Shownotes
Explaining death to a child and navigating the loss of a grandparent while parenting is one of the hardest emotional tightropes many of us will ever walk.
In this episode, I sit down with licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Liz Ross to talk about how to help a child grieve the loss of a grandparent, all while managing your own grief at the same time.
Whether you're dealing with an unexpected death or a long illness, this conversation is here to offer you real, compassionate guidance on explaining death to a child. We talk through the developmental stages of understanding death, how kids process loss at different ages, and what to expect emotionally, in your kids and in yourself.
Dr. Ross and I also share personal stories from our own lives and offer practical strategies for how to talk to kids about death in ways that are developmentally appropriate, emotionally supportive, and actually helpful.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why your child might seem "fine" after the loss of a grandparent at first—and what that really means (And why you might be surprised when questions about death show up weeks or months later.)
- How to talk to kids about death without overexplaining—or leaving them with scary gaps
- The developmental stages of understanding death—and what kind of questions are totally normal
- What helps when your child is grieving the loss of a grandparent
- Why taking care of your own grief is part of explaining death to a child
If you're wondering how to help a child grieve the loss of a grandparent, or you're struggling with how to talk to kids about death in a way that doesn’t scare or confuse them, this episode is for you.
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Transcripts
[00:00:17] Leah Clionsky: As you know, the purpose of the Educated Parent Podcast is so that I can give you expert tips on how to solve everyday parenting problems. And unfortunately, a problem that will happen to many, many of us is helping our kids cope with the loss of a loved one, like a grandparent or an elderly relative.
[:[00:00:50] Leah Clionsky: Pause the podcast. It's gonna be here for you at another time. If it's right for you, you are listening to Educated Parent the Parenting [00:01:00] Podcast, where I teach you realistic expert parenting hacks to solve your everyday parenting problems. So that you can reduce your stress, build your confidence as a parent, and raise thriving children.
[:[00:01:34] Leah Clionsky: I make mistakes and I forget what works. I do have three unique parenting advantages that you may not have. A PhD in child clinical psychology over 15 years of clinical experience working with families and a network of other experts that I can text for parenting advice whenever I'm lost. I'm here to bring my expertise and my expert network to you so that we can solve your everyday parenting dilemmas [00:02:00] together.
[:[00:02:21] Leah Clionsky: On a side note, she also shares office space with Thriving Child Center. So if you come see us in our River Oaks location, you will be in both clinics at the same time. With over a decade of clinical experience, Dr. Ross is known for helping clients navigate life's toughest transitions with compassion and clarity.
[:[00:02:43] Liz Ross: Thank you. As another aside, I wanna also mention that Dr. Clionsky. Happened to be one of my supervisors on postdoc. And so my favorite story about you, Leah, is that you know, when we are both first starting out in private practice, we're trying to support each [00:03:00] other and endorse each other as clinicians and in, in all of Leah's.
[:[00:03:16] Leah Clionsky: sweet. I cannot take credit. But I'm really, really excited that you are here because we're gonna talk about something where you actually have more training on discussing grief than I do, and I'm so glad that you're here to offer your expertise.
[:[00:03:39] Liz Ross: So I've got two kids. I've got a 9-year-old, a boy named James, and I've got a just turned 5-year-old girl named Peyton. And so we are in sort of that very, very busy stage of life as you are too, right?
[:[00:04:13] Liz Ross: As you know, my own father passed away October 31st, 2023. Halloween unexpectedly. And so we've had to navigate that. And before that, you know, believe it or not, my husband's grandfather was still alive when my son was born and up until he was six or seven years old. So for quite a while he knew my husband's grandfather and when he passed away, you know, we had to navigate some of those conversations as well.
[:I'm
[:[00:04:58] Leah Clionsky: Is sad. That [00:05:00] does affect many of us. And then you're trying to be the best parent you can possibly be in the context of your own grief that you're experiencing as part of what's so hard about it is it's affecting you, it's hitting you, and then you have children. How are you gonna help them cope with their own grief?
[:[00:05:33] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. So I'm so glad you're here because as always, we're going to give you specific strategies if you're going through this, if this happens to you in the future, which of course I hope it doesn't, but if you end up in this situation. You know, what can we do to support our kids while we're going through this process?
[:[00:06:08] Leah Clionsky: Yeah, it's, well, it's, it can be helpful to, there are pros and cons to going through the same things that your clients are going through. Right. It makes you realistic about what other people's experiences are. Sometimes it can make you too close to them. So there have been times where I haven't been willing to work with clients that are experiencing the same thing I'm experiencing for that reason.
[:[00:06:31] Liz Ross: Yeah, I, I would agree with that too. Right. Sometimes when it hits too close to home. And you also don't wanna be too assumptive with your clients, right? That whatever you're going through isn't necessarily the exact same experience that they're having.
