The Grieving Student

About the Authors

David J. Schonfeld, M.D., Director, National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement (NCSCB) and Director, Division of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, has provided consultation, technical assistance, and training in the areas of pediatric bereavement and school crisis preparedness and response for more than 20 years. He has provided presentations at national and international meetings and worked with communities throughout the United States and abroad (including Europe, Great Britain, Asia, the Middle East, Scandinavia, Latin America, and Africa). In 1991, Dr. Schonfeld established the School Crisis Response Program at Yale University School of Medicine, where he provided training to tens of thousands of school-based personnel throughout the country and technical assistance in hundreds of school crisis events. Dr. Schonfeld has consulted with schools during the aftermath of numerous school (including school shootings and other school violence) and national crisis events. From 2001 to 2004, he consulted to the New York City Department of Education and coordinated training for school crisis teams in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and provided training to more than 1,000 district- and school-level crisis teams within the system. In 2005, Dr. Schonfeld was awarded funding by the September 11th Children’s Fund and the National Philanthropic Trust to establish the NCSCB. Dr. Schonfeld has worked with schools coping with large-scale natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005; Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas, in 2008; and the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China. Dr. Schonfeld is currently a member of the National Commission on Children and Disasters, the Disaster Mental Health Subcommittee of the National Biodefense Science Board, and the American Academy of Pediatrics’s Disaster Preparedness Advisory Council. He is actively engaged in school-based research involving children’s understanding of and adjustment to serious illness and death.

Support for Grieving Children

Schools and teachers can take concrete steps that will help bereaved children. These include understanding how to be present with and express support for grieving children. Communicating clearly and effectively with children and their families is key. It is also essential to remember that grief is a painful process. There is nothing that anyone—family member, teacher, therapist—can say or do that will take away the pain or make the loss less powerful. That is not the goal of bereavement interventions.

Grieving children also often pull back from peers because they cannot quite relate the experience of a death to their relationships with peers. They may not know what to say about the death or their grief. They may feel uncomfortable at the attention people give them or with friends’ attempts to offer support. Or, they may be uncomfortable because their peers seem to be ignoring their loss. They may feel distracted or overwhelmed and less able to keep up with the usual social give-and-take of their friends.

Goals for Schools

1. Provide knowledge and skills: It is essential to provide all children with knowledge, skills, and increased comfort so that they are more able to share their feelings and receive and offer support.
2. Increase academic function: Common responses to death include difficulty concentrating, easy distractibility, frustration, anger, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, and feelings of sadness. Support that helps children cope with their feelings also prepares them to move forward academically.
3. Encourage family communication: The most important source of support for grieving children is their family. Children may not realize that these conversations are important or may not know how to get started.
4. Promote peer support: Students who have participated in lessons about death and grief will understand more about the process and may be more comfortable reaching out to a peer who has experienced a loss.

Being with Grieving Children

As a culture, we do not often talk openly about death and the grief process, especially when children are involved. The following are some suggestions for how to act and what to say to grieving children:

• Be present and authentic. Children are sensitive to dishonesty, and they can often tell if someone is not being truthful. Speak directly about feelings and encourage students to share theirs.
• Listen more, talk less. Keep the focus on the children who are grieving and give them plenty of space and time to talk.
• Demonstrate empathy. Reflect back what you see students express, directly or indirectly, with compassion and without judgment.
• Stop harmful reactions when safety is a concern. Some children may express grief through anger; ensure that expressions of grief are safe for everyone involved.
• Avoid trying to "cheer up" students or their families. Remember, a teacher’s goal is not to take away the pain of this grief.

What Not to Say

• “I know exactly what you are going through.” It is impossible to know what another individual is experiencing during their grief.
• “You’ll need to be strong now for your family.” This may restrict children’s ability to express their feelings instead of encouraging them to fully experience and express their emotions.
• “Both of my parents died when I was your age.” Avoid shifting focus away from the child’s personal experience.
• “It’s important to remember the good things in life as well.” Grieving individuals need permission to fully experience their grief without attempts to lighten their mood.

What About the Stages of Grief?

Grief is not a simple linear process. Rather than attempting to apply children's experiences to any model about grief, it is more useful to take steps to understand what an individual child is going through.