Helping a Child Remember Someone Who Died

How to help a child remember someone who died — organised by what a child can actually understand at their age, using guidance from the Dougy Center, the American Academy of Pediatrics and a free bereavement guide rather than from us, with our own additions marked as ours. If you are in the first weeks of a loss, the only section you need is the last one.

Most articles about remembering someone who died are written for adults doing the remembering. This one is about helping a child do it, which is a different problem — because what a child understands about death changes several times as they grow, and a keepsake that works at five is not the one that works at eleven.

Everything below on how children grieve comes from the Dougy Center, the national grief centre for children and families, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, and from the free guide After a Loved One Dies, quoted from pages we opened. Where a sentence is our reading of a source rather than the source's own words, it says so in the sentence.

What a child understands, by age

The Dougy Center publishes a developmental chart covering ages 2 to 18. Three things in it change how you approach remembrance.

Ages 2 to 4. Children this age "don't fully understand that death is permanent and universal" and "are most likely to express themselves through their behavior and play." Death is seen as reversible. The Center records questions like "My mom died? When will she be home?" and "Will you die too? What about me?"

Ages 5 to 8. Very concrete thinkers "with a tendency towards magical/fantasy thoughts." Children this age "often still see death as reversible" and — this is the part most adults do not expect — "can also feel responsible and worry that their wishes or thoughts caused the person to die."

Ages 9 to 12. Children this age "begin to understand that death is permanent and start thinking about how the loss will affect them over the long-term." Self-blame persists in a more reasoned form: "If I had done my homework, my teacher wouldn't have died." The Center also notes that "some children will focus on the details of what happened to the body of the person who died."

The practical consequence for remembrance: a memory object is also a conversation opener, and for a child under about twelve the conversation may need to include "this was not your fault" even though nobody asked. That last part is not our invention. After a Loved One Dies, the free guide written by David J. Schonfeld, MD and Marcia Quackenbush, puts it this way: "When talking with children about the death of someone close, it's appropriate to assume that some sense of guilt may be present. This will usually be the case even if there is no logical reason for the children to feel responsible." (read the guide)

The language rule, which the Dougy Center repeats in three of its four age bands

The instruction appears in the 2–4, 5–8 and 9–12 guidance. In the two youngest bands the second half is word for word identical, and only the lead-in and the example change. The 2–4 version reads: "Provide a short, honest explanation of the death. 'Mommy died. Her body stopped working.' Use the words dead and died. Avoid euphemisms such as gone, passed on, lost." The 5–8 version opens instead with "Explain the death honestly using concrete language. 'Daddy's heart stopped working.'" before the same two closing sentences.

For the 9–12 band the wording shifts and the list grows: "Even though children this age are starting to grasp abstract thought, it's still helpful to use the words dead and died and avoid euphemisms such as gone, passed on, lost, expired." The 13–18 band is the exception. Its own list of ways to help carries no euphemism instruction at all, and the nearest thing in it is "Answer questions honestly." The Center describes teenagers as "cognitively able to understand and process abstract concepts about life and death", which is the obvious reason for the omission, but the document does not say so and we are not going to put the words in it.

This matters for anything you make or write. A memory book that says "we lost Grandad" reads to a concrete thinker as a thing that could be found again. Plain words are kinder than soft ones here, which is counterintuitive and worth trusting.

Five ways to help a child remember, from the AAP and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

The five are published jointly by the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and the page credits the ideas onward rather than claiming them: "The ideas below are inspired by Allison Gilbert's Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive". Its framing is the best sentence we found on the whole subject: "Even though loss is out of our control, making sure positive memories of family and friends aren't forgotten is within our control."

Frame their handwriting. "Frame a handwritten recipe or a loved one's signature on a letter." Of everything on this list, handwriting is the one people most often still have and least often think to use.

Celebrate their words. "Jot down a loved one's funny or poignant sayings as soon as they come to you" and put them somewhere in the house. The instruction to write them down as soon as they come to you is doing real work — these are the first things to go.