[:[00:07:05] Liz Ross: Specifically, they're gonna understand the grief process differently as their brains mature and depending on where they are developmentally. So.
[:[00:07:26] Leah Clionsky: So that's upsetting. Double whammy of information to get at the same time. Yeah.
[:[00:07:46] Liz Ross: Right.
[:[00:07:47] Liz Ross: Yeah. Those concepts are pretty foreign to them.
[:[00:08:03] Liz Ross: Right? Exactly. Let me teach you how to read. Oh, by the way, do you know what happens to people after they die? Right. These aren't like normal conversations that we think of to have with our kids until it's actually happening. Right? Until either. You're experiencing death within your family, or they're hearing about somebody else dying or something like that, right?
Mm-hmm.
[:[00:08:41] Liz Ross: It's these questions that don't have these really concrete explanations, right? If your kid asks you why the sky is blue, I can go to Google and um, figure that out and then answer their question, right? But for something like this, they're gonna ask you a lot of questions that are going to make you feel uncomfortable, to be [00:09:00] honest.
[:[00:09:20] Leah Clionsky: But that's developmentally appropriate. So if you're, if something like this happens and then your kid suddenly discovers death and then becomes worried about their own mortality. That is expected. That doesn't mean that you're working through a bad grief process, or your child is, you know, you should be very worried about their mental health.
[:[00:09:40] Liz Ross: That is pretty typical. And so both of those things that you mentioned, right? So concern about when you're gonna die, right? And realizing that, oh, my parents might not be here forever, is extremely anxiety provoking for a child, right? They're dependent on you for their own survival and their own love, and then concerned about their own mortality.
[:[00:10:20] Liz Ross: Without them worrying all the time about your safety. How did that look for your kids?
[:[00:10:37] Leah Clionsky: What if something happens to you? What will then happen to me? And a lot of times when kids are asking about what will happen to you, what they're really asking is, will I be okay? Like if something happens to you, is there a plan? Will I be okay? Will I survive? This is basically what they're trying to figure out.
[:[00:11:04] Liz Ross: Right. If you think about it, you know, we're all really wired for survival. And so anything that that's a trigger for, oh, this could threaten my survival, is going to create that fear or response, right?
[:[00:11:24] Liz Ross: Those are good questions. So I would say the first thing to do is. Create space for your kids to talk about it. I think that we all have this sort of knee-jerk reaction when someone's upset to try to fix their feelings.
[:Right?
[:[00:11:53] Liz Ross: Allowing them to be sad and allowing them to work through that grief is what's gonna help them to get over it and get through it. [00:12:00] And so even if it's uncomfortable for you, which it probably will be to see your kids in distress. I think that's uncomfortable for all of us. We don't like to see our kids in distress allowing those conversations.
[:[00:12:13] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. So avoid saying things like, don't cry, grandma wouldn't have wanted you to be sad. Avoid putting a burden on your children that they shouldn't have emotions. Also, little kids, you know, and I, I guess we're speaking more for younger children here. Right? But they don't react the way you think they will.
[:[00:12:51] Leah Clionsky: So kids bring it up at different times when they realize different things. Like after they watched The Lion King, suddenly we had to talk about it more. So [00:13:00] don't expect it to be like an adult where they're gonna have that initial deep grief period. And then, you know, the processing might happen differently over time.
[:[00:13:20] Liz Ross: It really is. And, and to your point, you know. Depending on their developmental stage, they're going to understand and process that grief very differently.
[:[00:13:45] Liz Ross: That's just how we understand and explain death and dying within our family. And so, you know, having to explain, you know, they called my dad Bubba. And so, you know, bub was in heaven and my daughter kept asking if we could go visit him in heaven if, when he was coming back from [00:14:00] heaven, you know, if he was gonna come back and bring her birthday presents on her birthday.
[:[00:14:25] Liz Ross: So just because you've had those conversations. With your kid at a certain age doesn't mean they're not gonna bring it up again. And that also doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with them continuing to bring it up and trying to sort through it.
[:[00:14:43] Leah Clionsky: But you want to allow, you don't wanna put pressure on your child to not talk about the thing that's going on. Like Dr. Ross said, you wanna create space for that conversation.
[:[00:15:02] Liz Ross: And I think that in this case, it's really okay for your kids to see you emote and know that they also have permission to emote as well. And that it's completely understandable that if you lose your own parent, that you're gonna be sad about that, right? You're gonna cry about that. And so you don't need to feel like you need to necessarily shield all of your grief.
[:[00:15:30] Leah Clionsky: Yeah. Yeah. My kids have definitely seen me cry about the death of my mom. I mean, multiple times. Especially if they surprise me early in the morning by bringing it up. You know, it can happen. There's a difference though. I'm not relying on them.
[:[00:16:02] Leah Clionsky: Absolutely.
