What I Wish My Son’s Middle and High School Knew About Grief

Practical Tips for a Productive Partnership

Sep 27, 2023

By Maggie Moore, The Widow Coach

“He’s so much better these days,” said a friend and teacher. I realized how wrong those words were when I heard them in high school a few years ago. Yes, my son Collin is “better” NOW, eight years after my husband was killed in an auto accident. My husband was gone in less than a minute, and our world detonated. Yes, my son had re-engaged in the world. But no one knew the hellish path we walked to get there. And it’s time to change that. I’m writing this post because I made a promise to my son to do this. And I’m keeping it.

We have to get better at talking about grief and loss in the schools and elsewhere. Because it’s not isolated. According to Judi’s House/JAG Institute population estimate, 1 in 15 children in the U.S. will lose a parent or sibling before age 18,* almost 4 million children annually. If that 1 in 15 population were a high school, it would be the equivalent of 1-2 students in every classroom. And, that doesn’t include losses of close relatives like uncles, aunts or grandparents, for example.

As a parent, I walked that walk with my son. As a grief coach, I wish the schools knew what I have learned the hard way with him and others.

According to information from the New York Life Foundation:

Nearly 80% of those who lost a parent growing up agree that the experience was the hardest thing they have ever had to face.
Those who lost a parent growing up said it took 6+ years before they could move forward, yet 57% reported that support from family and friends waned within the first 3 months following the loss.
56% of those who lost a parent growing up say that their peers didn’t know how to act around them after the loss.

Schools are important in this process of dealing with the death of a parent:

81% of Americans believe schools should be better equipped with resources to assist grieving students.
75% of Americans agree that schools have a pivotal role to play in supporting grieving students.

But there is a disconnect:

68% those who lost a parent growing up say that it would have been easier to cope with their grief if our society was more open to talking about death and loss.
Only 25% of those who had lost a parent growing up said that their school was well prepared to help them when they returned to the classroom.
Only 31% stated that a teacher/ administrator/counselor sought them out to offer help.

There are some things that I wish my district (and all school districts) knew:

1) His grief is unique. Regardless of your own experience with loss, you don’t know my son’s loss or his journey. Neither do I.

Even if you lost a parent later in life, you lost that parent after you had a set of experiences that provided you more relationship perspective. The teachers I have talked to who lost a parent early on (before the age of 18) understood what you do not: the age at which you lose a parent does matter. The impact of spending time with a parent, support network, and life experience varies depending on timing, but there is no ideal time.

2) He’s invisible to society.

He’s invisible, in our schools and in our society.
My son illustrated this to me in a short, impactful, bitterly worded question after a school counselor told him he had to “move on”. He came home and threw his bookbag against the wall, put his head in his hands and told me about the conversation. He said, “Mom, what am I? There is no word for me in the English language. You’re a widow. What am I-a ‘half-orphan’?” The bitter laugh punched me in the gut, but it brought home a truth: we create language and identity for the things that matter to us, the things that we acknowledge. His loss had no language, no identity-and no validation.

· We need to acknowledge the loss of a parent, whether through death or divorce, and realize the impact that has on our children. According to a survey conducted for Comfort Zone Camp, 56% of respondents who lost a parent growing up would trade ONE YEAR of their life for ONE MORE DAY.

3) The world you live in is not his world.

You’re an adult. With adults around you…Adults with a lifetime of experience to draw on. Adults who have networks other adults on to help support you. And they will try to do so because that is how we have typically learned to navigate our world.

His world is different. His peers have less than 18 years of lifetime experience (10 or less, in my son’s case). As you know already as an educator, students are still developing themselves and will throughout school. But that has specific effects on the grieving process. Grieving teens aren’t accomplished in using peer networks to solve problems or to research solutions, or to discern those solutions for efficacy. Their peers also cannot be resources for them. Peers (and the grieving teen) may not have experience in processing loss in other capacities because they lack life experiences. There may not be experience for them to draw on. They don’t know what to say. Peers are asking him questions he can’t answer. His peer group isn’t skilled in helping him. And this is the group he spends his day and day out, week in and week out, who validate him.

He may or may not want to tell his peers what it is like to grieve, and if he does, they don’t have the life experience to help him.

