How To Manage Difficult Emotions Around The Loss of A Pet
Explore the emotional journey of dealing with the loss of a pet and how to handle the situation, especially for children.
Table of contents
Dealing With The Loss of a Pet
Losing a pet is always painful, and it can be especially challenging in families with young children.
On my way to school the other day, I was listening to a local radio show that does a segment called Couple’s Court. Each week, a couple shares a disagreement, listeners hear both sides, and then call in to vote or offer opinions.
This time, a divorced couple was in conflict over how to handle the death of their six-year-old son’s goldfish, Twinkie.
Perhaps Keep The Loss Of A Pet Quiet?
The father, who kept the fish at his house, didn’t want to tell his son what had happened. He thought it would be kinder to quietly replace the fish. His reason was that it would spare his child’s feelings.
The mother disagreed. She felt their son was old enough to begin to understand the circle of life — that losing a pet, even a small one, could become an important first lesson in love and loss.
Callers were split. Some thought replacing the goldfish was the compassionate choice.
Others, including a psychotherapist who phoned in, believed honesty would help the child begin learning how to process grief and grow emotionally.
When a Child Faces the Loss of a Pet
My own view is that avoiding pain in the short term often leads to greater pain later.
What if the child found out the truth from someone else? What if he noticed the new goldfish didn’t look quite the same and realized something wasn’t right? Suddenly, the parent would not only have to explain the loss, but also the lie.
Shielding a child from sadness and loss of a pet can seem protective, but it can also block their natural emotional growth.
Parenting often brings heartache that no one warns you about. Watching your child feel pain can be excruciating because you feel it, too.
Yet children need to feel these emotions to mature and understand life more deeply. If we deny them those experiences because we can’t bear their pain, we carry that avoidance ourselves.
It can ripple into children’s future relationships with honesty, trust, and emotional resilience.
Available on Amazon: When a pet dies, by Fred Rogers.
A Child’s First Experience of Loss
Whether we like it or not, part of parenting is helping children navigate life’s full cycle — including loss.
So when you encounter the loss of a pet in your family, tell them the truth with love and empathy. Let them grieve in their own way. You might even hold a small goldfish funeral or create a special moment of remembrance together.
Avoid shutting down their grief or distracting them from it. Give them space to feel it. That space becomes a foundation for emotional strength, compassion, and authenticity later in life.
Grief can be heavy, uncomfortable, and deeply human. It’s tempting to hide from it — for ourselves and for our children. But allowing emotions to move through us, rather than be buried, is how we heal.
Honesty, presence, and tenderness in moments of loss can teach a child something they’ll carry forever: that love and grief are both sacred parts of being alive.
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4 Responses
Oh yeah, I totally agree! The universe brings us all lessons at the right times. Even children. So tell the child about the goldfish! Turn it into a learning experience! You talked about Joeseph Campbell in another post I read of yours. I love him btw. He was big on ceremonies that help people deal with natural transitions in life. Like how native cultures had ceremonies signifying when boys become men. The same, he felt, is necessary for death. It offers a chance to go through the grieving process and understand that this is accepted and normal. The death of a fish is a great opportunity to teach a child that BEFORE a major death, like the death of a parent.
Having said all that, as a parent, it is not always easy to know which choice to make. I’m just beginning on my conscious spiritual journey (because of course, I’ve been on it all along) and I find that decisions as a mother are now more complicated than before. I am not only responsible for a tiny human that will have to go out and live in this world, but also for their spiritual health as well.
~Halima
http://www.wildwolfmomma.com
Hi Halima,
It can be a tough one for parents who have not cleared their own issues around a subject like this, they may be triggered instead of inspired to do their best. I agree, it’s a challenge and not easy to know which choice to make sometimes. Yes, our decisions can be complicated, I’m finding that with teens, too. Often the decisions I make have unforeseen outcomes. All part of the journey, I guess.
Let’s do our best to stay open and help our kids. They will be having spiritual journeys of their own sooner or later.
In the light
Sarah
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