Healing grief in children through play

On Nov. 30, the Bronx Children’s Museum marked National Child Grief Awareness Month through “Healing with Play,” a program for children under five and their caregivers meant to explore conversations around loss in a supportive, age-appropriate setting.

The event, presented in partnership with the New York Life Foundation, the Association of Children’s Museums and Knology, was designed to help guide the youngest family members through difficult emotions using story times, guided play and other interactive activities.

Although New York Life is widely known as an insurance company, its foundation has become one of the country’s largest private supporters of childhood grief work. Since its founding in 1979, it has invested more than $470 million in youth programs nationwide, educator training and free literature for families.

“When people hear ‘New York Life,’ they think of insurance, but with love and life comes grief,” said foundation president Heather Nesle. “There are all sorts of resources that we offer to help parents, caretakers and teachers understand how to address [the child’s] grief. To bring it out and let them experience it, express it and then address it.”

As families arrived, they were greeted with volunteers offering take-home activities developed by the foundation, among them a range of picture books, conversation guides and interactive flash cards.

“It's really just all about the healing and making sure these concepts reach our littlest grievers,” Nesle added. “Because if you're old enough to love, you're old enough to grieve.”

Surrounded by a group of bright-eyed tots, Museum Director of School Programs and Education Jessica Jackson began the morning with a story time reading of The Golden Sweater — a vivid picture book the foundation created about a young boy, Kai, mourning his father.

When Kai discovers a yellow sweater that once belonged to him, the garment becomes a source of comfort and connection. Jackson guided the children with steady prompts: “What do you think Kai is feeling right now?” she asked. “Does the character look brave or scared?”

The approach aligns closely with clinical experience. Assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Linda Chokroverty, M.D., also a child and adolescent psychiatrist in Montefiore’s psychiatric emergency room, said very young children often grieve in ways that can be hard for others to recognize.

“Adults expect grief to look a certain way, but children don’t follow that pattern,” she explained. “They move in and out of big feelings quickly. What looks like pretend or playfulness is often how they steady themselves.”

The longtime Riverdale resident added that nonverbal play is a critical bridge when words are out of reach – a universal experience that doesn't involve language.

But as children’s environments gravitated toward screens and digital entertainment in recent years, particularly during the pandemic, their way of coping has shifted too.

“Gaming and digital experiences online have much replaced real-world play, which isn't necessarily for the better,” she said. “When we want to actually work with kids therapeutically, we want to be able to do real life things, so I have real toys and real props and games.”

The collaboration behind “Healing with Play” also involved the Association of Children’s Museums, or ACM, which helped coordinate the initiative across 10 museums. As the national organization representing children’s museums, ACM supported the effort as part of its broader push to equip institutions with tools for addressing emotional well-being alongside academic or creative learning.

Its president and CEO, Arthur G. Affleck III, said that was central to the decision to join the partnership, noting the organization’s role was to ensure grief resources reached families in places that felt familiar and accessible.

“This gives us an opportunity to be focused on a challenging topic that we don’t like to talk about, and that’s bereavement,” he said.

ACM’s role, he added, was to help ensure that grief resources reached families in places that felt familiar and accessible — places where reading, play and quiet conversation could open doors to harder truths. The museum’s participation, Affleck said, reflected a broader belief that these institutions can connect caregivers to the tools they need long before a crisis lands in their laps.