It is believed that infants grieve. If there are people who have been consistently present in a baby's life, the child will have a sense of something missing. A young child often does not initially respond to hearing that someone has died.
Many parents are concerned that their child has no initial reaction or visible grief.
It is important to remember that a young child's perception is oriented in the five basic senses. It is concrete, short-range and based on what is felt in the moment. A young child does not comprehend the concept of death. When a person is gone and then still gone and then still gone, a child may grieve at each moment when he or she feels the person's goneness. A child may not grieve at all for these leavings until the accumu- lative affect of goneness inspires a longing or aching protest within the child.