Maladaptive grief is an intense form of grief disorder that causes crippling thoughts and destructive behaviors (Alvis, Zhang, Sandler, & Kaplow, 2022). This level of grief can impact any family member after a significant loss, such as a person's spouse, parent, or child.  With children and adolescents, it is important their parent or guardian are involved in their grieving process.

Parent education has been proven to have lasting positive impacts for parents and children. Researchers have compared literature from six electronic databases that focus on impacts of parent education programs and have found that parents notice changes in the behaviors, self-perceptions, and relationships of the parent and child (Butler, Gregg, Calam, & Wittkowski, 2019). These positive outcomes and experiences from parent education programs are tremendous, thus it would be beneficial for parents to participate in these programs during the family's grieving process.  

Children ask questions from their parents about every day life, including death. According to research, bereaved children tend to ask questions about the following topics: causes and processes of death, levels of human intervention, feeling and processing grief, the meaning of life and death, and what happens after death (Joy, Staniland, Mazzucchelli, Skinner, Cuddeford, & Breen, 2023). Answering these questions with honest answers can help children process the death of a loved one.