why children grieve in ‘puddles': how to support a child navigating loss
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children may jump in and out of their grief, cycling through periods of intense overwhelm and business as usual.
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when children experience loss, their ability to navigate through the waters of deep emotions they might not yet totally understand can be complicated. that said, the way children experience and manage loss isn’t necessarily the same as adults.
“for adults, when we’re grieving, it’s like we’re standing in a river, and it’s intense and overwhelming, and for children, it’s like puddle jumping,” said ceilidh eaton russell, lecturer in the department of pediatrics, faculty of health sciences at mcmaster university, child life lead with canadian virtual hospice (cvh) and developer of children’s grief activity books with kidsgrief.ca. “when they’re in the puddle, it’s no different from the river. it’s just as intense. it’s just as confusing, complex, overwhelming. but they do it in shorter bursts, and they kind of have a recess in between.”
according to eaton russell, their ability to jump in and out of their “grief puddle”, an analogy coined by julie stokes at winston’s wish in the united kingdom, is instinctive rather than an active choice. it’s them “letting a bit of air out when the balloon’s too full.”
when children experience overwhelming feelings, they may lash out, retreat, self-soothe, express, or distract themselves.
essentially, children use this in-and-out way of handling their grief differently from adults because that’s what helps. that said, even if they can distract themselves from those emotions, it doesn’t mean that their physical and mental health isn’t affected.
grief affects many areas of their well-being
grief can show up in many ways in children, and it doesn’t have to only mean death. while losing parents or guardians is the most common loss associated with grief, it can also occur in children who have to move away from their best friend, are living through a parental divorce, have had a guardian incarcerated, or are going into foster care.
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“any kind of major change (can cause grief),” said eaton russell.
after the initial loss, when children are standing in their puddle, they may experience several physical symptoms that can be hard to navigate. they may develop stomach aches and headaches, have difficulty sleeping and develop nightmares.
their appetites may also change, and they may have more or less energy than usual when going through grief.
when they’re at school, they can also deal with brain fog and an inability to concentrate on their work because “it’s really hard to care about a math test when this is what’s happening in your life,” said eaton russell.
she notes that relating to others who may not know what the child is going through is a challenge as well, because, as some will be complaining about allowance when a child has just lost a parent or other significant person in their life, they lose a “sense of belonging” and end up feeling different from everyone else.
these high-tension situations make overwhelm the norm for children. acting out or being defiant is another area where grief may play a role.
“for some young people, it can feel like they had a sense of how the world worked and then this happened, and their whole sense of things has been shattered,” said eaton russell. “things feel so out of control that they also internally feel out of control, and it’s not intentional troublemaking defiance, it’s just they don’t feel they have any control over it.”
when it comes to acting out, children are simply expressing what they’re thinking and feeling, even if they’re not able to connect their emotions to how they show up to others.
for children, the difference in support can be huge for their overall health. short-term effects that happen after the initial loss are overwhelming and affect their well-being, yes, but with the proper attention and support, the intensity of those feelings tends to ease over time.
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however, without someone there or without the ability to tap into resources, grief can lead to long-term consequences.
“not every child who experiences a loss is destined to those (negative long-term) outcomes,” said eaton russell.
unattended grief in children can contribute to mental health struggles that are hard to cope with, as well as addiction. when they grow up, and their grief isn’t supported, their puddles may become rivers, and in that river, they can experience emotional overwhelm that can increase risks of struggles with housing, professionally or academically. their physical health can also be negatively impacted, with heightened risks of chronic stress-driven conditions, immune system dysfunction and heart problems, for example.
how children deal with the lifelong experience of grief
eaton russell notes that grief operates under a dual-process model rather than the stages many believe, and because it’s so personal and unique to each individual, “every person experiences it in their own way.”
the model itself posits that while grieving, two types of stressors play a role in dealing with grief: loss-oriented and restoration-oriented.
“loss-oriented stressors are things that remind us of the person, of their death or separation, whereas restoration is about figuring out how to move forward in life in light of this change,” she said. “both sides can be positive or negatively experienced, but the point of the model is that we’re always going back and forth, and children, even more so, are going back and forth.”
the level of grief many adults expect also doesn’t play much of a role. for example, some people may believe that moving away couldn’t possibly have the same effect on a child as losing a parent. but that’s not how grief works.
“it all depends on the child’s whole entire cumulative life experience up to that point, the nature of their relationship,” said eaton russell. “think of it like the hardest thing that a person has ever experienced in their life is the hardest thing they’ve ever experienced in their life. it doesn’t matter if that thing seems like nothing to somebody else. if it’s the hardest thing they’ve been through, it’s super overwhelming.”
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she also notes that death isn’t the be-all-end-all when it comes to loss, because any major loss can be incredibly profound.
how to provide support to grieving children
for parents or guardians, supporting a grieving child can be challenging, especially when they themselves are grieving as well. eaton russell notes that adults need to get their own help for their grief while being there for the children in their lives, so that they can be available, but also able to navigate grief themselves.
