The Baffling Behavior Show {Parenting after Trauma}

Episode 208: Bravely Being With Grief, with Rose LaPiere
Host: Robyn Gobbel
Guest: Rose LaPiere, therapist & play therapist
Date: February 11, 2025

Overview

This episode explores the intricate, layered nature of grief—especially as it arises in families and children who have experienced loss or trauma. Host Robyn Gobbel is joined by Rose LaPiere, a seasoned play therapist and grief companion, to discuss how grief manifests in children and adults, the cultural taboos around expressing grief, and the power of community and simple presence over “fixing.” With honesty and vulnerability, Robyn and Rose share professional and personal experiences supporting families, offering both validation and practical guidance to parents, caregivers, and professionals.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

What Is Grief?

• Rose describes grief as "deep sorrow," encompassing a contradictory state of "feeling so much and also feeling nothing at all" (06:12 – 07:13).
• Robyn notes that many don’t recognize non-death-related losses as “real” grief, and that society often invalidates or narrowly defines grief (04:24 – 05:44).

"It's like feeling so much and then also feeling nothing at all."
— Rose (07:02)

Grief in Children: How It Shows Up

• Children may present as “okay” outwardly, but carry a heavy, unsettled feeling internally (07:36 – 09:57).

• Grief can manifest as restlessness, chaos, withdrawal, loneliness, or even mimic learning or behavioral issues.

• The impact of grief can be long-lasting, with adults sometimes questioning:

  "It's been a year… why are they still unsettled?"
  — Robyn (10:06)

• Rose emphasizes the difference between seeking solitude for regulation versus isolation due to sadness and grief.

Grief, Safety, and the Nervous System

• Grief disrupts expectations of safety—children continue seeking the lost person or situation, and the whole family’s sense of normalcy is upended (11:19 – 13:18).
• Children are especially dysregulated when both they and their caregivers are grieving, thus losing both the person and the caregiver's usual regulatory presence (13:18 – 14:11).

Community and Naming the Loss

• Community support and naming grief directly are vital. During COVID, isolation worsened the grief experience due to a lack of communal rituals and support (14:18 – 15:35).
• Parents often avoid talking about the loss out of fear—fear of making it worse or not knowing what to say.

"Sometimes it's even like we avoid talking about something because we know it can't be fixed. ... But I think—I say different. The opposite."
— Robyn (15:51)

Parental Vulnerability and Modeling Feeling

• It’s okay for adults to show emotion or admit they don’t have the answers, scripting honest responses for parents:

  "I don't know what to say, or this feels a lot for me."
  — Rose (16:38)

• Naming one's own feelings gives kids permission to talk about feelings and normalizes grief.

"How do kids know it's okay to be with feelings? They're watching the people around them be with feelings."
— Rose (19:35)

Approaching Grief with Openness

• Use curiosity-driven, “I wonder…” language as gentle invitations (“offerings”) for kids to share or reject, rather than pressing them (20:26 – 21:07).
• Most kids will correct you if you’ve “gotten it wrong,” so it’s more harmful to avoid the topic than to broach it sensitively.

Professional Reflection—Helpers Need Help Too

• Robyn and Rose discuss the necessity for therapists and helpers to seek support for themselves, especially when cases touch on their own experiences or overwhelm them (27:25 – 29:19).
• Professional co-regulation (consultation, supervision) enables clinicians to remain present for families—modeling the same support, presence, and co-regulation that families need to provide for their children.
• The value of presence over fixing is highlighted:

  "There’s really not a lot to do except for just, like, be with them… And the fear in ourselves because of being with them is so big and so overwhelming."
  — Robyn (32:05)

The Nature of Grief Across Time

• Grief is not linear or ever “resolved”; it morphs over time, re-emerging with new developmental capacities or life events (39:25 – 41:08).
• For children, as they mature, their understanding—and thus the shape and meaning—of the loss evolves.
• Rose shares stories of children returning to therapy as teens to integrate new levels of understanding about earlier losses.

"Grief doesn't go away. It just kind of changes shape and size and moves to different parts of our bodies. And then something can happen, and it comes right back to the front and it's there again."
— Robyn (38:16)

Permission to "Just Be With"

• There’s no need for elaborate activities or rituals unless the child/family is ready and interested. Sometimes, simply offering presence and noticing small moments is most helpful (35:41 – 37:33).
• Touch in, name the feeling, then return to play or normalcy; it’s about titrating closeness to the pain in manageable doses.

"...just being able to just be with their kiddo in talking about a feeling and then that kind of being it and backing away and not feeling like they have to do a special thing."
— Rose (36:45)

Holding Grief and Joy Together

• An especially meaningful thread: the ability to remember and honor the person or experience lost, while also making space for joy, creates a new, more integrated way of holding loss (25:21 – 27:05).
• Tying it all together:

  "There is a place where all these things exist together, where there are sunshine and rainbows and also a lot of hard, hard."
  — Robyn (45:32)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Defining Grief:
  "So when I think about grief, I think about the really, like, the depth of the sorrow that happens in the loss where my mind, my body, the sensations I’m having, my thoughts are kind of consumed with this sense of just simplifying, like, not feeling good, feeling really bad, feeling really badly inside of my own self."
  — Rose (06:12)

• On Honesty and Permission:
  "I don't know what to say, or I'm so overwhelmed with what's happening inside of me, I will cry when I talk to them about this thing. And I think what is hard in our culture, where I am in America, that we don't really, you know, crying in front of our kids is really hard… So just having permission to know it's okay to say, I don't know what to say."
  — Rose (16:18)

• On Presence over Fixing:
  "There’s really not a lot to do except for just, like, be with them… And the fear in ourselves because of being with them is so big and so overwhelming."
  — Robyn (32:05)

• On Long-Term Integration:
  "There isn’t a way…like a pushing through or getting over or like overcoming or bouncing back… those things just aren’t true about grief."
  — Rose (42:41)

• On Making Space for Paradox:
  "There is a place where all these things exist together, where there are sunshine and rainbows and also a lot of hard, hard. And they're together. There's not a side."
  — Robyn (45:32)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [06:12]: Rose defines the experience of grief as deep sorrow (contradiction of feeling everything and nothing).
• [07:36]: How grief may show up in children’s behaviors.
• [10:30]: Grief mimics behavioral or learning concerns in schools.
• [11:49]: Grief disrupts cues of safety and normalcy for kids and families.
• [14:18]: Importance of community; naming the loss.
• [16:18]: Permission for parents to model feelings and acknowledge not knowing what to say.
• [19:10]: Parents’ fears about making things worse by bringing up loss.
• [20:26]: Using curiosity and open-ended prompts with kids.
• [27:25]: The need for therapists to seek their own support.
• [35:41]: Permission to “just be with” grief—no special tools or forced conversations required.
• [39:25]: Grief’s evolution across childhood and life stages.
• [42:07]: No pushing through or “getting over” grief—normalizing its ongoing, changing nature.
• [45:32]: Holding joy and sorrow together.

Final Thoughts

The conversation concludes with warmth and gratitude for these honest explorations and for Rose’s ongoing involvement in the "Being With" program. The episode gently insists that for children and parents facing grief, the most healing thing is not to “fix” the pain, but to bravely be with it—one moment, one offering, one breath at a time.

Resources and further connection with Rose LaPiere

• Facebook & Instagram: Rose LaPiere
• Website: RoseLaPiere.com

Rose will also be returning for future episodes and joint trainings with Robyn—stay tuned!