How to talk to your children about death

octubre 31, 2025

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Talking about death can be hard for parents, as they want to protect their child’s feelings and avoid or minimize any pain they might face. While talking to your children about death is difficult, it is important too, because death is a natural part of life and something that everyone ends up facing eventually.

Nonetheless, there are strategies that you can use to talk to your children while you take care of their feelings and build early emotional resilience for life’s unavoidable changes and struggles.

Here you’ll find some strategies that will help you to start and keep the conversation going:

• Use a clear and developmentally appropriate language: Using clear yet thoughtful words to explain death is surely the best way to start the conversation. Don’t be afraid of using the words “die” or “dead” and explain death with biological and simple terms, for example: “When someone dies, their heart stop beating”.

 Use different educational resources: Books are a great tool to identify feelings and put them into words. “The Invisible string” by Miriam Tirado or “The Heart and the Bottle” by Oliver Jeffers are beautiful and heartfelt stories that introduce the concept of loss while acknowledging love as the main source to keep our bonds alive, even through space and time.

• Provide loving and thoughtful reassurance: The though of death can often bring feelings of unsafety and uncertainty. Reassuring your child by listening to their feelings and soothing their worries with phrases such as “I’m here for you and you are going to be okay” will make them feel safe and cared for.
• Don’t be afraid to express and share your own feelings: When adults express their feelings to children, they learn how they can express their own feelings as well and we normalize emotional expression to strengthen our bonds.

It is also very important that you are aware of your own emotional state and that you keep in mind that you don’t have to have all the answers to be a loving and supportive guide to your child.

In CAPI we can help your child to navigate through their thoughts and feelings with our Child Psychotherapy Program, where we provide tools and guidance to cope with loss and express and manage their feelings in a healthy way.

Finally, during this time of the year, make sure to remember that love is stronger than physical absence, and that as long as love is still present, no one ever really leaves us.

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