Children are our future. This statement is certainly obvious, but if we take it seriously, it will influence the causes we support. We need to do everything we can to ensure that children are protected, healthy, educated, and receiving the guidance they need during their childhood and teen years.

A family death changes a child’s world in a moment. The security and safety of family is suddenly thrown into chaos. Like a knife cutting through a spool of thread, what was once organized, secure, and tidy, is transformed into a bunch of frayed, loose ends. The future becomes frightening and caring people are needed.

There are more grieving children than you may realize. The latest estimates show that 1 in every 14 children will experience the death of a parent or sibling before the age of 18. Those odds more than double if you extend it out to the age of 25. And this is without even considering the 140,000 children who have had a parent die from COVID in the past months.

Childhood grief disrupts in profound ways.  Unless caring adults intervene with caring support, the following results often follow. Academic challenges, relationship upheaval, health challenges, depression, substance abuse, suicide, and poverty.

Teachers witness this regularly. In a study done by the New York Life Foundation, teachers were asked how a sudden death effects their students. They reported:

• Difficulty concentrating in class (observed by 87% of teachers)
• Withdrawal/disengagement (observed by 82%)
• Absenteeism (observed by 72%)
• Decrease in quality of work (observed by 68%)
• Less reliability in turning in assignments (observed by 66%)