Beyond the stories #4 With Rita Bezzola and Jessica Correnti

How Children Grieve — and How to Talk About It

What does grief actually look like in a child? And how do you talk about death, loss, and big feelings with kids who don't have the words yet? 

In this episode of Beyond the Stories, Rita sits down with Jessica Correnti— certified child life specialist, bereaved mom, and author of the ABCs of Grief series — to explore one of the most avoided conversations in parenting.

Jessica has spent 14 years working in pediatric intensive care units before building her own grief support practice. 

She brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to a conversation that is honest, warm, and surprisingly hopeful.

What you'll hear in this episode:

— Why children process grief through play, not words — The myth that we need to protect young kids from death and loss — How to use books as an entry point for hard conversations — What "grief bubbles" are — and why your child isn't doing grief wrong — The red flags that mean a child needs extra support — Why grief is not just about death — and how to help kids name ALL their losses — How to show your own emotions without making your child your caretaker

This episode pairs with the Once Upon a Feeling story episode on the same theme. Listen in order — the magic is in both together.

Jessica Correnti is a certified child life specialist, bereaved mom, and author of the ABCs of Grief book series. She spent 14 years working in pediatric ICUs before founding her own grief support practice, serving families across the U.S. and internationally.

📍 Instagram: @kidsgriefsupport 

🌐 Website: kidsgriefsupport.com 

📚 Books: Available at kidsgriefsupport.com and Amazon

Transcript

[00:00:00] [00:01:00] So welcome Jessica. Thank you for spending an an hour the next hour with me.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always a joy to be able to talk about grief, especially related to children and, and how they process the experience.

So grief is such a, um, What calls you to this work, this so important work, but sometimes taxing. Like, what was the origin story for Jessica?

I.

Sure. so I mean it's, it's definitely, a culmination of a lot of different things, uh, both professionally and personally. I actually started in this line of work as a certified child life specialist working specifically in pediatric intensive care units. So of course in that type of setting there, there is a lot of grief both.

Death and non death losses. And I, I think there's often this, [00:02:00] um, initial gut reaction that people have with anybody working in the grief space of, wow, that must be so hard. And yes, there are hard moments, but there's also so much. Joy and hope and connection. And I think unless you're really in this field working with Grievers, you don't really think about that.

And there's that piece that I initially first think of. as a child life specialist in this grief space just because of where I started my profession working in the intensive care unit. Um.

Even though there were all of these really big heavy moments, I was able to be there to make a huge difference in these families lives at, you know, whether it was the end of their child's life or if it was a really hard hospital stay that really changed, , the outcome of, this family's life.

There were moments of joy [00:03:00] there too. So, I, I guess what I can say too is my, personal experience of going through my own profound losses really kinda lit a fire underneath of me to be able to provide services outside the hospital setting as well. So I worked in the hospital setting for, , about 14 years of my career and.

After I went through my own grief experience, I realized there are some great supports in the hospital setting, but once families go home, there's not a whole lot. So realizing that I really wanted to get out into the community setting to be able to be that source of support, both with my child life background and then also my lived experience as a bereaved mom knowing, , there are certain things that.

Uh, these families need that are not easily accessible, so wanting to really fill the gaps and provide support for them.

Thank you for sharing all of that. I think one thing that you mentioned there that a lot of us [00:04:00] don't think about, because this is not something we talk about every day this is actually one of those topics that most of people don't like to talk about, , is that little moments of joy and that.

That little light when things feel like it's so dark.

From your work, from also your own experience, how did that show up? , How did that manifest itself and, did that shape how you show up for your, your clients?

Well, I think kids can bring such, a different perspective of grief. So the way that kids process grief in any difficult situation, as well as well as just life experiences is through play. And so a child might be playing with, you know, their Legos and their. Little Dolls and Play-Doh and playing through what they've experienced or playing through these imagined, you know, if things would've gone this way, this would've [00:05:00] been the situation.

So these really imaginative worlds kids can bring themselves into. And most of the time, helping kids process their grief is, is through some sort of. Lighter avenue like play. So, I think that's where this, this idea of, , it must be so hard and so heavy and so, you know, all these really dark things to help a child process this really difficult situation.

