Grief is hard for adults to handle, but for children who have limited life experience and less mature coping skills, it can be unbearable. Supporting a child who is grieving a loss, whether it be due to death, divorce or any number of other circumstances, is a challenge for teachers and parents alike. Like adults, all kids process their grief differently, and it's important to have great resources to help you help them.

One of the best books I've come across for helping educators and parents reach out to bereaved children is When Kids Are Grieving: Addressing Grief and Loss in School by Donna M. Burns. Burns is an educational psychologist with a concentration on adolescent and child development and issues in loss and grief. She's conducted seminars and written papers on the subject and supported families dealing with grief.

When Kids Are Grieving is an excellent resource for adults supporting grieving children. She provides insights into child and adolescent grief, how to recognize it, strategies for healthy and supportive interventions, checklists, additional resources, charts and even activities to help children at various ages.

I've read other books and articles on helping children who've lost parents or relatives to death, but they were never as complete or helpful as this book. Burns clearly understands that children can feel serious loss from more than just losing someone close to them and that we can't afford to downplay their grief. I actually bought this book when my son's first pet passed away and found it to be more helpful than any other title I'd seen before it. I would recommend that all educators and parents read this book, even before a child in their care experience loss for the first time.