Therapy for Grief and Loss in Children in Lynbrook and Garden City

Children grieve differently than adults expect.

Your six-year-old plays “funeral” with their stuffed animals then asks for ice cream. Your teenager seems fine for weeks then falls apart over a broken phone charger. Your toddler keeps asking when grandpa is coming back, no matter how many times you explain. They might be angry at the person who died for leaving them, guilty about that last argument, or convinced it’s somehow their fault.

Young children sometimes don’t understand permanence and they might think death is reversible, like in video games. Teens might channel grief into risk-taking behaviors or complete withdrawal.

And underneath all of it is the fundamental disruption of their safety: if this person could disappear, who else might leave?

Woman surrounded by butterflies; therapy for grief and loss

Loss for children isn’t just about death. It’s the divorce that means daddy doesn’t live here anymore. The move that separated them from everything familiar. The illness that changed a parent into someone they don’t recognize. The friendship that ended without explanation. The family pet who was their safest confidant.

These losses reshape their understanding of how the world works, and that reorganization takes time, patience, and support they don’t always know how to ask for.

We create space for the full spectrum of grief through approaches that don’t require children to articulate what they can’t yet understand.

They might draw pictures for the person who died, building continuing bonds rather than “moving on.” Through play therapy, they can safely express anger at the person who left. Perhaps by throwing soft blocks at a representation, or voicing the fury they’re too scared to speak. We use ritual and ceremony to mark losses that often go unrecognized. We might hold a goodbye party for the house they’re leaving, the burial ceremony for the pet they miss or create artwork that honors who mom was before she got sick.

For parents, supporting a grieving child while managing your own grief feels impossible. You want to protect them from pain but know you can’t. You struggle with how much truth to share, when their questions have no good answers. We help you understand that children don’t need you to fix their grief. They need you to witness it, validate it, and show them that big feelings won’t destroy them. You learn how grief shows up at different developmental stages, why your teen might grieve something from years ago that they couldn’t process then. We teach you how to create stability when everything feels uncertain, how to answer impossible questions honestly, and how to include children in family grieving rather than protecting them from it.

The journey through grief isn’t something to rush. Children will revisit losses at each developmental stage, understanding them differently as they grow. The goal isn’t to “get over it” but to integrate loss into their life story so they can learn that love is good even if it might end in death, that they can hold joy and sadness simultaneously, and that they’re strong enough to survive what feels unsurvivable.

Through creative expression and compassionate support, we help young people and families discover that grief, fully felt and fully expressed, eventually transforms into something bearable, not because the loss gets smaller, but because their capacity to hold it grows.