But a lot of it is done through play. So I'm playing board games with kids and I'm, creating these really vibrant, expressive art activities to help a child. Discover what, what feelings they do have inside and invite them out in a way that is comfortable for them because they might not have the words to articulate what they feel like, and they might need a non-verbal way to get their feelings out.

And it's also a lot less, it's a lot less threatening playing [00:06:00] through a grief situation versus. Having somebody try and pull that out of you with words. I mean, kids aren't, you know, sitting on a couch saying, this is how I feel.

Yeah. It is so interesting that You kind of showed, me especially on how to approach grief through play through some of these lighter, brighter, I mean, God forbid we say fun, right?

Like fun activities to process. Because how I was raised from many decades ago is that when the family is grieving, . We all have to be in this dark place. We have to, cry. I mean there actually a practice in, , on Chinese culture that you hire someone to wail and cry at the funeral , procession to show how much this person was missed.

Like, it's a thing like people get. 

that's interesting. I've never heard of that.

It's wild. [00:07:00] But there is immediate this, this dark cloud over it where it's a loss and you need to be solemn. You wear black, you, it's almost like if you're not miserable, then you are not a good human being.

That mindset can be so hard for a child. Like they can have this negative self-talk of like, what's wrong with me? I'm, Having fun. I'm laughing with my friends. Yes, I'm sad, but I'm having fun too. Does that mean something's wrong with me? And then the guilt comes in and the self blame. And so it can spiral kids into this place of thinking.

They're like doing grief wrong. Which of course there's, there's no way to do grief wrong. There are many ways to grieve.

Thank you for saying that because that kind of like goes straight into my next question is that in your, these years of practice, what jumped out at you? for example, like something that a kid did while they're grieving that is so out of the ordinary but yet makes so much sense, like something that was like, oh, that's interesting.

Did any sort of, [00:08:00] scenarios just surprised you?

Um, that's a tricky question 'cause I feel like grief is, is such an individualized, unique experience. Even though we all go through it, we're all going to go through it in our own different way and, there's not any one right or wrong way to do it. So, , I wouldn't necessarily say there's anything that's like, wow, that's shocking.

I've never seen that before in a grieving child. . I, I will say certain things that grieving kids say sometimes, particularly young children, sometimes they're extremely blunt in the statements and the questions that they have, so I think that often catches people off guard. Not a whole lot catches me off guard anymore because I feel like I've kind of heard it all.

I mean very, very blank questions like kids asking, questions about, you know, a, a body that has been buried and if they need food, if they're cold, if they, how, how long does it take for their [00:09:00] body to ? Deteriorate? So it's like these questions that probably everybody's thinking about, but 

Nobody 

dares to say. 

yeah, they don't have that same filter that an adult does, so they'll just say whatever's on their mind.

So if there is a myth about childhood grief, that you wish you could put to rest , forever, like parents, just get this out of your head now. What would that be?

I think the main thing that comes to mind is this myth or idea that we need to protect young children from death and difficult topics and. Really any child, no matter what age, including toddlers, can get some, some information about death and dying in, any tough conversation. So it might be a very simple one line sentence that is giving them some information, but no child is too young to have , these conversations.

And it, it starts really simply with the things that we're naturally seeing in our environment. I know [00:10:00] so many people decide, you know, " this seems like a really big, tough topic. I'm gonna wait until they're a little bit older, when they can understand better. "But we can build the foundation when they're really young.

I mean, even something like you're going out on a walk with your child and there's a bird on the sidewalk that has died, and they ask about that. The gut reaction for some people might be," oh, I'm just gonna say they're sleeping." That's not the truth. And when we can very simply say, oh, that bird must have died.

I, I'm not sure what happened, but he's no longer breathing, doesn't, you know, have a heartbeat anymore. , The bird is dead. So if we can start there with a bird that we have no connection to, when it does hit a little bit closer to home, they have that foundation built. And it's not this like. A topic that's never been talked about before.

Yeah, I love that there's a, that there is this scaffolding going on. . One thing that was so [00:11:00] interesting as I was recording the story with my oldest, who is 11 now, who has gone through, not close to home, but several kind of lost grieving situation, you know, through her friends, her friends, uh, her classmates families as we were going through the story, and I was interviewing her this question of like, well, you know, I asked her to.

