How to help children cope with sadness

By Dr. Charlotte Armitage, psychologist and psychotherapist

Experiencing a range of emotions which are sometimes enjoyable, but sometimes uncomfortable, is part of being human - sadness is an inevitable and healthy part of life, even for children. To support the psychological health of our children, helping them to understand this is one of the most important jobs parents have.

In childhood, sadness may be experienced because of things like a lost toy, falling out with a friend, the disappointment of missing a party, being separated from parents or through loss. As parents and caregivers, our instinct is often to “fix” these feelings, to help move the child out of their sadness as quickly as possible, to cheer up, distract, or solve the problem. But by doing this, we're not validating their emotional experience, we're teaching them to ignore those feelings of sadness. The most valuable thing we can do is help our children to learn to sit with their sadness, understand it, and grow from it.

Why it’s important to let children feel sadness

Sadness, like all emotions, serves a purpose. It signals to us that something matters, that we care, and that we’re alive to the world around us. It is healthy to feel sadness at times. When children are allowed to experience sadness in a safe, supportive environment, they develop a number of psychological skills which are essential for healthy functioning through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood.

Emotional literacy: They learn to understand, recognise, feel and label their feelings, which forms the basis of emotional regulation. In adulthood, emotional regulation is the bedrock of healthy psychological functioning.

How can I talk to my kids about their emotions?

Resilience: The ability to bounce back after challenges. By learning to tolerate sadness, children learn that part of the human experience is to learn to feel the sadness, but that it's temporary and survivable. This will support them significantly in the future, it will help them to take measured risks which could be developmental for them.

Five ways to build your child’s resilience.

Empathy: It's much easier to have empathy for others when you have experienced those same feelings yourself. Learning to feel sadness helps the child to develop empathy for others.

Coping skills: When we encourage children to feel their emotions, we also equip them with the skills and strategies to manage their difficult feelings in healthy ways. When a child doesn’t have healthy coping strategies and cannot regulate their emotions, they will reach for something to soothe themselves such as a phone, food, or exhibiting unhealthy or unhelpful behaviours which could result in poor mental health. When the child can process their emotions healthily, it removes the need for them to search for an unhealthy coping strategy.

If we attempt to shield children from sadness, or rush to distract them, we can inadvertently send the message that sadness is “bad” or unsafe or to be avoided. Instead, we want children to know that all feelings are valid, and that they have the strength to experience, manage and move through them.

Five ways to help your child with sadness

1) Acknowledge, recognise and name the feeling

The first step is simply to notice and name what’s happening, what is the emotion that the child is feeling, what has triggered the emotion and how does it feel in their mind and body. Children often need help identifying their emotions, especially younger ones.

Try saying: “I wonder if you’re feeling sad right now. Everyone feels sad sometimes.”

This is important because naming emotions helps children make sense of what’s happening inside their mind and body. It also shows them that you’re attuned and accepting of their feelings, which helps to facilitate attachment and sense of psychological containment for the child.

2) Offer validation and support but don’t fix

It’s natural to want to make things better, but more often than not the most helpful thing is simply to be present and sit with your child whilst they are feeling their emotions.

Try sitting quietly beside your child, offering a hug, or holding their hand, offering empathy and nurturing. Avoid jumping straight to solutions or distracting such as “do you want a snack” before they’ve had a chance to process. This is important because children need to be taught that sadness isn’t something to be avoided or “fixed” immediately, it’s a feeling that can be processed, managed and survived, especially with a trusted adult nearby.

3) Encourage expression in their own way

Children express sadness differently, much like adults do. Some children want to talk, others might want to run around, some take a longer period of time to process, some play and some simply need to cry.

Offer options: “Do you want to talk about it, do you want to play, or just sit together for a while?”

Respect their pace, if they’re not ready to talk, let them know you’re there when they are ready to talk and try to encourage them to process that sadness at some point rather than avoiding it. This is important because expressing sadness in a way that feels natural helps children process and release feelings, rather than bottling them up.

4) Validate and normalise the experience

Validate their emotional experience by letting your child know that sadness is a normal part of life. Also recognise how painful it feels for them at that time.

Try saying: “It makes sense to feel sad when something like this happens. It shows that it meant a lot to you. I can see that it is painful for you now. I feel sad sometimes too.”

Share stories: Without overwhelming them, share a simple story of a time you felt sad and what helped you. This can help your child to open up and share their experience with you. This is important because children who know that everyone feels sad and have someone to share that sadness with, are less likely to feel ashamed or isolated in their emotions.

5) Help them reflect and build coping strategies

Once the initial wave of sadness has passed, gently help your child reflect and build tools for next time.

Ask them: “What helped you feel a little better?” or “Is there something we could do together when you feel sad in the future?” Recognise their strengths in finding a healthy way to process their feelings.

List and try different coping strategies such as deep breathing, drawing, talking to a trusted adult, taking a walk, or listening to music. This is important because over time, children develop a toolkit of coping strategies that they feel able to use which they will carry forward into their adult lives. This will give them the confidence and resilience to cope with challenging situations in life.

It’s tempting to want to take away our children’s emotional pain, but true resilience is built by learning to sit with it and move through it rather than by avoiding it. When we allow and support our children to feel, express, and recover from sadness, we’re giving them the knowledge that they can handle whatever life throws their way and the confidence and resilience to do this.

Your presence, empathy, and willingness to let your child experience their feelings are more powerful than any quick fix. Sadness is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be supported. By helping your child sit with their sadness, you’re helping them grow into emotionally healthy, resilient adults.

This article was published in February 2026

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