How Children of Celebrities Struggle with Grief

Bobbi Kristina Brown's grief over her mother's death has become public fodder.(Getty Images)Mourning the loss of a parent in the public eye is a struggle all its own. Sadly, Whitney Houston's daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, is facing it head on.

Just as fans learned of Houston's tragic death, the singer's 19-year-old daughter was rushed to the hospital after an emotional breakdown. She returned to the hospital a second time over the devastating weekend.

"My daughter Bobbi Kristina is doing much better," her father, Bobby Brown, said in a written statement. "We continue to provide love and support to Bobbi-Kristina. She is dealing with the tragedy of her mother's death and would prefer to do it outside of the public eye. I ask again that our privacy be respected."

Read more: Whitney's last days
The sudden loss of a parent is unimaginably traumatic for any child, but for those foisted into the spotlight, the burden is particularly stressful.

"They face additional burdens because all of the speculations and emerging details of the death and of the parent's life," a grief specialist at Madonna University, Dr. Kirsti Dyer, tells Shine.

In some cases, the grieving kids become the focus of curiosity, as much as the deceased.

In 2009, when Michael Jackson died of an overdose, the three young children he kept shrouded behind masks, quickly became familiar faces without their father's protection. Present at his televised memorial, Paris, just 11, at the time, alarmed both fans and dissenters by calling Jackson "the best father you can ever imagine" before bursting into tears. She reminded onlookers that his death was as personal as it was public. She was also defending her father's honor, a task many children of public figures are forced to do in the face of controversy.

"Children see both the good and the bad being written about, broadcast, tweeted and posted on Facebook for everyone to see," Dr. Dyer says. "Limiting their exposure to the media can be beneficial to their grieving process, so that every time they see a news report, read a magazine or go on line they will not be reminded of the death again, and again."

Some children have managed to escape the exposure. After Phil Hartman's tragic death at the hands of his wife, his young son and daughter were placed in custody with their mother's family in a small Midwestern town and allowed opportunity to grieve and grow up privately.

Francis Bean Cobain wasn't as lucky. Very public custody battles, leading to a restraining order against her mother, forced the music legend's daughter to grow up in the shadow of her father's death. Meanwhile, the Jackson kids have barely escaped a day without paparazzi stalking since their dad's death.

Sometimes, that attention may be comforting. Jackson's three children recently left their mark in their father's honor at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Now at just 13, Paris seems to want to make a mark of her own in the industry. She's got a Twitter account, a publicist and a starring role in an upcoming movie.