Create a memory garden. "Visit your local nursery and buy a loved one's favorite herb, plant or flower." This one suits younger children particularly well, because it is a thing to do rather than a thing to look at.

Upcycle clothing. "Reimagine a loved one's favorite sweater, shirt, or pair of jeans" — into a quilt, a cushion, a bear.

Repurpose jewelry. "Necklaces, cufflinks, and charms don't have to stay as-is."

What we would add, as opinion rather than guidance

Three things, clearly marked as ours and not the AAP's.

Record the other adults, now. The child will want the stories later, and the people who hold them are the ones most likely to stop telling them. Twenty minutes on a phone with a sibling, a friend or a colleague of the person who died is the single highest-value thing available, and it gets harder every year.

Write down the ordinary, not the eulogy. Children ask what the person smelled like, what they said when they were annoyed, what they ate for breakfast. Funerals produce summaries; children want specifics.

Make the object openable rather than sacred. A box a child can go through beats a display case they must not touch. The Dougy Center's words for the youngest band are that children "are most likely to express themselves through their behavior and play", and its advice for that band includes "Provide opportunities for play." The handling of objects is our extension of that, not the Center's: an object a child cannot pick up is an object that cannot do the work.

What to be careful with

Do not make the remembrance a surprise. Presenting a memory book or a framed photograph to a grieving child in front of a room is a lot to be handed in company. Give it privately, and say what it is before they open it.

Do not build it to be finished. The AAP is direct about the timescale: children "won't simply 'get over' a loved one's death within a few months or even a year", and its example of grief returning is deliberately far out — milestones that reach "adult children" "even decades later". The remembrance page it publishes with Children's Hospital of Philadelphia is blunter about the shape of it, and about children rather than grown ones: "Keep in mind that grief comes and goes over time, and there's no doubt children will experience the same loss differently throughout their lives", and "because grief has no time limit, it's essential parents and caregivers make opportunities for remembering as easy as possible." Our conclusion from that, not theirs: something that can be added to at nine and again at fourteen is more useful than something completed once.

Be careful with photographs of the death itself or of the final illness. Older children may specifically want these. Younger ones generally do not, and the Dougy Center notes that in the 9–12 band "some children will focus on the details of what happened to the body of the person who died."

Do not use it to close the subject. The AAP's first instruction to a grieving family is "Be clear and honest": "As adults, we might assume that the less we talk about death with children the better. But kids of all ages can benefit when caring adults take time to offer a framework for understanding death, using words that match the child's age and level of development." Its second is "Allow feelings to flow. Let them know that it's healthy to cry or talk about how we feel when we're sad." An object is a way in, not a way to stop.

When to get help rather than make something

This is the part that matters more than anything else here.

The AAP advises watching for "major changes in your child's approach to everyday life" — the talkative child who goes quiet, the decisive teenager who cannot decide. Its instruction if you see that is direct: "Call their doctor. Pediatricians and family physicians care about the well-being of your child's body and mind."

The Coalition to Support Grieving Children, which includes the AAP, distributes a free guide called After a Loved One Dies: How Children Grieve and How Parents and Other Adults Can Support Them, written by David J. Schonfeld, MD and Marcia Quackenbush and published by the New York Life Foundation. The Dougy Center runs peer support groups and maintains a directory of similar programmes.

If you are in the first weeks of a loss, none of the making is urgent. The handwriting, the recordings and the photographs will still be there in six months. Support will not organise itself.

Where a book fits, and where it does not

We make illustrated hardcover books from families' own memories, so read this section as interested rather than neutral — and read the next paragraph before the one after it.

This is the article on this site where our product is least likely to be the right answer, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise. A book cannot help a child who needs a grief group or a doctor. It does not shorten anything. If you are choosing between making something and finding support, find support.

