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Children's Spirituality, Death, and Suicide
- Pastor Chris
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
The Difficult Discussion
When a young person in a community dies, it ripples outward. Such a traumatic event may be the closest and earliest experience with death a young person has. Children and adolescents may have big feelings and questions. A young life cut short feels especially unfair. That the death happens to someone around their age is shocking to a young mind used to the protection of family and the youthful feeling of invincibility. These issues are compounded when the death is by suicide because of the stigma surrounding the subject. “We don’t talk about that.” How can parents help to guide their children when faced with topics like this that are too big for us?
Parents may ask themselves:
What do I say?
How do I address this without hurting my child?
How can I protect my child?
Fortunately, children are not as fragile as we fear, but they do need guides. It turns out that spiritual connection is one of the strongest foundations for resilience.
The Hidden Strength in Children: Spiritual Capacity
There has been an exciting amount of research into children’s spirituality in the last couple of
decades. A foundational study in the UK revealed that the core of children’s spirituality is relational consciousness (Hay & Nye, 2006). Children are wired to experience spirituality as a growing awareness of their relationship to themselves, to others in the world around them, and to God. Lacy Finn Borgo notes that the God who longed these children into existence is already in a relationship with them, and they are growing in awareness of that relationship (Borgo, 2020).
When faced with experiences of death at a young age, children are naturally going to ask spiritual questions.
“Where is God?”
“Why do people die?”
“What happens after?”
Children have an innate spiritual awareness. We can nurture that in them, or we can quash it. Lisa Miller, author of The Spiritual Child, is a clinical psychologist and researcher of the neuroscience of spirituality. She followed families for ten years through research at Columbia University. The study showed that overall, when people listed their spirituality growing up as being important to them, there was about 75-90% less chance of experiencing major depression as an adult. This was even more striking for at-risk children who had parents who had depression. This is one of the findings Miller calls “stunningly large for a psychological protective factor” (Miller et al., 2012). This is not so much about being religious, but about having an active, lived spirituality. It is not about going to church alone, but about felt relationships, meaning, belonging, and an active experience of connection with God. If spirituality is a kind of inner root system, then resilience is what grows from it.
What Resilience Really Looks Like in Kids
Resilience is how kids bounce back. It is not about suppressing emotions. It is not about being strong. Instead, it is about naming feelings, staying connected, and holding hope alongside pain. Grief for kids will surface, come and go at surprising times. It can be like trying to hold an inflated ball underwater. It can bubble up at an odd time and subside just as fast. Across multiple studies, three themes for resilience consistently emerge.
Connection – that relational consciousness connecting us to one another and God.
Meaning-making – how do we make sense of the world around us? How do we connect what we are experiencing with the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, our families, and our place in God’s story?
Emotional expression – do we have space to name our emotions and feel our feelings?
Spirituality strengthens all three, even building pathways in the developing brain that help kids respond to stressors and trauma in healthy ways.
Why Silence is a Risk
As a society, we really don’t want to talk about these things. It is tough. Instinctively, many parents will avoid the topic or soften the language too much. Children already hear things. Especially in our world of social media, they know what is going on, they fill the gaps in their knowledge with their imagination, and then that gets passed around as well.
Silence doesn’t protect children. It leaves them alone with their questions.
Miller observes that children's innate spirituality is a use-it-or-lose-it proposition. If we minimize and trivialize their budding spiritual experiences, we risk quashing it for them (Miller, 2015, p. 27). Exploring these topics on the edges of their existential limits, while challenging for us as adults, helps them to process their feelings and build the spiritual relationships that serve as such a protection for them in the future.
How to Check In with Your Child
Here are some practical, simple, and repeatable tools for checking in with your children when a death occurs in their world.
Start with presence, not answers.
“I heard something really sad happened… Have you heard anything about it?”
Use open, gentle questions.
“What are you wondering about? How are you feeling about it?”
Normalize emotions. Remember, resilience is not about hiding our mix of emotions away, but about naming them and feeling them. It is normal to be sad, confused, angry, and even curious.
Listen more than you speak. You don’t need to have the answers to the questions. You can sit with your kids in the wondering. Resist fixing. Reflect back what you hear, even as simply as taking a phrase they just said. “I hear you saying…”
How to Talk About Suicide with Children
Talking about suicide does not plant the idea in their heads. Studies have consistently shown that talking about it does not increase suicidal ideation, but can decrease it. Talking about it in a direct, caring, non-judgmental way is safe and helpful.