Name the color, like how grief feels like, you know, in terms of color. I asked her where she feels it in her body, which surprised me. She says she feels is right on her nose. I'm like, Hey, that's great. I feel like, you know, are you trying? I was trying to make sense of it and I decided not to. You feel in your nose.

You feel in your nose what I, to negate that? But what was so interesting was that when I asked her about specific instances where she felt grief, , She could gimme the definition of the word perfectly fine, but when I asked her to kind of like, well, when did you feel that? , She couldn't gimme one.

She's like, well, all of my [00:12:00] family, everybody is living. Our dogs are living. And when the other dog passes, I was too young. She was immediately equating grief with a capital G.

And then, so that is when I took a break and I'm like, okay, let's talk about this. I don't know like what happened there, because we know about death.

She knows about death, she knows about pain, she knows about loss. But when we ask her about grief, she immediately blanks out. What was interesting was when we were, when we talked about it, about half an hour, like, you know, loss as many things, friendship, I had to draw so many parallels. What was interesting is like two hours later she comes back's like, you know what?

A lot of my friends are probably leaving school next year and they're not gonna be in the same class. I mean like, I think that feels like grief and immediately, and I'm like, yeah, that is.

I think so many people only equate grief with death. Not only children, but adults too. It's just what we commonly think of and the more that we talk about other. [00:13:00] Loss situations, whether it is moving schools and not having those same friends there, or, there are so many different things.

It could be getting a medical condition and your life all of a sudden is totally different than it was before. And maybe the expectations for what you could do in the future are totally different. Or maybe it's, you know, your finances are totally different than they once were. And. You have to change your expectations about everything.

And of course, friendship changes is a, a big one, but there are so many different losses that we all go through, and so often we don't really assign, you know, that loss word or grief word to it. And we wonder, you know, why am I having such a hard time with this? But if we give some language to that experience, and if we connect it as a loss, maybe we can give ourselves a little bit more permission to feel whatever we're feeling and [00:14:00] to be able to talk about it with other people instead of just pushing it within and thinking, , there must be something wrong with me.

Why am I having such a hard time with this? So I think the, the more that we can do to educate kids. On the many different types of losses that we all experience and, and making sure that kids know that, whatever you're experiencing and feeling is okay. We don't need to like try and. Compare and have like the grief Olympics of like, "oh, , yours is so much harder than mine.

So mine's not valid anymore." No. Like we all have our own different experiences, and whatever you are feeling is okay, and we don't need to quiet our own losses or minimize them because in our mind we think it's, bigger or smaller than anybody else's.

I think it is so interesting 'cause you're an author. You have published three beautiful books. ABCs of Grief, ABCs of Grief and And Emotions and Feelings. [00:15:00] And then the third one and the latest one is ABCs of Grief of Coping. , I think what is interesting on, especially on bedtime stories or even just introducing these topics. These are not typically the type of books that the parents reach for before they put the kids to bed. And I also, I have also heard from lots of parents who feels like, or you know, who thinks that I don't have to introduce all of that to them yet until it happens. What is your take on that? which team are you on?

Are we team, like sell them early or a team, like we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

I think the more proactive we can be about any difficult topic, the better because these experiences are happening all of the time, whether we know it or not. , I mean, my books, for example, I, when the ABCs of Grief came out, the very first one in the series, I brought it to my daughter's kindergarten class at the time and read it to her class.

And to be [00:16:00] honest, I was a little bit nervous reading it to her class not because of what was in my book, but I was nervous about the, the potential reaction of the teacher being like, oh, , this topic is too much or too big. But she was really celebrating me reading this book because she said, oh my gosh, we need this book because we have so many kids going through so many big things.

She really recognized, the teacher really recognized that grief is many things and when. I read the book, one of the very first pages is A, is for anything and it introduces all the different ways that grief can show up. And I stopped and paused and I asked this room full of five-year-olds,

have you guys ever been through anything like this? And almost every single hand in that room shot up like 20, 25 kids and they're all sharing their different grief situations. And one child had a pet die. One child just moved here from a different country and everything was new to them.