“adult generations have been socialized to be in control, hold it together, be strong, not need help,” she said. “(but) we need to change that. children need a … secure, unconditionally loving grown-up who can be in and out of the puddle with them, and so if children are in the puddle, you want to meet them in the puddle and not try to cheer them up, not try to fix, just validate.”
validation can come in many forms, from just being there with them to acknowledge that the situation is incredibly hard, but that the child is not alone.
when they come out of their puddles, eaton russell notes, that’s when adults can let them do what they need to do and come back as they’re ready. it’s also “really helpful for grieving adults to show their emotion, to model that it’s okay to have really hard feelings and to let them out. it doesn’t mean you’re not strong.” it simply shows that the adult in their life completely understands what they’re going through and is still able to be there for the child and show up for them when they need it.
“so often, children may be reluctant to ask a question or let on how they’re feeling because they don’t want to upset their grown-up, who seems like they’re really struggling already,” eaton russell said. “so, we really want to let children know that if you say something or tell me something about your experience, and i have feelings in response, you didn’t make me sad. you didn’t upset me. this situation has me and my own balloon full of feelings too, and you gave me a chance to let some out, and that’s really healthy.”
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eaton russell also notes that trying to keep things as normal as possible can feel really dissonant because “nothing is going to make this feel normal.”
“participating in a balance of familiar and also different activities can help because it feels like such a surreal experience of going on as if nothing happened when clearly something earth-shattering has happened.”
trying to keep them safe or protect them from their grief and the loss can also be more harmful than helpful if it doesn’t allow for an open expression of their emotions.
“many children, if they had a grief-literate community of people who could welcome conversations and expression of emotion, wouldn’t need therapy at all,” said eaton russell, later continuing. “as adults, we have such a deeply rooted desire to protect children from hardship, and when someone’s dying, that instinct comes out all over the place.”
she notes that keeping children from visiting someone who’s dying or attending a funeral, as examples, only excludes them from the process without protecting them from the loss at all or the impact it will have on them.
“we’re just excluding them from opportunities to make sense of it, to get support, and to feel included and connected.”
it’s about preparation over protection and giving children the choice and the credit to make informed decisions for themselves. this could involve sharing with them what would happen at a funeral, discussing whether or not they would like to see the body of their deceased loved one, and participating in a conversation that gives them some control over how they proceed.
“these moments stay with children forever, whether they’re included or excluded,” said eaton russell. “we have such an opportunity to make it a meaningful, positive, memorable experience that they hold forever. they’re going to hold it forever either way. let’s help them hold it forever in a meaningful way rather than one full of doubts and wishes and questions.”
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you can do this by using “really concrete language” to explain what’s happening rather than leaving it up to their imagination, which may make the entire experience more difficult.
“adults worry that if they say the word cancer, they’re going to be so scared. they don’t have a reason to be scared of one word more than another. if we don’t tell them, and we’re just calling this sick, then (they might think) ‘how do i know that my cold isn’t going to turn into this?’”
children often look inward to see if there’s anything they could have done to cause the situation as well, and to address those feelings and ensure that they are not at fault, talking openly about death, sickness, and loss is imperative.
“those are things we can help address and explore with children, clarifying misconceptions.”
tapping into community and resources as an added source of solace
community and resources are also exceptionally beneficial to help children reduce the risk of developing long-term health complications because of loss early in life, because if one “grown-up is not having a moment where they can show up themselves, there’s somebody else.”
“it’s really about the goodness of fit between the stressors and impact of that death in a child’s life versus the resources,” said eaton russell. “if they have adequate supports, resources, emotional outlets, a present supportive adult who they feel safe to process, make sense of things with, express their feelings with, we can really reduce long-term negative health outcomes for those children.”
resources can range, but include emotional support, personal support, and cognitive support, alongside peer support groups and activity books that can help them better understand their feelings. cvh, for example, has many resources people can tap into, such as mygrief.ca, kidsgrief.ca, and youthgrief.ca.
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there is also a grief camp, camp erin, that children can attend, developed across north america by former baseball player jamie moyer.
there’s a camp in every city with a major league baseball (mlb) team, giving children the chance to participate in “really meaningful grief activities as well as regular camp,” so they can puddle jump with others their age who are doing the same.
it’s not just about the loss. it’s about the support that children receive afterwards that really counts.
“there are children who talk about realizing years later that they’re stronger than they thought they were, realizing they have a better perspective on life than they would have otherwise,” eaton russell said. “if they find people who get it, whether it’s people in their family or other bereaved young people, so like peer support programs or grief camps, things like that, that can lead to really positive outcomes. that doesn’t take away from the heartbreak of the grief, but it helps to mitigate the long-term negative effects on their physical and mental health.”
helping children through grief comes down to one major factor: they don’t need to cope with it. they need to attend to it because it’s a “lifelong experience.”
“i would really want people to know that we are never going to have all the answers to all the things. we can always have a response. our response is to show up and let them know that we’re here, even for the mysteries, even to wonder together, and that’s much more powerful in our presence than our words.”
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