We expect to grieve when someone dies. We anticipate staying in bed after a traumatic childbirth. We consider crying as normal when passed over for a job. Yet, we sometimes fail to validate our children’s laments.

Social exclusion can feel like death. “Failure” in school, for many children, is traumatic. The loss of a pet is a fairly universally understood reason for many tears.

Recently, I brought both of my daughters to an undergarment shop. In my eyes, those two young girls, though built and colored differently, are equally beautiful. Nonetheless, in their esteem, as that esteem had been affected by peers, by media, and by other ordinary influences on teenagers, they are not attractive.

Each took me aside, privately, to whisper that she wished she looked more like her sister. Each explained that her was the wrong texture or the wrong color. Each claimed, in confidence that her body shapes did not please her.

Fortunately, the undergarment shop had goods for all types of girls. We left the store with new purchases for both daughters. Mission accomplished, sort of. I spent the next morning speaking individually to each of them, exclaiming their virtues.

In another case, that of my teenage son, I have watched him develop interests in various forms of armaments and in cars. Unfortunately, during this period, one of his “best buddies,” a fellow with whom he played touch football and with whom he bonded over all sorts of imaginings about vehicles and about weapons, transferred schools. My guy was dumbfounded.

As was the case with his sisters, I tried to listen. I also tried to engage him in talk.

I watch my elementary-aged son build towers out of Legos and otherwise occupy himself with self-imposed deadlines for self-invented art projects. I smile at the ease with which his span is negotiated. Although he wails as ably as does his older siblings, if, for instance, someone inadvertently knocks over a tower he spent long minutes on, or trips over one of his teabag wrapper creations, this youngest one’s pain is not yet the shade of grief of a teenager.

I pray regularly that my children experience no worse losses than the ones aforementioned since I have limited ability to impact on their lives. The best I can offer them is to witness their emotional injuries and to provide a hand, a shoulder, or a hug.

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