His peers may minimize or trigger his grief, with messages like:

“I know what you feel like…. my cat died,”
“I know what you feel…my uncle (or other non-parental male relative) died,”
“You’re lucky-your dad loved you. My dad walked out of my life.”
“I know how you feel…. my dad divorced my mom.”
“You’re lucky-my dad is an a***.”
“What’s it like to have no father?”
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His perspective on life is RADICALLY different from his peers:

If they have not dealt with major trauma, chances are they are upset about age-appropriate things: whether a teacher assigns homework, whether they made the team, whether they get asked to a dance, or the prom.
His loss is so overwhelming and so omnipresent that he looks at the innocence of most of his peers and just can’t relate. Their concerns are critical in their world, his are an order of magnitude different in terms of complexity.
His peers have a trust in the world and a security that he will NEVER have again. Yes, he will learn how to interact, but the trauma has changed him forever-that he will never trust that “things will always be alright” again.
The innate security that his peers feel is absent from his life-because he understands that life is cruel and random, way before he has the maturity and life experience to process that effectively. Some people think this will “help him later in life” with a special resilience, having survived this, but it won’t. If anything, the LIFETIME absence of a parent removes one more support to talk about that challenges he faces.

Given the choice to tell you the truth about what he’s feeling or put on a performance, he’s going to act:

My son should have gotten an Academy Award for his acting skills.
I would sit in conferences where teachers would tell me “he’s smiling, and participating, so he seems ‘ok’.”
He was not okay. He was on auto-pilot and would come home and retain nothing, or fragments of what the class discussed.

Here’s what happened with the “REAL version” of my son (his words, not mine) after school:

For two years after the loss, he spoke to none of his friends.
He invited none of his schoolmates to our home to avoid explaining why dad wasn’t there as he struggled to process his grief.
He was a zombie.
He lost two years of school-but his gaps were inconsistent.
He lost two years of development, of friendships, of developing teenage skills.

And, before you say “what did I do about it” note that he had a therapist weekly, we went to grief groups separately and together and I researched for hours on how to help him each and every week while battling my own grief. Simply put, it was that much of a loss to him.

And the statistics bear it out:
57% of adults who lost parents during childhood they would trade a year of their lives for one day with their parent. 73% believe their life would have been "much better" if their parent hadn't died when they were so young. Their responses, part of a wide-ranging new survey, show that bereavement rooted in childhood often leaves emotional scars for decades, and that our society doesn’t fully understand the ramifications—or offer appropriate resources.

4) His world is one in which fathers are a regular part of school life and, being in the majority, you don’t see the triggers that hit him.

The cheering dads at the football games;
The fathers who show up to assist and support classroom projects;
The teachers who talk about what a dad should be;
The fathers who coach games, or cheer their child;
The divorced dads who get parenting time at school events;
All the assignments in which teachers lead students to talk about the important impact that their father has had in their life;
Discussions of competence in which father-son experiences are used as examples.

This differs radically from a divorce situation. I cannot emphasize this enough: Having a LIVING parent in the world, even if the family situation is estranged through a difficult divorce, is RADICALLY different from having a DEAD, never-to-return parent. Those kids can hope, someday, that the missing parent can return. I’m not comparing losses in depth, just that the finality of death makes this different.

5) His relationship with his surviving parent just got A LOT more complicated.

· As his mom, I walk a tightrope while balanced on a unicycle, carrying one stack of responsibilities on each outstretched arm. I can’t wobble and I can’t fall or I take us both down (and I’m not sure the net is there at times):

I am his security, and his disciplinarian. I am the “good cop” AND the “bad cop”…because I am the ONLY cop…with no time off.
I am his anchor, his stability in this world and he is terrified something will happen to me.
I am the custodian of his father’s memories and legacy.
I am his North Star, guiding him through a journey that I don’t understand myself.
When he comes home from school, he deposits his REAL feelings that you will never see: the anger, the confusion, the desperation, the anxiety with me…. because you are not a safe place to be who and what he truly is.
I am on hyperalert for years at a time, watching for any sign of anxiety or depression and shepherding him through that, too.
I am dealing with a myriad of things related to the loss that you cannot understand and don’t see: police reports, press, fire, insurance companies, loss of income, attorneys, CPAs, financial planners and the omniscient press of mail, phone and contacts that still call me married, while I struggle to find a new identity. Grief compromises my brain. After that I have academic challenges, emotional breakdowns, homework. Maybe, at the end, I will get to deal with my grief…. sometimes.
I am watching him struggle with REAL executive function issues that you only see the outcomes in the classroom and reinforcements (homework) and in evaluative experiences (projects, presentations, exams and grades).

