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You may worry if your child isn't talking about an upsetting event in their smaller or larger world.

By approaching it with heart and availability, and without judgment, you can create closeness.

Some reasons children choose not to share difficult feelings are causes for concern, while others are not.

Some children seem to be natural talkers/sharers. They offer what happened at school, speak about what they are feeling, and generally come to you about anything on their mind. However, even these children go through periods of time when they close down to you. Then, there are children who, from birth, seem to keep everything inside. You may see changes in behavior, such as lots of smiles or sad expressions, but they do not identify those aloud to you, and the changes can be quite subtle at times. When something likely to have been upsetting happens in your child’s small or larger world, how are you, as a parent, to know if your child is doing OK when they are not talking about it?

Whether your child is typically a sharer but now won’t or is all the more their customary non-sharing self, the first thing is to try to identify the “why” behind your child’s reticence.

Jordan is an 11-year-old fifth-grader who lives with his mother, an art teacher; his dad, an optometrist; and Marla, his second-grade sister. His parents were concerned because, although he was ordinarily forthcoming, he wasn’t talking about the death of his favorite aunt. They had asked a bunch of times if he was doing OK and how he was feeling about Aunt Lorena dying, and were met with shrugs or monosyllabic responses. The more they asked, the less he said. They didn’t know if this was worrisome or just the way he needed to be right now.

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