They barely knew the language and the [00:17:00] cultures were very different than what they were used to from their home country. And , there was a child in there who had a parent die, a child in there who had a sibling die. , There were kids talking about, I really miss my preschool. Everything's different here at elementary school.

So it was a range of all these different types of losses. And what was so beautiful is that with this classroom of five-year-olds. Nobody in there was like trying to compare losses. Nobody was trying to say, yours is bigger than mine, yours is harder than mine. Mine is, you know, just this little thing everybody just shared.

And it was, I think there's a lot that we can learn from, from young kids.

Yeah, I feel like we all need to go back to that kindergarten class where everybody just feels seen and and see others, 

yeah. They were so excited to share their grief situations and you could tell they just, they, they wanted to be seen and heard, and there's so much power in that validation of speaking your story and having other [00:18:00] people see you and whatever you're experiencing.

Yeah, I think so much of like, you know, like parenting, especially our, I feel like our generation we're kind of like, for me anyways, I'm crossing cross culture, cross Generations that whatever, however I was raised, no longer applies., It's served me well in the sense that, oh, I am not gonna do that to my kids.

'cause that didn't work out great. , For those of us who really didn't grow up in an environment like you're holding, if we wanted. Do it right by our children, and start talking about grief and normalizing these conversation at dinner tables or at bedtime.

what do you think is the one thing that we need to remember? Like, like, you know, for the parents out there who gets a little, like nervous about talking to the children about this really big topic. 'cause they might not feel like they have all of the knowledge and the background to support that. Like what would you tell them?

[00:19:00] How do they start?

Yeah, I, I mean, I think, I think books are a really great entry point to have these. Tough conversations because we might not feel like we know what words to really choose. And a, a book does such a beautiful job of just laying that out there so that you don't have to be the one to decide how you're gonna start that conversation.

You can just read the book 

Yeah.

I love 

take pauses and see where the child takes it to. I'm all for seeing what your child does with introducing. Certain topics and seeing, you know, what, what's coming up for them? What, what questions are they asking? What do you see in their body language? Is their body language changing at all?

Do they seem overwhelmed? Do they seem confused? And, um, you, you can start the conversation through a book, but if they shut that thing down, you take that as a cue that, okay, maybe they're not ready for this topic right now. Or maybe there's something that [00:20:00] we need to explore first to. You know, see what, what we can do to help support them where they are right here in the moment.

So I, I do love the use of books when, particularly when it's a difficult, emotionally charged topic and we're not really sure what to say. 

I. 

Um, and for those, and I think one thing that happened in, you know, like in, in our, in our community when I mentioned that my oldest daughter, um, her classmates were going through some really serious things too, of her classmates separately, one lost his dad and the other one lost his mother. Um. For the surviving parent, how do you do it?

How do you, how do you take care of a grieving child when yourself are grieving hard?

Yeah, it's imperfect and messy and, and yeah, there's, there's no perfect way to do it. You just, you do your best in the moment, and my [00:21:00] hope for anybody going through something like that is that they really use their supports in their community because nobody should have to go through that on their own.

While I say that it is incredibly isolating in, in instant, your whole support network has totally shifted and changed and there is a lot more on your plate. And you know, we can, we can say the, you know, pretty, um, often heard comment of, you know, you gotta support yourself first and put your own oxygen mask on.

And that's. Great. And it's also way easier said than done. Um, the reality is most grieve and most parents who have gone through the death of a spouse, they're, they're not putting their needs first. They're putting their kids' needs first, and that's what most parents do. Um, but to also find these small little wins and these little [00:22:00] moments, whether it's five, 10 minutes where you're doing something to really.

You know, feed your soul or to connect with somebody else or to specifically ask for what you need. And I think that's one of the things that often, often people will say, you know, let me know if you need anything asking, you know, asking the griever, how can I support you? When most of the grievers, they don't know what they need necessarily.

So as supporters, if we can show up and. Say, give them a couple choices and say how you can help support them. That's huge too. So I know that that kind of switched tracks a little bit into more of the community. But if you're trying to show up to support somebody in your community who has gone through a, an experience like that, maybe you show up and say, I can drop food off at your house at this day, if that would be helpful.