6) His world is one in which teachers “trigger” him without thinking about it through routine school assignments, things like.

“Create a timeline of key events in your life,”
“Write your last will and testament.”
“Write an essay about your legacy,”
“Write an essay about where you want to be in ten years,”
“Write a thank-you letter to your parents,”
“It’s a new school year. Give a presentation about the most important thing that changed your life.”

I realize teens are present-focused and think they are invincible. Schools rightly try to balance this with assignments that are designed to help teens think about downstream consequences, future focus and thoughtful decisions. Sometimes, trying to add references to death in the curriculum can hurt grieving teens, even if it’s unintentional. Schools try to accommodate for this with an “alternate assignment request” driven by the student, thinking it will help with self-advocacy skills.

An “alternate assignment” only granted on when the student is forced to make the exception request is not the answer.

What you don’t understand is that by asking for an alternate assignment publicly, he calls out his difference and puts a spotlight on him he doesn’t want. If he completes the assignment by telling you something else, he’s lying about what really matters to him-but he’s not called out. Or, worse, he completes the assignment, and it causes his trauma to trigger. It’s a “no-win.”

7) Divorce is more common, but it’s not the same. Schools have learned to accommodate for divorce-but equating those accommodations with loss of a parent is a huge mistake.

· Many schools do a great job of trying to work with non-custodial parents. Procedures are in place to help non-custodial parents take part in school and access records with permission. It’s not perfect, but at least it exists…because that parent is ALIVE.

This is different-the PERMANENT removal of the parent from this child’s life. His parent won’t take part in discussions or games and won’t be there for his life milestones. No football games. No Science Olympiad. No School Play. No Prom. No Marching Band. No prom. No graduation.

The traumas are different. I will not get into the “whose pain is greater” game by comparing divorces versus widowhood because no one wins when we engage in that debate. Celebrations often have a bittersweet feeling, where he feels that absence (and I do too), such as middle school graduation, team wins, honor roll, school events, college visits, and graduation.

8) His world is one in which appearing different is a problem, where the peer pressure to confirm is enormous. Death makes him feel like he’s in a world apart.

He doesn’t want to have friends come over. Friends may ask awkward questions-like “where’s your dad?”
If he changes schools between middle and high school, he may not even tell his new friends his dad is dead until years after the loss-after he knows he can trust them.
He may not have learned “traditional” skills, like how to shave or drive, from a dad. He might have learned them from his mom or someone she paid to teach him. Don’t assume you know how life got cobbled together in the sense of a loss.
Chances are, he’s going to learn things at a different timeline, because the loss is so enormous to process. He’s not slow, he’s a champion fighting and winning a battle you can’t see and can’t understand.
He may not show up in the latest clothes or shoes, or forget spirit day and spirit week. Those things pale in comparison to the enormity of what he is trying to process.
Love becomes much more complicated, because love IS a complicated emotion for him. Falling in love is harder, because love involves trust. Breakups with girlfriends are harder because they can re-trigger the loss all over again. Taking risks involves Olympic effort and courage.

9) The school’s emphasis on being responsible for plans after graduation (college, trade school, post-graduation plans) conflicts with his struggles in memory, organization, and anxiety.

The truth is, my son and others like him, are not disengaged, uncaring, or willfully disorganized.
They literally CANNOT THINK. They are so overwhelmed with processing the loss of their parent they cannot do anything else effectively. Grieving students are dealing with both a trauma and a form of executive functioning disorder that is like ADD/ADHD.
In the same New York Life Foundation study, the results observed in the classroom were very clear. Classroom teachers report that students who have lost a parent or guardian typically exhibit.
- Difficulty concentrating in class (observed by 87% of teachers);
- Withdrawal/disengagement and less class participation (observed by 82%);
- Absenteeism (observed by 72%);
- Decrease in quality of work (observed by 68%);
- Less reliability in turning in assignments (observed by 66%).
Even if students participate in school, it is often a form of escapism and their affected short-term memory will not allow them to retain what they learned. They are “present-absent” in schools and may be that way for years to come. Blaming them for a lack of commitment is something that happens often because there are process breakdowns in the handoff process; and schools do not transfer the information about a parent’s death from one teacher to the next, from one school year to the next. And the student is the casualty of this lack of process. They are often unwilling to call attention to this key event in their history.
As a coach, many of the strategies I use with ADD work effectively with children who are grieving. Students with IEP’s and 504 plans receive more accommodations than others, such as tutoring, more time on assignments, and help with organizing check-ins. Some of these would be incredibly helpful to grieving students.

