11 Easy Ways to Help Children Dealing with Sadness
Inside: Important messages and practical strategies for parents and educators helping children dealing with sadness learn to cope and share their feelings.
As a child, I carried a huge burden as a significant part of my life revolved around dealing with sadness. My childhood was complicated, and it left me with heavy unresolved emotions that I carried well into my adult years.
Back then, therapy was rare for children, and resources were scarce. Thankfully, times have changed. Today, we have a wealth of tools and approaches to support children who are dealing with sadness.
Looking back, I know that understanding what I was experiencing and having access to coping strategies could have saved me a lot of pain.
My experiences showed how important it is to equip kids with tools to understand and regulate their emotions.
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In collaboration with pediatrician Kristin Ray, the author of “Sam’s Sadness Slips Out,” I’m excited to share important messages and practical strategies to help kids process their emotions before they become burdens.
1. Sadness is a Normal Human Emotion
It's normal to feel sad sometimes but learning how to respond to sadness and gaining skills to regulate emotions is an important developmental task. Helping a child understand their sadness and developing positive coping strategies supports their emotional growth.
Helpful resources:
2. Sadness Can Appear in Our Bodies
Sadness, worry, and stress can show up as physical symptoms like headaches, stomach aches, or fatigue. The pain and discomfort are real but may have an underlying mind-body connection. Helping children understand how their feelings show up in their bodies can help them navigate their physical and psychological symptoms when dealing with sadness.
Helpful resources:
- "Sam's Sadness Slips Out" - book by Kristin Ray
- "Listening to My Body" - book by Gabi Garcia
- The mind-gut connection
- Mindfulness and breathing activities
- Muscle relaxation activity for children
3. Find Ways to Express Feelings
Teach children to notice and name their feelings. Explain that emotions often mean they have a need that hasn't been met, like wanting attention, comfort, or time alone. By understanding these needs, kids can handle their feelings better and express themselves more appropriately.
Helpful resources:
4. Talking Helps
Talking about feelings can be incredibly therapeutic, whether it's with a family member, therapist, or even a pet. Sharing feelings through storytelling helps children make sense of their emotions and their world. These conversations also provide opportunities to coach children on coping strategies.
Helpful resources:
5. Focus Energy Elsewhere
Sometimes, redirecting energy can help manage emotions. This might involve deep breaths to calm the body and mind, distraction by focusing on another activity, or physical activity to release pent-up energy.
Helpful apps:
6. Look at Things Differently
Sometimes we find our brains stuck in certain thoughts and convince ourselves that one way of looking at the world is the only truth. Activities that promote new perspectives, flexible thinking, and reframing can be very helpful.
Helpful Resources:
- Perspective-taking activities
- Flexible thinking activities
- Weeds Badge activities
- How positive affirmations are helpful
7. Solving a Problem and Processing Emotions
Sometimes there’s a problem to solve and sometimes there are feelings to process. When there’s an external cause of sorrow, help children unpack it with problem-solving skills. If you can't change the cause, focus on tools for regulating emotions.
Helpful resources:
8. Be Aware of Less Helpful Coping Mechanisms
Children might hear messages to suppress, deny, or avoid their sadness. Distraction techniques can help children re-evaluate their feelings, but suppression or denial does not allow that re-evaluation. Building emotional vocabulary and talking about positive coping can develop a varied emotional regulation toolbox.
Helpful Resources:
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9. Understanding the Ups and Downs
Recovering from sadness isn't always predictable. There can be ups and downs, especially true for grief. Understanding that it’s okay to feel better and then worse again can be helpful.
Helpful resources:
10. Differentiate Sadness from Depression
Sadness and grief improve over time, while depression can be persistent and associated with changes in behavior, sleep, or school performance. If you notice these signs, connect with additional resources like the child’s doctor.
Helpful resources:
11. Get Curious About Sadness
Sadness can be an opportunity for growth by testing out new emotional regulation and coping skills. Coaching children through big feelings by encouraging curiosity, naming the emotion, observing it, and finding ways to tame it can be very helpful.
Helpful resources:
Remember, it’s healthy for children to feel sad and talk about their emotions. It’s a natural part of life and a way to process challenges to release emotions that can hold them back.
As a parent or educator, you can equip kids with powerful tools that give them a huge advantage in life. Teaching them to navigate their sadness and develop emotional resilience will help them thrive and succeed.
Sam's Sadness Slips Out: An Important Resource for Parents & Teachers to Help Children Dealing with Sadness
Affiliate link with Amazon helps support this blog.
Sam's Sadness Slips Out is a story about sadness and coping. The reader is not told why Sam is sad, which felt important so that the book could be useful for children experiencing sadness for a range of reasons, whether it be loss of a pet, death of a family member, friendship woes, family sorrow, or anything else.
The opening talks about how Sam's sadness colors his world (everything looks gray) and how his sadness shows up in his body (stomach aches and tiredness). As he moves through his day, he gradually finds that bits of his sadness slip away, first through deep breathing and focused observation of the natural world, then with self-expression through art, writing, and singing, and then through being in company with his cat, his friends, and his mom.
The book closes with Sam's sadness not fully resolved, which normalizes the fact that sadness doesn't always resolve quickly or predictably. However, Sam falls asleep recounting to himself the many strategies he can employ to cope with sadness, and he finds himself able to imagine a future with less sorrow.
Sam's Sadness Slips Out discussion prompts for teachers or parents:
How did sadness show up in Sam's body?
- How does sadness show up in your body?
- How does your body feel when you are sad?
- How does the world look for you when you are sad?
What helped Sam's sadness to slip out?
- Where any of these strategies you have used?
- Were any of them surprising to you?
- What helps your sadness slip out?
Who helped Sam with his sadness?
- Who helps you when you are sad?
- How can we help our friends and classmates when they are sad?
How did Sam feel at the end of the book?
- Why wasn't he all better?
Book Author & Guest Contributor
Kristin N. Ray, MD, MS, FAAP
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
I was a kid who had big feelings but wasn't always sure what to do with them. Sometimes it felt wrong to feel so much. But I found ways to make sense of my feelings -- I journaled a lot, I talked with my gerbils a lot, and I found amazing friends who listened beautifully.
I hope that this book helps children with big feelings and the adults in their lives to talk about sadness and coping in new ways.
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AUTHOR: Lisa Currie - Ripple Kindness Project
Lisa is passionate about contributing to a happier world by building emotional intelligence in kids through fun and engaging social-emotional learning resources. Her core value is kindness as she believes it to be the “mother” of all character traits. She started Ripple Kindness Project to spread kindness in schools and communities. She also founded an outreach program to support disadvantaged families.