Where it does fit is narrow and specific: a child old enough to ask for stories, some months after the death, who wants the person as they were rather than as they were at the end. A short illustrated story about one real afternoon with that person — the fishing trip, the kitchen, the thing they always said — is something a young child can hold. The Dougy Center's own words are only that young children "express themselves through their behavior and play"; that a physical object helps with that is our inference, not theirs. It is also addable-to, which matters given how long the AAP says this lasts.

Practically, and stated once: a memorial book about a grandparent is a book about an adult, which is what the personalized book for adults and storybook for any age pages cover. The grandparent gift book page covers the same relationship while the person is alive, which is a better time to make one. If you have grandparents living, the highest-value version of everything in this article is to record them this year — the interview idea in our guide to gifts for grandparents is the same twenty minutes, done while it is still easy.

Frequently asked questions

How do you explain death to a young child?

Short, honest, and in plain words. The Dougy Center's own example is "Mommy died. Her body stopped working." Use the words dead and died, and avoid euphemisms such as gone, passed on or lost — the Center calls children in the 5–8 band "very concrete thinkers", and our own reading is that a softened phrase gets heard literally. Expect the same questions repeatedly: the Center lists "Repetitive questions" as a common response in both the 2–4 and 5–8 bands, and its advice for the 5–8 band is "Be prepared for repetitive questions."

Do children blame themselves when someone dies?

Some do, and the sources are careful about how many. The Dougy Center says children aged 5–8 "can also feel responsible and worry that their wishes or thoughts caused the person to die" — "can", not "usually" — and records them saying "It's my fault. I was mad and wished she'd die", with 9–12s saying "If I had done my homework, my teacher wouldn't have died." The guide After a Loved One Dies advises adults to assume "some sense of guilt may be present" even where there is "no logical reason for the children to feel responsible". Because children rarely volunteer this, it usually has to be said out loud without being asked: this was not caused by anything you thought, said or did.

What are good ways to help a child remember someone who died?

The AAP and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia suggest five, credited on their page to Allison Gilbert's Passed and Present: frame their handwriting, write down and display their sayings, plant a memory garden, upcycle their clothing, and repurpose their jewelry. We would add recording the other adults who knew them, writing down ordinary details rather than eulogy-style summaries, and keeping any memory object openable rather than displayed out of reach.

Should a memory keepsake be made straight away?

No. Photographs, handwriting and recordings will still exist in six months, and the first weeks are for support rather than projects. The one exception is other people's memories — recording a sibling or friend of the person who died is the only item that genuinely degrades with time.

Why does a child grieve again years later?

Because the same death keeps meeting a different child. The Dougy Center's chart has two- to four-year-olds who "don't fully understand that death is permanent and universal" and nine- to twelve-year-olds who "begin to understand that death is permanent" — one loss, understood differently at each stage. The AAP takes the long view: children "won't simply 'get over' a loved one's death within a few months or even a year", and it describes milestones such as graduating, moving or becoming a parent throwing "adult children" off-course "even decades later". Neither source uses the word re-grieving, and the advice that follows — make something that can be added to rather than finished — is ours rather than theirs.

When should you seek professional help for a grieving child?

The AAP's marker is major changes in a child's approach to everyday life — a dramatic and sustained shift in personality or functioning — and its instruction is to call their doctor. The Dougy Center runs peer support groups and maintains a directory of similar programmes. Neither this article nor any object is a substitute for either.

How this guide was made

Every quotation here comes from a page or PDF opened on 28 August 2026, and each source is linked at the point it is first quoted rather than only at the foot of the page. The Dougy Center's developmental chart was read from its own PDF. The two American Academy of Pediatrics pages are separate publications of different dates, so they are credited separately rather than blended into one undifferentiated "the AAP says", and the guide After a Loved One Dies is credited to its own authors and publisher rather than to the AAP, because the document itself never mentions the Academy.

The earlier version of this section said that everything here on how children grieve was a direct quotation from one of two organisations. It was not. Six claims did not survive the check as they were written, and naming them is the point of this section.