I can take your kids to the park with my own children as [00:23:00] well. Give you some time. You know, to do whatever you need to do, whether you need to get stuff done or if you just wanna take an nap. Um, so giving some very tangible ways that you can be there to support them is really helpful because I, I think it is just so overwhelming for the grieving adults that also have grieving children at home.

It's just, um, it's a bit of a rollercoaster ride.

I think one of the things that I have seen, especially my mother, that generation is this need of shielding their children from their own sadness. 

what is your take on that? 

Yeah, I think many of us in, in this generation had the same experience with our own parents and not really showing their own emotions in front of us. that's carried over for some people who are parenting in, in our generation, and they either are of that mindset where we wanna shield and protect, or [00:24:00] they are trying to break the cycle and show their kids, I'm human.

I have feelings too. I always encourage caregivers and parents, it's okay to show your emotions. What you're doing is actually inviting your kids to do the same. And you're modeling for them, , how do we express our emotions in a healthy way and we might not always get it right, and that's okay because we're human.

And so maybe we do have a moment where our anger gets the best of us and we're raising our voice and we're saying things in ways that we don't wanna say them.

And then we can go back and repair the situation with our child and say, that was not the right way to handle that. I'm so sorry. My emotions got the best of me.

I was really angry and I raised my voice, or whatever it might be. And you can not only repair, but say, this is, , this is what , I'm gonna do instead, I'm gonna go for a walk next time. I'm gonna take five minutes by myself and just [00:25:00] catch my breath, whatever it might be. But if kids see. Those emotions shared as well as how we as adults can cope and release those emotions, whether it's like the uncomfortable ones or the really joyous ones too.

Having that full range of emotional expression is really healthy for kids to see.

Really, the only time that I would say it's like gone too far is if the child is always the one that's like.

The supporter of , the parent or the adult in the situation, then it's gone too far. , So there is a balance there, , that we want to create.

And it, it's not black and white either. It's , lots of different shades there.

But, but yeah, it's really healthy to show all of that to, your kids as well.

Well that is, uh, yeah, it's a balance. I keep on thinking, it's just so interesting as you were telling those scenarios. I know in my culture there's literally stories [00:26:00] like. Moral stories that we would read as we were really young, like second, third grade about, um, how like. Virtuous. It was for this ancient kid taking care of their parents, you know, um, at all cost and what a example they were setting.

And now I'm like thinking about, I'm like, that's not great.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Like that's, that, that's not fair. Um, so yeah, there's a lot of, these kind of like cultural education, just all these things that we need, , we're trying to undo here. 

Yeah. And I think sometimes too, I was just thinking of like the example that you gave of, kids who have had a, a parent who has died. Sometimes those kids feel like it's their responsibility to take care of their surviving parent too. So we gotta be careful of that too. 

That's like heartbreaking. 

it is, it's so heartbreaking.

And, you know, we can say, I know [00:27:00] you really care about me. I know you're really worried about me. This is how I'm taking care of myself. It's really kind that you are worried about me. It's not your job to, you know, it's not your responsibility to be, you know, my main supporter, whatever it might be, but giving them the, literally giving them the words and the permission, like, you can let this go.

It's, it's not your job as a child to take care of me.

And we have to be very loud and very literal about it. 

So one thing that I realized, um, and we kind of like touched about it a little bit in the beginning is what healthy grief looks like and, especially in children,

Can you kind of just. Describe like a, like a, you know, like a possible arc or what that potentially could look like for a parent when their child is grieving so they don't think that there is something wrong with their children.

so this is an interesting question 'cause. There's not any one answer. It's many different answers. So healthy grieving can [00:28:00] look like so many different things, and you have a lot of different grief styles that will take place as well. So, some kids, and this goes for adults too, they're grieving styles for adults and kids fit into those too.

Some, some kids will be very emotionally expressive about their, their grief. They might say what they're thinking and feeling. They might cry. They, they might be very emotive. And then you have other kids that, that's not their grief style, that's not their personality. They might be more, you know, maybe internal with their process and they might take on these roles and these.

They might have this feeling of like, I need to work on certain projects. I need to be busy. I need to do things, I need to, they're, they're really throwing themselves into these, they're stepping away from the emotions and going into acts of doing. and then you do have some [00:29:00] kids that in some capacity, they're kind of.

