As concerned adults, we would like to be reassured that children are too young to feel the deep sadness and despair that grief can bring. Sadly, this is not the case. Children and young people grieve just as deeply as adults, but they show it in different ways. They learn how to grieve by copying the responses of the adults around them. They rely on adults to provide them with what they need to support them in their grief.

Children have a limited ability to put feelings, thoughts and memories into words and tend to ‘act out’ with behaviors rather than express themselves verbally. They will gradually gain the language of feelings by listening to words that you use. Showing your grief will encourage them to express theirs. Their behavior is your guide to how they are feeling. This is as true for a very young child as it is for a teenager.Children are naturally good at dipping in and out of their grief. They can be intensely sad one minute, then suddenly switch to playing happily the next. This apparent lack of sadness may lead adults to believe children are unaffected. However, this ‘puddle-jumping’ in and out of grief behavior is a type of inbuilt safety mechanism that stops them from being overwhelmed by powerful feelings.

As children get older, this instinctive ‘puddle-jumping’ becomes harder and teenagers may spend long periods of time in one behavior, such as being withdrawn or another behavior, such as keeping very busy.

One mother said: My ten-year-old doesn’t seem to care, she cried on the day because we were crying, but she hasn’t cried since.

For a young person, getting on with life might mean a hectic social schedule as their way of shutting out the pain. Or they may withdraw into themselves, rejecting offers of help and being generally very hard to communicate with. If this is the case for a young person you are supporting, try to be patient and continue to let them know that you are still there for them. However, try not to put them under pressure to talk.The difference between adult and child grief is sometimes illustrated by the following: a child jumps in and out of puddles of grief, but an adult is deep in a river, being swept along with the current, finding it very difficult to get out.