a wish to die to be with the person
  • having aches or pains without a physical cause
  • switching from feeling sad to acting as if nothing has happened


This is not an exhaustive list but just some of the common experiences that children have told us about.
 

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Beth aged 14 years came to a group programme after her dad had died suddenly and unexpectedly. She was having difficulty concentrating at school and felt that it was hard for others to understand how she was feeling. Her relationship with her dad hadn't always been easy and she was struggling with her guilt. At the group she met other young people who had experienced the death of someone significant to them. They shared their coping strategies with Beth. She began to realise that others had a similar mix of feelings as well as good and not so good memories. She felt less alone in her grief and found a new supportive network of friends.