There are some added benefits shown when talking about it.
Relief of secrecy – naming the thought reduces isolation
Permission to speak – there is so much stigma, children need to know they have a safe place to talk about it.
Early detection – if a crisis is brewing in the life of a child, talking about it may surface the risk before it escalates.
Emotional regulation – Being asked about it in a caring way can lower distress.
When talking to your child about suicide, be honest but simple. Avoid euphemisms like “went to sleep.” Avoid language that places blame, like “committed suicide.” Instead, experts suggest:
For younger children (approx. 5–9)
“They died because their brains were very sick, and they hurt themselves.”
For older children (approx. 9–12)
“They had a serious illness in their brain that made them feel very, very hopeless, and they died by suicide.”
Followed by reassurance (always include this)
“Most people who feel this way can get help and feel better. There are always adults who help keep people safe.”
Emphasize that this is not common. There are always adults who help. Your child is not responsible. Invite on going conversation. This shouldn’t be viewed as a one-time speech, but an introduction to an ongoing conversation about what they are experiencing.
“You can always ask me anything about this.”
Remember, you don’t have to have the answers when they ask, but wonder about the questions together.
Spiritual Conversations that Build Resilience
Because spirituality is such a strong protective factor for children and adolescents, I am so excited about helping parents have spiritual conversations with their children. Spiritual conversations help children see where God is every day. This is especially true when they are facing trauma. When having a spiritual conversation, you are not looking for the right information from your child. They want to please you so much that you need to make sure you ask open-ended questions that aren't right or wrong.
I wonder where God is when someone feels that sad?
I wonder, can you imagine where God was when you experienced that?
I wonder what helps people when they feel alone?
Once you recognize your child’s feelings and name them, and recognize where God is in all of it and name it, then respond in prayer. This can be a simple prayer, such as “God, be close to people who feel very sad.” Or you can name your gratitude and sorrows together. You may want to try a practice of lament, or light a candle for remembrance.
Spirituality is not about giving answers. It is creating a space where questions are safe.
What Parents Can Do Over Time (Not Just in Crisis)
Spirituality is such an important factor for our children’s development. It is key that we engage in a loving rhythm of support to nurture their spiritual development.
Have regular check-ins. What was the best part of your day? What was the worst? Avoid questions that are easy to shut down with a yes/no/fine.
Tell spiritual stories. Tell each other stories of the Bible to build a vocabulary of faith to deal with the realities of life. Tell your story and the story of your family and see how it connects to the story of God. Jerome Berryman, who developed Godly Play, worked on a multidisciplinary team in a hospital caring for families of suicidal children. He said a common feature among those families was that they didn’t tell the story of who they were (Berryman, 2018, p. 22).
Develop family rituals of prayer, gratitude, and reflection. Develop a rule of life for your family, one that is less about the practices themselves and more about creating a place where hospitality invites spiritual experience. In all these rhythms, we are creating a culture where feelings are named, questions are welcomed, and God is present in everyday conversation.
Closing: A Quiet Hope
I recognize the weight of this topic. I lost a friend to suicide when I was in high school. Her loss has impacted me in ways even the death of my parents later in life has not. The studies showing how powerful spirituality and relationships with trusted adults are have given me hope that we have something to offer our hurting world. You don’t need perfect words. You need openness and presence. Children don’t need parents who have all the answers. They need parents who are willing to sit with them in the questions.
References
Berryman, J. (2018). Stories of God at Home: A Godly Play Approach. Church Publishing Incorporated.
Borgo, L. F. (2020). Spiritual conversations with children: Listening to God together. IVP, an imprint of InterVarsity Press.
Hay, D., & Nye, R. (2006). The Spirit of the Child: Revised Edition. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Miller, L. (2015). The spiritual child: The new science on parenting for health and lifelong thriving (First edition). St. Martin’s Press.
Miller, L., Wickramaratne, P., Gameroff, M. J., Sage, M., Tenke, C. E., & Weissman, M. M. (2012). Religiosity and Major Depression in Adults at High Risk: A Ten-Year Prospective Study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 169(1), 89–94. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2011.10121823
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