Getting Bereavement Counselling
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With thanks to our member, Maria Kopec for this article.
There’s a phrase I heard as a child that I can’t forget: “Children and fish have no voice.”
It wasn’t cruel, not exactly. It was just how things were. Adults decided. Children obeyed. But silence doesn’t mean peace. And children… they feel everything…
From their first breath, children are absorbing the world. Not passively but actively, watchfully, like emotional sponges. They watch how adults respond to stress. They notice whether sadness is allowed or shameful, whether mistakes are punished or understood, whether apologies come easily or not at all.
We learn through observation. Children don’t just copy behaviours, they internalise beliefs, values and fears. They’re not waiting to be shaped by school or therapy. They’re already becoming someone long before they learn to speak in full sentences.
By the time a child enters education, an emotional outline has begun to form. For some, it’s filled with warmth, patience, and safe expression. For others, it’s marked by absence, conflict, or quiet emotional disconnection. It’s not out of malice, but often because those raising them never learned another way. When a parent is doing their best but drowning under stress, isolation, or trauma, that “best” can still leave deep gaps. And those gaps don’t vanish. They echo forward.
Freud recognised the power of these early years, how childhood experiences echo through adulthood. He saw the ways unhealed wounds resurface in unexpected places: in relationships, in reactions, in the parts of ourselves we don’t yet understand. The understanding matters. It helps us name the pain, see the roots of our patterns, and begin to separate what happened to us from who we are. Without it, we risk misplacing blame on ourselves or on others, without knowing why. But if we only look back, we risk staying stuck in awareness. Insight without action can become a story we live in, rather than one we learn from. Healing begins with understanding, but it doesn’t end there. The moment we realise that while we didn’t choose our beginnings, we can choose what happens now. That’s the heart of Adler’s belief that we are not just shaped by the past, but capable of shaping the future. Choosing kindness over cruelty. Repair over repetition. Growth over guilt. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. It starts when someone, a parent, a teacher, or maybe a therapist, dares to do things differently. That is a power of a belief in choice, in growth, in the possibility that we are not only the sum of our past but the authors of our next chapter.
That’s the space where healing lives. Between knowing and doing. Between reflection and action.
Therapists are seeing more and more young people burdened by emotional distress, anxiety, self-harm, identity confusion, fear of failure, emotional shutdown. These symptoms often appear in the consulting room, but they’re rooted in something deeper. Not individual weakness, but systemic disconnection. A child who can’t focus in class might be navigating chaos at home. A teen who lashes out may never have seen calm conflict resolution. The issues may look personal, but they are often profoundly social.
What’s striking is how many adults in these young lives are struggling too. Parenting today comes with different pressures to what that previous generations faced: financial hardship, digital overload, societal judgment and impossible standards. There’s little support and endless blame. Families are exhausted, doing what they can and still feeling like it’s never enough.
Many parents were once children who weren’t allowed to feel. Who weren’t taught to name and address their emotions. Who were told to toughen up. Without tools, they parent in survival mode. Without models of emotional safety, they may rely on control, silence, or distance. It’s not about bad parenting, but about generational patterns repeating themselves, often unconsciously.
Some young people act out. Some shut down. Some withdraw so quietly that it’s easy to miss the pain entirely. But nearly all of them are responding to something, not just at home, but in the environments, they are part of every day.
I asked a youth worker about his experience. He described what he sees daily: teenagers still emotionally stuck in the early stages of adolescence because the years meant for social exploration were spent in lockdown. Now they’re expected to “know better,” to behave, to focus, to grow up but no one ever showed them how. They missed out on modelling, on relationships, on the space to get things wrong and learn from it. He spoke about boys growing up without role models. Girls overwhelmed by comparison and self-doubt before they even hit puberty. Teachers are under pressure, parents burnt out and services underfunded. Still… the expectation is that these young people will somehow be fine. It’s no wonder some of them rebel, retreat or drift into dangerous places looking for belonging.
What made the difference? It wasn’t funding, not policy, but connection. When a young person finds someone who sees them, who believes in them, who keeps showing up… they begin to believe they’re worth showing up for too. It doesn’t take perfection. It just takes consistency. Presence. Patience. And most importantly the willingness to ask, not “what’s wrong with you?” but “what happened to you and what do you need now?”
Some young people are fortunate. They find a person who sees them clearly, who believes in their potential, who won’t let them give up. It might be a coach, a mentor, or maybe a neighbour. That one connection, one individual… can shift the course of a life. Not because it erases the past, but because it offers a new possibility for the future. It’s about showing that young person who just begins to learn what life is about that the possibilities are endless and it’s up to them which route they will take.
But not every child finds that person. And it shouldn’t be left to chance, however, so often it is.
What can we do? First, we can remember that a child’s behaviour is often their language. Acting out, withdrawing, shutting down, these are expressions of need. Before rushing to correct, we can pause to understand. What’s being said underneath the surface?
Second, we can reflect on our own assumptions. Do we expect emotional regulation from children who’ve never been shown what that looks like? Do we unknowingly hold biases about what “good” parenting should be, based on our own history or cultural norms?
And finally, we can hold space, not just for the child in front of us, but for the invisible threads they carry. Their caregivers’ unresolved pain, their community’s stress and the societal messages shaping their identity.
Healing doesn’t begin with blame. It begins with seeing.
We can’t rewrite a child’s early experiences. And we shouldn't, because every experience is a valuable lesson as long as we learn from it. But we can offer something powerful: the chance to be heard, believed, and supported — perhaps for the first time.
A child may not remember every word we say. But they will remember how we made them feel. Whether we saw them not as broken, but as becoming.
Yet, there is always hope. Because sometimes, change begins with one person who listens. One adult who holds space. One connection that breaks a cycle.
Sometimes all it takes is for someone to say: I see you. I hear you. You matter.
Because children do have a voice. They always did. And it’s time we start listening.
And sometimes, that’s enough to break the cycle.
With thanks to a youth worker and mentor, Kadus Smith, whose insight and experience helped shape this article. His work with young people continues to inspire hope and real change, in their lives and in the communities around them.
