Grief comes in many shades and colors. On average, each of the 2.5 million deaths every year in the United States directly affects four people, each of whom has a unique way of dealing with bereavement based on gender, culture, personality, and age.

Age makes a tremendous difference in how grief affects us. A teenager will deal with death much differently than a 70-year-old will. Understanding how grief manifests in people differently at various stages in their lives can help you determine how best to reach out and provide the help that is needed.

Children
One in five children will experience the death of a loved one by age 18. Coping with children and grief can vary drastically depending on the child’s developmental stage.

Infants (0 to 3): Children this young are not yet able to understand death. However, they can sense feelings of grief in the adults around them, and they may imitate or soak up those emotions. Babies can also react to the loss of a caregiver with increased crying, listlessness, and changes in sleeping and eating habits. Young children may revisit the experience later as they go through different developmental stages.

Young children (3 to 6): At this age, children may become curious about death, but they still aren’t able to understand it as final. They may internalize it, believing they caused the death by misbehaving. Regression, such as bedwetting, baby talk, thumb sucking, and wanting to sleep with their parents, is common, as is fear of abandonment.

School-aged children (6 to 12): These children are old enough to understand the finality of death, but are often not yet able to put their emotions into words. Some children complain, instead, of stomachaches or other physical ailments. They are also highly interested in the biological aspects of death and may ask a lot of questions.

Teenagers
Although they are caught directly between childhood and adulthood, teenagers have the same capacity for understanding grief as adults. This can cause confusion about how to react—whether they should exhibit sadness and emotional neediness like a child or act brave and strong like an adult. They may be reluctant to turn to adults for support out of fear of childishness and unwilling to turn to their peers for fear of appearing weak.

As a result, many teenagers try to bottle up their feelings instead of resolving them. Unresolved grief can cause ongoing mental health issues, from depression and social withdrawal to substance abuse and academic problems.

Teenagers can struggle with having their own feelings of invincibility challenged. This can cause them to question their spiritual beliefs and their understanding of the world.

Adults
Adults who are coping with grief tend to re-evaluate their lives, look for meaning in the world, and contemplate their own deaths. Some adults will manage their grief by preoccupying themselves, while others may temporarily lose their ability to function.

Normal symptoms of grief, such as irritability, restlessness, changes in personality, conflicting feelings, and numbness or sadness, tend to lessen in about six months, although the entire grieving process can go on for two or more years. Intense feelings can wax and wane, taking adults on an emotional roller coaster ride.

The cause of the death, lack of a support network, an especially close relationship with the deceased, and past trauma can all complicate the grieving process, causing adults to become stuck in unhealthy bereavement.

Elderly
Grief manifests a bit differently in the elderly than it does in adults. At this time in their lives, they are no longer focused on looking forward to future milestones but are spending much more of their attention reflecting on the past.

With age, the number of deaths in a person’s life increases, and facing these multiple losses in a brief period can be overwhelming. In many cases, the elderly are already dealing with many other losses in life: loss of occupation, loss of a familiar environment, loss of physical capacity, and possibly loss of mental capacity. Sometimes, the elderly may become so overwhelmed they find themselves unable to grieve.

Bereavement can exponentially amplify feelings of loneliness, which are often a large component of an elderly person’s life. This is particularly true for someone who has lost a person with whom they have become interdependent. Feelings of sadness, loneliness, and depression become prevalent.

Regardless of age, grief is something that must be worked through. There is no way to speed up the process, but having a healthy support network can make a huge difference.

~Nicole Krueger, 2009