For many children, school is the place where life just goes on. What does that mean for a child who has lost a parent? Israeli researchers asked children and their surviving parent.
What was studied
20 children took part (7.5 to 16 years old, one participant was 18) and 16 surviving parents (12 mothers and 4 fathers). The loss was at least a year earlier. All families took part in activities of the organisation Sunflowers. For 19 children the cause of death was an illness, for one it was suicide. Eight deaths followed a long illness, eleven were sudden. The interviews lasted 40 to 120 minutes. Most of the time, child and parent sat together. The researchers drew the patterns from the conversations themselves (grounded theory). They also looked at word choice in four interviews with older children who later became guides at Sunflowers.
What came out of it
Support from classmates was not a yes or a no. The researchers describe a scale: from support, through an unintended lack of support, to a deliberate lack of support.
Soon after the death, classmates often came by during the week of mourning (the shiva), sometimes with teachers. Many children experienced that as support, sometimes as a nice surprise. The researchers read it as a protective layer against loneliness. Going back to school was hard and good at the same time. Friends and the fixed routine helped. After that, the support faded. One mother said that a child who has lost a parent is still that child in the second, the third and the tenth year.
Often there was no ill will, just clumsiness. Younger children especially did not know what to say. One boy said friends started telling stories about their great-grandfather, and that only made him sadder. Two boys asked a girl on her birthday: ‘Why are you happy if your dad died?’ She said it was her birthday and she wanted to be happy. Dark humour was delicate. Jokes by others about illness hurt. When the child made the jokes, it sometimes helped, even if classmates did not always know how to react.
Two children told of teasing that used their loss as a weapon, in an argument: ‘Shut up, your dad isn’t even alive.’ The researchers think such remarks can push a child back to the loss against their will, when they wanted to focus on everyday things. That is their reading, not a measurement.
How strong is this
This is a qualitative study of 20 children in Israel. All the families were already with a support organisation. Children who get no support anywhere are missing. It covers primary school and the first years of secondary school. Child and parent were mostly in the conversation together, so a child may have held things back. Those who wanted to could also talk separately. Teasing came up with two children, so it says nothing about how often it happens. The language analysis covers only four interviews. The scale comes from the conversations themselves and is not a tested model.
What this means for practice
- First look at where classmates’ behaviour falls on the scale. Unintended misunderstanding needs an explanation and a conversation. Deliberate teasing needs a clear limit. The authors make this distinction themselves.
- Keep paying attention after the first weeks. In the conversations, support from teachers and classmates faded over time.
- Put policy and teacher training in place, so it does not depend on luck. The authors miss clear school policy. This study does not show which training works.
Read the article (PMC, open access) · DOI
Source
Boutton-Laor, Y., Muchnik-Rozanov, Y., & Frei-Landau, R. (2026). “Why are you happy if your dad died?”: The social experiences of parentally bereaved children in elementary and middle schools. Children, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.3390/children13010155