How Children Grieve: Developmental Considerations and Grief-Informed Support

Grief Across Development: What Professionals Need to Know

Children grieve. That statement seems obvious, but the ways in which child grief is misread, minimized, or mishandled in clinical, educational, and family systems suggest that professional understanding of childhood bereavement still has significant room to grow. Children do not grieve the way adults grieve — and they do not grieve the way adults expect them to. Understanding the developmental dimensions of child grief is foundational to grief-informed care across every setting where children are present.

One of the most important concepts for professionals to hold is that childhood grief is not a single event with a linear trajectory. It is revisited across developmental milestones — a child who lost a parent at age six will grieve that loss differently at twelve, and again at eighteen, and again when they become a parent themselves. The grief does not resolve and disappear. It grows with the child and resurfaces when development creates new capacity for understanding what was lost.

In this episode of the GRIEF Ladies podcast, licensed clinical social worker Jennifer Kimlingen joins hosts Kelly Daugherty and Rox to discuss how children express and process grief, what adults and systems can do to create genuinely supportive environments, and why caregiver wellbeing is inseparable from child bereavement outcomes.

What This Episode Covers

The conversation addresses several areas with direct relevance to professionals working with grieving children and the adults around them:

• How grief presentation varies across developmental stages — and why behavioral expression is often the primary language of grief in children

• Why structure and routine function as stabilizing tools during acute bereavement, not avoidance of grief

• The relationship between caregiver self-compassion and the quality of support available to grieving children

• Storytelling and narrative as clinical and relational tools for honoring loss and maintaining connection to the deceased

• How professionals can hold space for children's grief without having all the answers — and why that matters

Clinical and Systemic Implications

Child grief is one of the most common presentations across helping professions, and one of the most frequently mishandled. Several systemic and clinical realities are worth naming directly for professionals in this space.

Behavioral expression is grief expression in children. Adults often look for sadness as the marker of grief — and when a child appears fine, returns to play, or acts out instead of crying, they conclude that the child is coping well or is not significantly affected. Neither conclusion is reliably accurate. Acting out, regression, somatic complaints, school refusal, hypervigilance, and social withdrawal are all common grief presentations in children. Professionals who are not grief-informed may route these presentations toward behavioral intervention, discipline, or mental health diagnoses without ever identifying the underlying bereavement.

Developmental grief recurrence is expected and is not pathology. When a child who lost a sibling at age eight begins struggling again at fourteen, that recurrence is not a sign that earlier grief work failed. It is a sign that the child has reached a new developmental capacity and is encountering the loss at a new level of understanding. Systems — schools, therapists, families — that are not prepared for this pattern may respond with alarm rather than appropriate support.

Caregiver grief capacity directly affects child outcomes. A bereaved parent cannot be expected to be the primary grief support for their bereaved child while simultaneously managing their own acute loss. This is not a failure — it is a structural reality that helping professionals need to account for. Identifying additional adult support for grieving children, and providing parallel support for grieving caregivers, is grief-informed systems thinking.

School systems are often the primary point of contact for grieving children. Children spend more waking hours in school than anywhere else. Teachers and school counselors frequently observe grief presentation before clinical providers do — and they are often undertrained to respond to it. Building grief literacy in school systems is not supplementary to clinical grief work. For many children, it is the only grief-informed support they will receive.

Death avoidance in adult systems harms children. When adults around a grieving child are uncomfortable with death, that discomfort communicates itself. Children learn quickly whether grief is a topic that can be spoken about openly, and they adjust accordingly — often suppressing questions, fears, and emotional expression to protect the adults around them. Professionals who can model direct, calm engagement with death-related topics provide a meaningful corrective to this pattern.

Practical Applications for Helping Professionals

1. Assess grief presentation through a developmental lens. When evaluating children for behavioral, emotional, or academic concerns, include bereavement history as a routine component of assessment. Ask not just whether a loss has occurred, but when, and what support was available at the time. A child struggling at twelve may be encountering grief that originated years earlier and was never adequately supported.

2. Educate caregivers about developmental grief recurrence. One of the most useful things a professional can do for a bereaved family is prepare caregivers for the reality that grief will resurface. When adults understand that a child revisiting loss at a new developmental stage is expected — not alarming — they are better equipped to respond with support rather than panic or dismissal.

3. Use structure as a clinical tool. In the acute bereavement period, maintaining routine and structure is not about bypassing grief — it is about providing a regulated container within which grief can be held. Helping families identify which routines are stabilizing and how to maintain them amid the disruption of loss is practical, actionable grief-informed support.

4. Incorporate narrative and storytelling deliberately. Supporting children in telling stories about the person who died — through conversation, memory books, photographs, or ritual — serves multiple clinical functions. It maintains continuing bonds with the deceased, provides language for the loss, and invites the child's active participation in the grief process rather than positioning them as passive recipients of adult-managed mourning.

5. Address caregiver grief as a component of child bereavement support. When working with grieving children, assess and address caregiver grief as part of the same clinical picture. A caregiver who is overwhelmed, unsupported, or actively avoiding their own grief will have diminished capacity to support their child. Connecting caregivers with their own grief support is not a separate intervention — it is part of supporting the child.

6. Build grief literacy in school settings. For school counselors, psychologists, and administrators, grief education for staff is a high-leverage intervention. When teachers know how to recognize grief presentation, how to respond with appropriate language, and when to refer, the entire school environment becomes more grief-responsive. This is a systemic intervention with significant individual impact.

7. Normalize not having answers. One of the most clinically useful things a professional can model — for both children and the adults around them — is the capacity to sit with uncertainty. Children do not need adults to have answers about death. They need adults who can be present, honest about what is unknown, and regulated enough to tolerate the weight of the questions.

About the Guest: Jennifer Kimlingen, LCSW

Jennifer Kimlingen is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in grief, bereavement, traumatic loss, and children's grief. She completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Adelphi University in 2014 and has a clinical background spanning medical social work, grief counseling, and private practice. Jennifer currently serves as a bereavement counselor with Choices Health and provides grief education for mental health clinicians through the Agents of Change Continuing Education platform. She presents regularly on children's grief and bereavement and is committed to building a more informed, less avoidant professional culture around death and loss. Jennifer lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with her husband and two children.

Resources from the Center for Informed Grief

The Center for Informed Grief offers training and professional development for therapists, school personnel, healthcare providers, and organizational leaders working with bereaved individuals across the lifespan. Our programs address grief-informed practice in clinical, educational, and community settings — including specific content on childhood bereavement, developmental grief recurrence, and building grief-responsive school systems.

To learn more about upcoming trainings, workshops, or consultation opportunities, visit the Center for Informed Grief.

How Children Grieve: Supporting Kids (and Yourself) After a Loss

How Children Grieve: Supporting Kids (and Yourself) After a Loss

Grief doesn’t look the same at every age.

In this episode, we’re joined by clinical social worker Jennifer Kimlingen to talk about how children process loss, why grief can resurface at different developmental stages, and how adults can create safe, supportive environments for grieving kids.

You’ll hear:

• How children express grief at different ages

• Why routine and structure help during acute loss

• The role of self-compassion for caregivers

• Storytelling as a powerful way to honor loved ones

• Why it’s okay not to have all the answers

No child should ever grieve alone — and caregivers deserve support, too.

As always, we close with practical steps you can try this week.