First, it said the Dougy Center repeated the dead-and-died instruction in every one of its age bands. It appears in three of the four; the 13–18 guidance has no such line, and the article now says so. The old heading's claim that this was the single most repeated instruction in the chart went with it, because we never counted the others. Second, it stated that children aged 5–12 frequently believe they caused the death, and called that belief common and a normal part of development. The Center's verb is "can", the intensifiers were ours, and they are gone. Third, it attributed two phrases to the AAP about what talking to a grieving child does — one saying that talking lets a child show sadness rather than produce it, one saying that silence is worse than talking. Neither phrase is on any AAP page we could open, and searching the three healthychildren.org pages and the Coalition guide in full returned nothing; both have been dropped and replaced with the sentences the page actually carries.

Fourth, it said the Dougy Center describes young children as processing through play and handling. "Handling" is not in the document, and the sentence now marks it as our extension. Fifth, it stated as fact that a child's grief returns at each stage of growth, and that a loss met at five is met again at nine by a child who now understands it, calling that re-grieving. The five-then-nine example was ours, and so was the word: no cited page uses "re-grieving". The idea underneath it, though, was on a page this article already quotes throughout its five-ways section, in a closing passage we had missed — the AAP and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia write that "grief comes and goes over time, and there's no doubt children will experience the same loss differently throughout their lives" and that "grief has no time limit". So the invented ages and the invented word are gone, and the claim is now made in the source's words, alongside what the second AAP page says about milestones reaching grown children and the change in understanding the Dougy Center's own chart records. The conclusion we draw from those — build something addable-to — is still marked as ours. Sixth, the five remembrance ideas were credited to the AAP alone. The page is published by the AAP and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and it credits the ideas to Allison Gilbert's Passed and Present.

Our own additions are marked as opinion in their own section rather than blended into the sourced material, and where a sentence is our reading of a source rather than its words — that a concrete thinker hears a euphemism literally, that a physical object suits how a young child processes — it now says so at the point it is made. We have no data on what helps a grieving child and have not implied that we do.

This is also the article on this site where our commercial interest sits worst against the reader's need, so the section about our product says plainly that it is often the wrong answer, and the section before it says to seek help instead. If those two sections read as underselling, that is deliberate.

Sources

• Dougy Center: The National Grief Center for Children & Families, "Developmental Responses to Grief, ages 2–18" (four-page chart, copyright 2021; bands 2–4, 5–8, 9–12 and 13–18) — source of the age bands, the concrete-thinking and magical-thinking descriptions, the recorded child quotations, the wording on permanence, and the instruction to use the words dead and died rather than euphemisms, which it gives in three of its four bands. Read from the Center's own PDF. dougy.org (PDF)
• American Academy of Pediatrics and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, "Five Ways to Help Your Child Remember and Celebrate Loved Ones" (copyright 2020, last updated 27 November 2023; the five ideas are credited on the page to Allison Gilbert's Passed and Present) — source of the five remembrance methods, the "within our control" framing, and the passage under its heading "A life's journey" on grief coming and going over time and having no time limit. healthychildren.org
• American Academy of Pediatrics, "Grief & Loss in Childhood: How to Help Your Child Cope" (by David Schonfeld, MD, FAAP and Arwa Nasir, MBBS, MSc, MPH, FAAP; AAP copyright 2024, last updated 4 May 2026) — source of "be clear and honest", "allow feelings to flow", the passage about milestones reaching adult children decades later, the marker of major changes in everyday functioning, and the instruction to call their doctor. healthychildren.org
• "After a Loved One Dies: How Children Grieve and How Parents and Other Adults Can Support Them", written by David J. Schonfeld, MD and Marcia Quackenbush, MS, MFT, CHES, published by the New York Life Foundation (copyright 2009) and distributed by the Coalition to Support Grieving Children — source of the guidance to assume some sense of guilt is present. It is not an American Academy of Pediatrics publication and is not cited here as one. After a Loved One Dies (PDF)
• Dougy Center — peer support groups and a directory of similar programmes. dougy.org