What Children Can Teach Us About Grief: Joy and Sorrow Are not competitors (A Guest Post)
Roger Hutchison is an author, artist, speaker, and Director of Communications and Family Ministries at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. He is the author of numerous books for children and adults, including the forthcoming Sparrow's Blue Christmas (Beaming Books, September 2026) and Into the Woulds: A Field Guide for Tender Souls (Eerdmans, March 2027). Through his writing, artwork, and ministry, Roger encourages people to notice the sacred in everyday life and discover hope, healing, and possibility in every season.
Roger will be speaking to The Collective+ on Thursday, August 20, 2026 on “Preaching to Tender Souls.”
My phone buzzed one afternoon with a text from a parent.
Their young child had experienced a significant loss, and they wanted to know how to help. What do I say? Should I bring it up or wait for them to ask? What if I say the wrong thing?
After years of working with children and families, I've learned that questions like these almost always come from the same place: love.
Parents want so desperately to protect their children from pain that they worry even their words might make it worse.
Not long after that conversation, I read a thoughtful review of my forthcoming children's book, Sparrow's Blue Christmas.
It was generous and encouraging, but one sentence lingered with me long after I finished reading: "While the theme of holidays being fraught with mixed emotions may strike some as more relevant to adults than children..."
I understood what the reviewer meant.
Adults have lived long enough to know that the holidays can magnify loss.
We carry empty chairs, changed traditions, broken relationships, diagnoses, divorces, and grief that seems to echo a little louder when the world insists everything should be merry and bright.
Still, I couldn't stop thinking about those words: more relevant to adults than children.
For nearly thirty years, I've had the privilege of listening to children tell me about their lives.
I've sat around art tables, visited classrooms, led workshops, and walked alongside families through seasons of profound joy and heartbreaking loss.
I've watched children grieve grandparents, parents, siblings, pets, classmates, friendships, homes, and dreams that changed before they ever had a chance to become reality.
If there's one thing those years have taught me, it's this: children don't experience less grief than adults. They simply experience it differently.
Adults often expect grief to look like uninterrupted sadness.
We imagine tears, silence, withdrawal, or an inability to find joy.
Children rarely stay in one emotional place for very long.
A child might cry because they miss their grandmother, then laugh five minutes later when the family dog does something ridiculous.
While decorating cookies or hanging ornaments, they may quietly say, "Grandpa always put this one on the tree."
They haven't forgotten.
They haven't moved on.
Their grief simply breathes differently than ours.
Children’s Grief Breathes Differently than Adults’
I've come to believe that one of the greatest mistakes adults make is assuming that because children return to play, they've left their grief behind.
But play isn't the opposite of grief any more than laughter is the opposite of love.
Children have an extraordinary ability to move in and out of sorrow without feeling the need to explain themselves.
They don't apologize for laughing after crying.
They don't worry that a moment of happiness somehow betrays the person they miss.
Somehow, they know instinctively what many adults spend years trying to relearn: joy and sorrow are not competitors.
They are companions.
Perhaps that's why I paused over that sentence in the review.
It's not that I disagree that the holidays become more layered as we grow older.
Of course they do.
But I also know that children carry losses that adults sometimes fail to recognize.
The first Christmas without a grandparent.
A parent who is absent because of divorce, deployment, or death.
A sibling whose illness has changed the rhythm of family life.
A move to a new town.
The loss of a beloved pet.
Even the quiet realization that a cherished tradition has disappeared forever.
These losses matter, even when children don't yet have the vocabulary to explain them.
For those of us who preach, these losses matter.
Preaching that Witnesses Children’s Grief
Every Sunday we stand before congregations filled with people carrying losses we cannot see.
That includes children.
Some have experienced death.
Others are grieving divorce, illness, a move, the loss of a friendship, or a life that suddenly looks different than the one they imagined.
They should hear themselves in our preaching, too.
Not by simplifying grief into easy answers, but by telling the truth with gentleness, honesty, and hope.
Children don't need sermons that explain away suffering.
They need to know that God is present in the midst of it—and that the church is willing to stay with them there.
Whenever a parent asks me how to help a grieving child, I find myself offering less advice than I once did.
I no longer believe there's a perfect sentence that makes grief easier.
Instead, I encourage parents to pay attention.
Listen carefully.
Tell the truth in language a child can understand.
Resist the urge to rush past sadness or explain it away.
Most of all, remember that children don't need adults who can rescue them from grief.
They need adults who are willing to stay with them in it.
Grief Belongs to Children, too
Maybe that's why I continue writing stories for children that make room for difficult emotions.
Not because I believe childhood should be protected from sadness, but because I believe children deserve stories that tell the truth—with tenderness, honesty, and hope.
Childhood isn't an escape from life's hardest experiences. For many children, it's where they encounter them for the very first time.
In the end, the review gave me an unexpected gift.
It reminded me how easy it is for adults to assume that grief belongs primarily to us—that children are somehow waiting until they grow up to encounter the complicated emotions that shape every human life.
My experience has led me to believe the opposite.
Children have always known that joy and sorrow can occupy the same heart.
They don't need us to teach them that truth nearly as much as they need us to notice it, honor it, and walk beside them as they discover what it means.
Perhaps, in the end, children aren't the ones who need to learn how to grieve.
Perhaps they're the ones reminding us that the church doesn't need better answers as much as it needs people willing to stay.