10) When he struggles, at some point a teacher, a substitute, an advisor or staff member has traumatized him with a message that he needs to “get over it” or “move on.” The teacher, substitute, advisor or staff member sometimes intentionally delivers the message, and sometimes not, traumatizing the student.

It can be frustrating to reach grieving students. They may appear not to care.

But when you say, “get over it” or you’ve got to find a way to “move on” what you don’t realize is:

He doesn’t know what those words mean;
He doesn’t have the skills;
The work of processing his grief is so enormous and so overwhelming your request is a whisper in a world that is a hurricane of emotion;
No one would get away with saying to an adult “get over it” and get away with it because of the equality of adults. No matter how caring, no matter how good your intentions are when you say that, you are unintentionally traumatizing him and abusing your authority as a teacher.
- Grief has no timeline and we don’t “get over it.” With time and effort, we learn how to integrate the loss into our reality and build something out of the shattered pieces of the old life. When you ask a student to do this, it is exactly like asking someone who has a broken leg to run faster. Or, as my son said, “You’re telling me to get stronger by going to punch the punching bag filled with kryptonite.”

What Schools Can Do:

1) Build in a multi-year grief support system for students who have lost a parent.

a. Develop a consistent method for sharing loss information with school personnel.
b. Provide a means to communicate known trigger days.

2) Note and plan for additional vigilance on potential “trigger” dates or events for grieving students. These events may or may not trigger obviously because students express grief differently. Some examples of trigger dates include:

Calendar dates involving family or the deceased parent: anniversary of the parent’s death, birthdays, Mothers/Father’s Day, Family-centric holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah
Personal “holidays”: Dates of special “events” with the deceased parent, such as fishing trip
School Events that are family-centric: First day of school, Last Day of School, Spring Break, Holiday Break, Parents Day, Muffins with Mom/Donuts with Dads Parent Orientation/Weekend/University, Parent Career Day, Father-Daughter/Mother-Son Dances, Club Family Celebrations, Award Ceremonies, Dances, Prom, Graduation

A discussion with the surviving parent (and sometimes, the student) can identify what those key dates might be. Validating a student’s grief can reinforce that you care for them as a whole person, even if it’s been years since their parent passed away.

3) Train Teachers Staff and Faculty with Critical Strategies to Supporting Grieving Students.

a.      Educate them on best practices to support grieving students.
b.      Do not provide messages of expectation that expect the student to engage in adult behavior. “You’re the Adult of the House now” or “You need to ‘man up’ or ‘step it up’ to support your mom/dad”
c.      Provide best practices to adapt curriculums to minimize triggers for grieving children.
d.      Develop procedures for staff to support students leaving the classroom without highlighting their differences.

4) Adopt a joint support approach with the student’s family instead of the traditional school-professional-as-expert model: I see a temptation with new and experienced school professionals to approach relationships with a grieving family as “we are the experts” because of the educational experience. This can cause an attempt to take the upper hand with grieving families. I’ve had well-meaning educators state to me they have “twenty-five years of experience” in teaching, which means they know how to proceed.

That’s not exactly true. Without specific expertise in the neurobiology of grief, you won’t have a complete picture of how it affects the brain. You aren’t having conferences with my child’s therapist as we try to work through the unthinkable. Nor do I have a full picture of your situation in the classroom. I don’t know your educational objectives and what you are trying to achieve in your classroom this year.

We share the responsibility of handling this situation and need to work together with respect. It’s important to understand that my child is dealing with an impossible situation. Every single day he goes to school that is organized around the fact that his brain works fully and normally, when it can’t. We focus education on delivery with an assumption that students are functioning in a neurotypical way. Even with the expertise that special education trained staff, teachers and administrators bring to the table, that is only part of the solution.

