Understanding Childhood Grief: Recognizing the Signs and Offering Support by Karan Kataria, MS

2 days ago
3 min read

Child in yellow sweater sits curled up on a couch, looking sad. A gray stuffed animal is beside them. Warm tones create a serene mood.

Children don’t always have the words to express grief—but it often reveals itself through their behavior, thoughts, emotions, and bodies. Recognizing these signs is the first step toward offering meaningful support, understanding, and care.

The Lukin Center has partnered with Imagine, A Center for Coping with Loss, to help support children and families navigating grief. Together, they aim to bring awareness to the many ways loss can impact young people and to ensure families know that compassionate resources are available.

Grief in children can appear in several ways:

Behavioral changes:

Children may show increased aggression, withdraw from relationships, or develop an intensified drive for perfection. Younger children may regress in developmental behaviors—such as bedwetting, clinginess, or baby talk—as a response to feeling unsafe or overwhelmed.

Cognitive changes:

Many children experience what is sometimes called “grief brain,” which can include difficulty concentrating, memory challenges, confusion, and disrupted thinking patterns. Some children may also struggle with causality and mistakenly believe they somehow caused the death or loss.

Emotional changes:

Grief is not limited to sadness or anger. Children may move quickly between deep sorrow and moments of joy or play. This fluctuation is normal and reflects how children process overwhelming emotions in manageable doses.

Physical changes:

Loss can be traumatic, and a child’s nervous system may shift into fight-or-flight mode. This can result in sleep disturbances, nightmares, changes in appetite, stomachaches, headaches, and even weight loss or gain.

Understanding these signs allows caregivers to respond with empathy rather than confusion or frustration. Early recognition and support can make a meaningful difference in a child’s healing process.

To learn more about the incredible work being done to support grieving families, click here to visit Imagine. If a child may be struggling with grief, compassionate help is available. At Lukin Center, therapists Jeremy Fuhrman, LPC, and Alexa Perillo, LPC, LPAT specialize in working with children and provide guidance, safety, and practical tools for healing during deeply vulnerable times.

Karan Kataria is the Mental Performance Coach and Social Media Manager at Lukin Center, where he is passionate about communicating the Center’s mission of accessible, evidence-based mental health care. In his role, he manages all social media and content creation across platforms including LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, while also supporting program development and patient engagement. Karan plays a key role in shaping the Sport Performance Program at Lukin Center by creating educational materials and preparing to serve as a presenter in the program’s initiatives.

He specializes in integrating sport and exercise psychology into performance and wellness, with a strong interest in the relationship between mind and body. Karan holds a Master of Science in Sport and Exercise Psychology from Springfield College and a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology with a cognate in Exercise Science from Michigan State University. His graduate research explored how self-talk evolves throughout endurance performance, reflecting his deep passion for the mind-body connection. Dedicated to advancing the field of psychology, he is also applying to doctoral programs in Clinical Psychology. Karan has worked with athletes, teams, and individuals across a variety of sports, providing mental skills training in areas such as self-talk, visualization, emotion regulation, and performance routines. He has also presented at conferences and academic forums on topics including endurance performance and applied psychology, blending his academic expertise with practical applications in sport and mental health. Deeply committed to bridging communication, psychology, and performance, Karan brings creativity, research, and passion to his work at Lukin Center, with the goal of helping individuals strengthen both their mental health and their performance potential.

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