“As sad as it is when a pet dies, it can also really prepare a young person for when a human dies”

But they can experience very similar feelings of loss, sadness and anger , just as intensely as adults. And, just like adults, children and young people can be just as affected by the death of a family pet as by a person...

When I'm talking to a child or young person about terminal illness and bereavement, one of the questions I always ask is whether they've experienced the loss of a pet in the last 12 months. That experience can change their perception or coping methods when a loved one dies, or is dying, so it always alters how I might work with children, and it might change the questions I ask them. We explore it as if that animal was as important to them as anything else.

For example, I was working with a little girl recently whose aunt had died. But the family dog had died afterwards. I had to work out what the focus of that young person was, and not presume that the death of a person was going to be any more difficult for her. The death of the dog could've been more affecting, or it could've been her main focus, or it could've been easier to talk about, and therefore open more conversations about her aunt.

As sad as it is when a pet dies, it can also really prepare a young person for when a human dies. The experience helps them to explore what life is, what death is, what happens when somebody dies, and how to explain cremation, burial and so on... You can use the experience to explain concepts like how the body and the spirit soul are separate – if that's something the young person believes.

I spoke to one child who'd had a pet fish that had died and been buried. I asked things like what did you do with the dead body, where do think the fish is now, what would they like to be doing...?

Young people sometimes like to talk through, or confide in, a family pet. So when that support mechanism is taken away, it can be a huge blow. It feels like the animal just listens to them and they don't have to explain themselves. This can often be the case with children who are on the spectrum.

I remember a young girl who was autistic and she really struggled to communicate . Both her parents died very soon after each other, and she was really struggling with that bereavement. But we have a therapy dog that used to come into the sessions, and she found those sessions much more helpful when she was talking through the dog.

I often find that a child or young person's response to a death can go one of two ways. Firstly, it could make them extremely resilient. Some children feel like the hardest thing in their life has happened to them, so anything else just blends in.

And then the opposite can be the case too – it can lead to anxiety in terms of who's going to be next. "This has happened to such-and-such, so it going to happen to Mummy?"  

Regardless of whether they're grieving for a person or a pet, school is an outlet for lots of young people. It's where they can be "normal" and blend in.

But that has pitfalls too, so even when they recognise the pain they're going through, they don't want to be seen as different. For example, when other children are having conversations about things they've been doing – "I went to such-and-such a place with Dad at the weekend..." – a grieving child may hear that word, "Dad", and think "Well I haven't got a dad anymore, therefore I can't join that conversation..."

It can also be hard being away from other family members at a difficult time, whether that's school or anywhere else.

It's not necessarily that the child is really struggling to be away from loved ones; often it's the other way round. The child assumes that because they're struggling, their loved ones must be too – so the child feels like they should be protecting them.

In situations like this, it's good to maintain a link of some kind. We do activities like handkerchief painting where the young person and the adult can put their handprints on two handkerchiefs, and both adult and child has a handkerchief each. Then the child knows that part of them is still with the parents, and vice versa.

I always explain the key difference between adults and children in grief like rivers and puddles. Adults are being taken away with the current and the current is uncontrollable because they're holding their own grief, as well as their children's and everyone else's around them.

But children can separate everyone else's grief from their own – which isn't to say they don't feel anyone else's pain – but they're able to jump in and out of it.

Which can be really hard for adults to understand because one minute a child can be in their grief and seconds later they're asking if they can play on their Xbox.

It's tricky because very few people want their children to suffer with pain when they die. But at the same time, people sometimes want their children to have some experience of it because otherwise you end up thinking, "What do I mean to them?"

After the death, I always say to both children and adults, imagine your tears as your medicine. Your body automatically uses tears to relieve the pressure in your body. One of the biggest fears for adults is showing their emotion around children. But actually that helps children to allow their emotions to flow as well.

A lot of grieving for a person or pet is linked with anxiety, so breathing techniques can be helpful. For children it's good to train their mind to get used to these exercises in advance, so they're not learning new things when they're in a really stressful situation.

You can do this by finding something special to them, for example a teddy.

In a state of anxiety, the child will often breathe from their chest rather than the stomach. This means they take in less oxygen. So you get them to lie on the bed and put the teddy on their stomach – watching it moving up and down can help the child breathe from the right place.

I also get them to think of the five senses. So, when you're walking, name four things you can see... name three things you can smell... name two things you can touch...

By doing this, you're diverting their attention onto something else.

The one thing I would always say is if at all possible, before a person or a pet dies, allow the young person to talk about what's happening. Prepare them and allow them to have that connection. That's the feedback young people give to us time and time again that they wanted that involvement. They wanted to be part of the preparation.

**For more information and support on helping a child through grief, visit our grief page.