The school lacks understanding of the challenges faced by a grieving family, while the parent is unaware of the resources.

Best practice is a balanced approach in which each brings their knowledge of the student, family, current challenges and resources to the table and co-create a plan for the student that considers ALL of the current challenges on equal footing.

5) Stop giving messages to grieving students they need to handle this on their own as part of expecting them to self-advocate.

a.      Don’t make this a test of their self-advocacy skills, especially within the first 2-3 years post-loss.
b.      Balance the “self-advocacy” curriculum with moderated messaging about using supports.
c.      Communicate getting help with understandable examples, such as getting help for a physical injury (broken leg, sprained ankle) that is relatable to a student’s experience with seeking care.
d.      Explain, clearly, that we do not expect them to evaluate their own situation and “come to me if you need something” (we view this as a “competence test”). This is not enabling self-reliance, it is setting the student up for repeated failure. Grieving students cannot do that sometimes because of the neurological loads on their brains that grieving causes. (P.S. Adults, with more life experience and peers who actually understand loss, can’t do it either).

Provide curriculum vehicles to share stories about their loved one and audit the curriculum for triggers. No triggering curriculum assignment (e.g. You should not present “write your last will and testament” as the only assignment option for them. Offer another way for students to share stories about their loved ones while meeting the assignment goals.)

Here are some options to consider incorporating life, legacy and death in a healthy way in the curriculum:
- Social studies: How cultures celebrate life and legacy;
- English: How various authors have approached the topic, writing a favorite story about a loved one or a favorite memory with a beloved friend or family member;
- Foreign Languages: How death and memorials appear in that culture; ways families remember loved ones who have passed away;
- By adding life transition and loss topics to the curriculum, we can create a balanced culture for grieving students. It can also help the rest of the class practice communication flexibility, relating to those with different life experiences, and emotional fluency. As with everything, these units should be sourced from the appropriate, qualified experts and the use of them should be managed proactively with widowed parents to address concerns with student supports.

6) Balance Routine and Curriculum Goals with a Robust Exception Process: Maintaining routine can be a useful balance and provide some safety and security when a world feels like it is spiraling out of control.

Schools can often provide that because, like work for a parent, the missing member of the family was not present in that environment. However, there needs to be an exception process for tough assignments or when the student becomes overwhelmed.

Requesting that exception cannot fall only on the student. Frankly, the “call me if you need help” approach that is common in many schools doesn’t cut it with grieving students.

It’s crucial to give extra support for executive function and memory challenges when a student is struggling emotionally throughout the loss. A best practice for this is an exception process for assignments allows for flexibility in submitting work late at the institution level. A teacher who is not fluent in the neurobiology and long-term process of grief should not be the one to decide whether a late assignment should be accepted or an alternate assignment can be requested. This creates a vicious cycle of re-traumatizing students with cognitive challenges who are already struggling to meet deadlines.

But this should not be a “blank check” forever. The student needs to re-integrate with expectations as they process their grief correctly. Once we help students become emotionally resilient, we can discuss ways for them to handle difficult topics with support.

7) Avoid the temptation to limit academic support efforts only to teachers or district resources. In certain schools, there is an institutional preference to direct students who struggle academically to internal tutoring resources or discourage parents from seeking external academic tutoring partnerships.

The reality is that the students who have experienced the trauma of a loss of a parent are likely to need specialized academic support that specifically targets areas of deficit that are likely patchwork because of the inconsistent nature of the grief experience. If the school can’t solve ongoing academic issues with a customized curriculum to address multi-year, multi-subject gaps from ongoing grief, a tutoring partnership may be the best solution to assist the student in catching up via a customized curriculum.

If the gaps are specific to a single subject and a single year, a district-based tutor may be the right solution to address this. However, the ongoing nature of grief in students often results in gaps that develop in multiple subjects over several years. If these are not identified and addressed, the learning deficits can snowball, compounding the neurological load, grief and academic struggles.

Best practice in this case is to build a strong partnership between classroom teachers, district tutors, academic skill gap assessors and the outside tutoring company, continuing to position the school as “expert partner” with the family, until the student can shore up gaps in education. I used both to help shore up the materials that my son missed. My preference was to go first to the district resources, but the additional resources provided by an outside tutoring center identified specific multi-year learning deficits in curriculum that needed to be addressed if my son was going to be ready for his post-graduation plans.

