There are things you might not notice when you first walk into The Children’s Room.
Newer pieces sit alongside furniture and objects that have been part of the house for years. Children’s drawings share space with artwork on the walls. Some rooms invite you to sit quietly. Others invite you to move, make something, talk, or play.
Last week, a group of Tufts University students walked through our blue door and were asked to pay attention to those details.
At the end of their visit, we asked them one question:
What is one detail about the space that changed the way you think about how an environment can support children and families who are grieving?
Their answers made us look at our own house a little differently.
“We tend to overthink the physical design and underthink the vibe.”
A feeling before there are words
This wasn’t the first time Tufts students had been invited to look closely at our space.
In 2018, The Children’s Room wrote about our ongoing workshops with students from Tufts University’s Designing Educational and Therapeutic Environments course. At the time, the annual visit was already in its fifth year.
The idea students were exploring was therapeutic space planning: creating spaces with intention and purpose, with attention to the well-being of the people who use them.
Part of that is something we called the “felt sense” of a space.
It’s what we experience when we enter a room before we necessarily understand why.
A sofa. A tea kettle. A clock. Lighting. Pillows. Art. The way furniture is arranged. Individually, these are ordinary things. Together, they can influence whether a space feels comfortable, welcoming, or like somewhere you are allowed to settle in.
When students visited in 2018, they used words like peaceful, secure, comfort, and understood to describe what they experienced inside the house.
Eight years later, we wondered what a new group might see.
What they noticed
One student stopped at the drawings and messages children had left behind for people in their lives who had died.
They saw something more than children’s artwork. To them, those messages conveyed empathy and offered “a gentle reminder that they’re not alone in navigating through more difficult times.”
Another student noticed the furniture.
The house has changed over the years, including a recent renovation, but not everything old was replaced simply for the sake of making it new.
The student reflected that “stories are told through the second-hand furniture in the space,” and that holding onto some of those pieces rather than seeking an entirely new or modern look adds something to the community that gathers here.
Someone else noticed that a space for children who are grieving doesn’t have to look or feel entirely like a place for grief.
It can still have many of the qualities we would want in any thoughtfully created space for children.
That observation feels important.
Children and teens come to The Children’s Room because someone important in their life has died. But children who are grieving are still children.
They may want to talk about the person who died.
They may also want to make something.
Run around.
Laugh.
Play a game.
Sit quietly.
Or not talk about grief at all that day.
A space created for them has to leave room for all of those things.
More than the things inside it
Not every student pointed to an object.
Some noticed something harder to name.
One wrote about the energy people bring into a space and how that shapes the way we engage with it.
Another reflected on how a building can become something more through “community love, support, and determination.”
And one student wrote:
“The house holds memories but it also holds you where you are at.”
That may be the most difficult part of a space to design.
Because therapeutic space isn’t only about choosing the right furniture, colors, or lighting. It is also about how people care for the space and, in turn, how they care for one another within it.
One student described that connection this way:
“Everything, and everyone, has a place here.”
For years, students have walked through The Children’s Room to study how an environment can support the people who use it.
This week, a new group reminded us that much of what makes a space meaningful can be easy to overlook when you see it every day.
A drawing left on a wall.
A piece of furniture with a history.
A room where it’s okay to make noise.
A quiet place to sit.
And the feeling, sometimes before anyone has said a word, that you don’t need to become someone different before you come inside.
There is room for you here.
About This Series: 30 Years, 30 Stories is an ongoing collection of reflections from the community that has shaped The Children’s Room over the past three decades. For 30 years, all of our services have been offered free of charge to grieving children, teens, and families thanks to the generosity of our community. Learn more or support our work at childrensroom.org.