When It Comes To Grief, For Children, the Play Is the Thing

By Christa Martin, LCSW-C, Grief Counselor

Chesapeake Life Center

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When It Comes To Grief, For Children, the Play Is the Thing

“I miss my mom. She had the best snuggles.”

A six-year-old once ran up to me, said that sentence and then ran right back to play.

Moments like that stay with you. Not just because they’re heartbreaking, but because they perfectly capture how young children grieve.

Children don’t grieve the way adults do. They move in and out of grief. A child may become quieter, more withdrawn or have emotional outbursts that seem to come out of nowhere. This can feel confusing or even alarming to adults who may be sitting in their own grief all the time. But for children, this isn’t avoidance. It’s survival. Young brains are only able to process grief in pieces.

 Many children also don’t yet have the language to describe or even understand what they’re feeling. Because of that, grief often shows up in behavior rather than words. One of the most important things adults can do is remember that play is a child’s language.

Through play, children tell us what they’re feeling without having to say it directly. Drawing, building, pretend play, dolls, puppets and imaginative storytelling all create a layer of safety and distance that allows kids to express big emotions in a way that feels manageable. Play also helps children develop healthy coping skills by identifying feelings, releasing them and learning that emotions can come and go.

In our children’s counseling room, shelves of action figures often become stand-ins for parents, siblings, grandparents, or best friends. I once asked a child to create his family using figurines during play therapy. Everyone in his life was represented as a superhero or a princess — except one parent who had little connection with him. That person was represented by a plain stick figure. That single choice told us more than words ever could.

Especially after the death of a par­ent, a child needs to know they are safe and secure. One of the first questions they have, even if they don’t ask it out loud, is: Who is going to take care of me now?

Children need to know who will pick them up, who will take them to school or the doctor and who will tuck them in at night. Keeping routines as consistent as possible helps restore a sense of safety when their world has been turned upside down.

What children need most from the adults in their lives is reassurance: that their feelings are normal, that it’s okay to talk about the person who died and that they are not alone. Modeling healthy grief by saying, “I miss her today and I feel sad,” teaches children that emotions are safe to express and don’t need to be hidden.

Many children are incredibly resilient and may not need ongoing counseling. But support, open conversations, play and consistency make a powerful difference. Sometimes, the most meaningful response to grief is simply listening and letting a child return to play when they’re ready.