8) Keep in communication with the student and the parent, recognizing that the student will be under pressure not to communicate. In theory, this will help you assess the student’s needs. What is essential for success is to allow it to occur in a way that does not “call out” the difference for the student from his or her peers. Above all, correct communication will let him/her know you care. Consistent, open communication will help to prevent confusion and misunderstanding. What is important to know is that this communication should be consistent and be planned for at least two years after the parent’s passing. The nature of grief will change over this period, as will the student’s needs.

9) Keep in communication with the surviving family. This will let family know that you possess an authentic concern for the student. What is key here is to approach this from a COLLABORATIVE perspective, recognizing that your expertise in student experience and development DOES NOT equate to expertise in THIS student’s grief. Plan to communicate at least two years after the parent’s death, then twice every quarter while the student is in the district.

10) DO NOT routinely switch guidance counselors or other staff assigned to that student: If there is a good relationship with the guidance counselor, that relationship should be maintained for the duration of high school. Consistency of support is important.

I cannot understate how destabilizing this is for grieving families. Often, a strong guidance counselor is a multi-year anchor for a student at a school. It is one of the top complaints I work with widowed parents to advocate for in schools.

11) Provide an “exit plan” for the student to leave class if at any point during the academic career, grief becomes overwhelming that is NOT a “call out.” Schools miss the mark frequently on this one by making it a “visit” to the social worker or something that “calls out” the student for difference. Best practice is NOT to do this, but to provide an excuse to discreetly leave the classroom. Teachers and substitutes should model this process and should NOT challenge the student by asking “if anything is okay.”

12) DO NOT restrict cell phone or text contact with the surviving parent. Cell phones are literally a lifeline for some students to reassure themselves their surviving parent still lives. This is, especially true if the deceased parent died suddenly. Provide a means for a private phone call for students to contact parents if they have a grief crisis at school. My son would text me multiple times a day during the first year and into the second, just ensure that I was still alive, and then could go on with his day at school.

13) Recognize that students may express grief in culturally acceptable ways, depending on their family of origin experience, school culture, and experience. Somatic symptoms such as aches, headaches, stomachaches, shortness of breath, panic, and exhaustion can be a manifestation of grief. Others may express it by being easily angry or short with their classmates. Where physical complaints are present, they need to be acknowledged and validated, with a subsequent referral to school medical staff (school nurse) and to inform the student’s family in a timely way. Likewise, difficulty in handling anger or anxiety should be referred to the school personnel and the family, who may choose to engage outside professionals (medical professionals, social workers or therapists) to evaluate the student.

14) Agree with the Parent on a Process and Checkpoints to Assess and Refer the student for further help: This process can be triggered by either party, but most often needs to be owned by the surviving parent, especially if the student displays or parent reports excessive difficulty with social, academic, emotional or family functioning. The reason for this being owned by the surviving parent is that he or she may have additional information that the school does not have, such as treatment by an outside therapist, external tutoring or academic supports, or specific information on the home situation.

Some areas to agree on checkpoints would be.

Expressions or symptoms of deep depression
Excessive panic or anxiety
Extreme difficulty focusing/concentration
Extreme difficulty in handling intense emotions
Strong expressions to “be with” the deceased parent that concern the outside therapist
Expressions of self-harm
Behavior that appears, on the surface, to be extremely irrational

Again, some of these expressions (anxiety, intense emotions, missing the deceased parent) are consistent with the grieving process. Agree on checkpoints beforehand and stay in touch with the right professionals, like parents, school administrators, school social workers, and outside therapists for professional help when necessary.

The opportunity to help a student who has faced a loss of this magnitude is something that means you can make a lifelong difference. I hear inspiring daily stories about staff, teachers, and administrators who create a safe space for students to grieve without trying to fix things. Never underestimate the power of a kind word or reaching out to students who have lived through the unimaginable. I will be forever grateful for the educators who got it, or even admitted they did not know but were willing to listen and learn.

Did you have a good experience with your school in handling your student’s grief? Did you run into challenges? Were there things in this blog post that resonated with you? Hit the subscribe button and hit the “Leave a Comment” button to add your feedback on the substance post:

What I Wish My Son’s Middle and High School Knew About Grief

Practical Tips for a Productive Partnership

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