Kids Are Drowning in Grief, And Schools Keep Pretending They Can Swim
The Silent Struggle: Why Schools Must Address Grief Head-On
Grief doesn’t punch in and punch out on a schedule.
It doesn’t show up only when a loved one dies.
And it definitely doesn’t resolve itself in a neat little package.
Grief is messy, unpredictable, and invisible, especially in the lives of young people who are expected to bounce back quickly and keep moving. But here’s the truth: grief is one of the most misunderstood emotional experiences our kids face. And schools, where teens spend most of their waking hours, are rarely equipped to deal with it.
Grief is more than loss by death
We tend to think of grief as the response to death. But grief can come from many kinds of loss:
A breakup
Failing a test you studied hard for
Not making the team
Watching your parents separate
Losing a sense of identity, safety, or belonging
Getting rejected from your dream university
Being excluded from a party
Changing schools
Moving homes
The death of a pet
These events may not get memorial services or sympathy cards, but they leave real wounds. And the list goes on and on. And too often, they’re minimized or dismissed by adults who don’t see them as "real" grief. “She’s resilient. We’ll just take her out shopping.” “He’s a tough kid. I’ll take him to a Leaf game.” Really? Just because you’ve decided to move on, doesn’t mean they’re onside with it. This is called disenfranchisement, and parents do this all the time, and they don’t even realize it.
According to Harvard Health Publishing, grief isn’t a single emotion. It’s a tangle of sadness, anger, confusion, guilt, and sometimes even relief. And it doesn’t follow a straight line. It might spike after months of feeling "fine." It might live in your body even when you think you’ve "moved on."
The missing piece in school mental health
In the U.S., 93% of teachers say they’ve never received formal training in how to support a grieving student (Coalition to Support Grieving Students). Most teachers feel unprepared. Only 40% of educators report that their school has adequate resources for students dealing with grief. That means the majority of students are left to manage their pain alone, in environments focused on performance, attendance, and behaviour.
If 93% of teachers say they’ve never received mental health training, how do 40% of educators know what adequate resources even look like?
In Canada, recent data from CAMH shows that over 50% of Ontario students experience significant psychological distress. One in three say they needed mental health help in the last year but didn’t receive it. Grief support rarely gets a specific focus in school programs, even though students experience all forms of loss.
What’s worse? Grief is often treated like a one-and-done scenario. A student loses a parent, and they’re sent a card. Maybe they get a brief check-in. And then the assumption is they’re "okay."
They’re not.
Grief takes however long it takes. A lifetime in some cases!
Some students are still hurting six months later, some a year later, and some will carry that pain into adulthood. And when we don’t acknowledge that, we turn our backs on some of the most vulnerable moments in a young person’s life.
What happens when we don’t talk about it?
Unresolved grief can show up in all kinds of ways:
Anxiety and depression
Anger and irritability
Withdrawal from friends and schoolwork
Risk-taking behaviour
Self-harm and suicidal thoughts
In fact, research published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence shows that youth experiencing unresolved grief are at significantly higher risk of mental health challenges and lower academic achievement.
And yet, the silence continues.
Why we need to face it head-on
We keep saying our teens are resilient.
Did you ever stop to think maybe they’re not?
Or maybe they’re tired of pretending to be.
We hand them slogans like "bounce back" or "stay strong" — but we don’t give them the tools to actually deal with what they’re going through.
And then we wonder why so many of them are silently struggling.
Here’s what we know:
Education works. Programs that teach kids about emotional literacy, grief processing, and resilience show measurable improvements in coping and wellbeing.
Connection helps. When students feel seen and supported, their mental health improves. Even a single trusted adult at school can change a student’s entire experience.
Prevention matters. Supporting grief isn’t just about comfort. It’s about keeping kids from falling into spirals of anxiety, depression, or worse.
So why are we still not doing enough?
Maddie’s story
My daughter Maddie was 14 when she died by suicide.
She was bright, funny, and full of love. The kind of girl who lit up every room she entered. But like so many teens, Maddie carried emotional pain under the surface. Pain that was hard to name. Pain that didn’t have an obvious cause. Pain that we now recognize included grief — over lost friendships, the pressure to be perfect, the weight of a world that often felt too heavy.
And she was grieving our failed marriage.
That grief doesn’t get talked about enough. Maddie didn’t get a vote in the decision to separate. Yet she was left to deal with the fallout. The confusion. The loyalty tug-of-war. The pressure of being placed in the crosshairs of our disdain for one another. That kind of grief doesn’t have a nameplate. It doesn’t come with acknowledgment about how tough it is on the kids. But it hurts. And it lingers.
After losing Maddie, aside from writing, I dove into the mental health world to try to understand what went wrong. What I found broke my heart again: schools were not asking the hard questions. They weren’t talking openly about suicide. They weren’t giving kids space to grieve the everyday losses that pile up. And they weren’t training teachers to spot the signs of a student silently falling apart.
We’ve shown that prevention and education works.
We just need more of it.
Mentorship: Building a bridge through grief
One thing that can help fill the gap is mentorship.
Mentors aren’t therapists, and they don’t need degrees in psychology. But they show up, listen, and create safe spaces where kids can be real, heard, and human.
Mentorship gives students a chance to talk through their feelings without fear of being judged, fixed, or dismissed. It creates a bridge between the chaos in their heads and a path forward, especially when grief is involved; grief that isn’t always named or recognized.
We’re not taught how to handle grief. Or shame. Or heartbreak. We aren’t taught what emotions mean, how to sit with them, process them, or move through them without pushing them down into a place where they fester.
But guess what?
Eventually, you can’t outrun what you don’t deal with.
Mentorship gives grief a name. It gives pain a witness. And sometimes, that’s all a young person needs: someone to say, "I see you. I’m not going anywhere."
What can schools do now?
Let’s stop pretending resilience is automatic.
Let’s stop assuming our kids are fine because they smile in the hallway or hand in their homework.
Resilience isn’t something you just have. It’s something you build.
And if we want to help students build it, we have to start by giving them room to feel what they feel.
Train all staff to recognize the signs of grief, even the non-obvious ones.
Create space for students to talk about loss without fear of judgment or minimization.
Normalize emotional check-ins as part of the school day.
Partner with grief organizations to bring expertise and resources into schools.
Introduce mentorship programs that help students feel connected, seen, and supported.
Listen to students when they say they’re struggling. Even if the loss doesn’t seem "big" to us, it can be everything to them.
Grief isn’t a detour from education. It’s part of being human.
And if schools are serious about supporting student well-being, they need to stop avoiding the hard stuff and start showing up.
Because the silence? It isn’t helping anyone.
It’s time to talk about grief. Head-on. Are you with us?
Sources:
Coalition to Support Grieving Students: Educator Survey (AFT/Hart Research)
Journal of Youth and Adolescence: Impact of Unresolved Grief on Adolescents
Statistics Canada: Mental health of youth, 2023