I not really, touching or processing their grief quite yet. And I think sometimes we really worry about those kids with, , are they just suppressing it? Are they ignoring it? And that's a valid question. Sometimes, depending on a child's age, their experience, their personality, sometimes that's actually not necessarily a bad thing that they're.

Holding it in for a little bit. Sometimes they just need a little bit of time to process that. Sometimes it can be something that is really tough for a child. There's really the red flags that I see. If a child is having a really hard time with their grief and they need some extra support, the things that I would be worried about is.

Is the kid having a really, really difficult time with things like eating and sleeping and doing the activities that they normally love to do? are they [00:30:00] having just a drastic change in their behaviors? are there certain worries or questions that they're like really perseverating on that they're really having a tough time with?

Have they totally shifted into like a very different personality, like than they were prior to their loss? So there's some of these red flags that I kind of look out for to provide a, a deeper level of support or connect them for more resources. But there are so many norms to what grief looks like in a child that there's, there's not any one, like this is what.

Healthy, normal grieving looks like, but there are definitely some red flags with, you know, they need more support if you're seeing some of these things.

Right. I think one that always kinda worries me the most is like, if the child is acting as if like nothing happened

that so always kind of like stops me in my tracks. And that's what you were saying before is, is that, are you [00:31:00] okay? Are you not okay? Are you suppressing it? 

It's interesting though too, with that. from an onlooker standpoint, we might think, oh, they, they are acting like nothing happened. But the way that kids process grief is so different than the way that adults do because for adults is really this like all consuming type of experience where, you know, maybe the loss happens and then that's the only thing that we can think about for weeks on end.

It's not that way for kids. Their brain does not let them stay in it. It is. Physically impossible for their brain to stay in that place. They process it in these small little bubbles of time where , they might have these couple minutes where they're really sitting deep in their grief and they're asking the big questions, and they're feeling all the big feelings, and then that bubble moves on and they're out playing with their friends.

They are acting like nothing happened, and they're in this space of. being kids, and [00:32:00] these little bubbles will come up where they're really just sitting in their grief, but to an onlooker. If they catch 'em in those times that it's not like this big grief burst, they might look at them and think they're acting like nothing ever happened.

Maybe they're not really processing it, and it's really not that they're not processing it, it's just that right now they're, they're playing and they're being, you know, whatever their age is, they're being a kid.

that is one piece of information like that is gold. Thank you. Yeah, I did not know that. Like, you know the, and I love it like when it's like combined with basically just physiology. Like this is just a brain.

It doesn't happen that way. That really kind of like, okay. I'm not looking at them 24 7.

So look for the red flags.

yeah, thank you. That was so informative. Please tell us where, the listener could find you, find your work, where to buy the books, 

Yeah, absolutely. So on Instagram, you can find me at Kids Grief Support [00:33:00] and my website is kids grief support.com. My, my books can be found on my website as well as Amazon. There are some bookstores that have my books as well, but the, my website and Amazon are the, the prime places to get my books.

Amazing. And you work with clients, I believe, both in Maryland as well as everywhere else.

anywhere, , all over the, the country as well as, , some international clients as well, which has been really fun.

Oh, that's amazing. So for all the listener out there, if you need some support, you know where to find Miss Jessica.

Well thank you so much. I hope to bring you on again soon. Um, talk about something else.

Mm-hmm. No problem. Thanks for having me,

Alright. is my, uh. It's my husband. I'll have to call him back. But yeah, he's like playing ping pong today with the kids and all. Yeah,

know. I know what that's like.

um, fun. I think this [00:34:00] episode will go live probably next week, so. I'm like, I need to build, like I slacked, 

Thank you so much for spending this time with us on Beyond the Stories. If this conversation was helpful, we'd love for you to share with a friend, a fellow parent, or anyone who might benefit from it. And if you feel moved to, please leave us a five star review wherever you get your podcast. It truly helps more people find these conversations.

You can also find more stories and resources by downloading the GCI app in Apple App Store. All the links and resources as well as ways to connect with us are in the podcast description. And if you have any questions, episode requests or topics you'll love us to explore, would truly love to hear from you.

Thank you so much again for listening, [00:35:00] and we will see you next time.