[:[00:16:10] Leah Clionsky: So our first big tip is to give your children space to experience their feelings and to let that take whatever shape is right for your child.
[:[00:16:21] Liz Ross: right, exactly. And to that point, I think for kids, because you know, they're not necessarily gonna sit down and have an adult conversation like we are right now about it. That could take a lot of different shapes. So for some kids being able to act something out or tell a story or write a story might be the way that they're actually processing their grief.
[:[00:17:03] Liz Ross: You have older kids. I guess a little bit of a warning is that you, well, you wanna create space. You don't wanna be too pushy about trying to make them talk about how they're feeling all the time, because sometimes that can elicit some resistance, right? I'm not sure if any of you ever had the parent who was like knocking on your door all the time saying like, are you okay?
[:[00:17:39] Liz Ross: Is gonna be really important to them. You're still going to create that space, and when they come to you to talk about those things, you still want to be open and non-judgmental and all those things that are gonna encourage that conversation. But if you're pushing it too much, that actually could be sort of a deterrent for them to talking about it.
[:[00:18:16] Leah Clionsky: Anytime you wanna talk about it, I am available. And then you leave them alone. Right? Sometimes leaving people alone is really hard when you're, you're like, you're in pain and I want you to come to me, and you just can't. You can't make people talk to you when they don't want to. So you're creating space and then you're basically respecting communication styles is the second tip.
[:[00:18:39] Liz Ross: where they are. And to your point, Leah, a little anecdote. So I think after my husband's great father passed away, all of a sudden our son was taking all of his dinosaurs and his dinosaurs were like eating cars and eating things, and he was acting out death and dying in a very kind of graphic violent way, which was a little distressing [00:19:00] to us, but it was sort of part of his way of helping to process through that.
[:[00:19:30] Leah Clionsky: right.
[:[00:19:33] Liz Ross: is to find a way to sort of memorialize the death. And so that can look a lot of different ways, but just having, you know, an opportunity for you and your kids to. Share memories in some way. And so you don't have to use this tip specifically what we did, but, so I mentioned earlier in the podcast, you know that my father had passed away in Halloween.
[:[00:20:22] Liz Ross: And so, you know, the whole family, me and my kids, we went out there that day. We told stories about him. We did a prayer. My husband had read a letter that my grandfather, we found after, after my dad passed away, that my grandfather wrote him. It was really special. I have a, another friend recently actually, that her father-in-law passed away and she's got a daughter soon age to my daughter and her daughter has been wearing, you know, the necklaces that her grandfather Pappy gave her since then.
[:[00:21:02] Leah Clionsky: Yeah.
[:[00:21:03] Leah Clionsky: love that, Liz, I love that you did that. Bring your dad. Sometimes kids will do it on their own.
[:[00:21:27] Leah Clionsky: But she sometimes kids really do cope with things on their own in a way that is inspiring. To us, you know, where you, you think you have to go in and solve things for them, but sometimes they do figure things out in their own way. One thing, um, I do wanna make sure we do say in this podcast is that if this is really hard, if you are having a tough time, which is very understandable with the loss of a family member, and it makes the idea of your child bringing up these things with you is very painful.
[:[00:22:17] Leah Clionsky: Dr. Ross's clinic is a fantastic place to go, so I just wanna let you know about that. Be transparent about how helpful and healing that can be, because being a good parent is being true and kind and compassionate with yourself for Ev all of us.
[:[00:22:46] Liz Ross: Surreal process. I think we never kind of lose that need for a parent even. You know, if you're in middle age or you're a parent yourself, you always want that person to go to. That's gonna help you get through whatever period of [00:23:00] life you're in, right? Whether that's like a mentor or a peer family member, or whoever that is.
[:[00:23:26] Liz Ross: And sometimes, you know, sort of depending on what your relationship was with that person, those feelings can be really complicated. I know we've talked about this before, but for example, if somebody has like a really challenging relationship with their own parent. Sometimes they might expect to feel, let's say, even like relief or something like that, especially if that person's been suffering for a long time and then they might be surprised that they feel so emotional about it.
[:[00:23:56] Leah Clionsky: Being a human is hard. It is we're all [00:24:00] human. We are even humans when we are well-trained psychologists, which is why we are here being human with you today. Well, I am so, so glad you were able to join us for this episode. If you are, I. Looking for some excellent clinicians to help you through your grief.
[:[00:24:37] Leah Clionsky: Thanks again for spending time with me on Educated Parent if this episode helped you feel more confident in handling those parenting curve balls. Hit follow. So you never miss an episode. Know a parent who's stuck in the endless cycle of conflicting advice. Send this their way because we all deserve parenting strategies we can actually trust.
[:[00:25:21] Leah Clionsky: If you need personalized parenting support, connect with an experienced clinician at Thriving Child Center or PCIT experts. That's it for today. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.
