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From Our House to Yours:
Teens and Grieving
Like all of us, teens sometimes experience the
deaths of loved ones. Sadly, suicide, risky
behaviors and teen violence leave adolescents
especially vulnerable to losing friends and
acquaintances to death. Parents and caregivers often
wonder how to help teens grieve and heal from this
kind of loss.
Thinking About and Understanding Death
Unlike younger children, teens usually grasp the
finality of death. Adolescence is a time when teens
are figuring out what they think about life,
spirituality, and their purpose in the world.
Thinking about death, sometimes to the point of
“dwelling” on it, is a common way that teens work
out their views about these big questions. Themes of
death in music, artwork, poetry, books, and clothes
may be a sign that your teen is wrestling with these
issues or is trying to fit into a social group.
However, exaggerated interest in death can also be an
indication of depression. Talk with your teen if he
or she seems overly drawn to these things, but find
out more before you react.
Grieving
Grief is a natural process that
happens on its own timeline. People who are grieving
often experience shock or numbness, intense sadness,
anger and/or fatigue. These feelings can happen at
different times for different people, and not
everyone experiences all of them. Above all, grief
is a highly personal reaction to a universal
experience. People in the most intense stages of
grieving after a death need love, patience and
support. They also need permission to feel whatever
they feel. Teens should be encouraged, but not
pushed, to participate in all the adult rituals
surrounding a death, including attending viewings
and visiting hours, funerals or memorials, sitting
Shivah or other religious or family traditions. The
first days and weeks after a death can be exhausting
for everyone involved, so teens and caregivers
should be particularly careful to allow for time to
stop and rest. Caregivers may need a break from the
job of caring for their teen! It’s OK to ask for
help and extra support.
When someone dies, a teen may react in lots of
different ways. Like other life events, death may
provoke very strong feeling in teens: confusion,
anger or intense sadness. These feelings can swing
very quickly and leave teens and adults feeling
tired and confused. Teens who do not want to display
their feelings may choose to isolate themselves from adults,
finding comfort from peers. Other teens may become
clinging and more childlike for a while. Some teens
try to just keep everything “normal” and go about
their lives as if nothing has happened. Any of these
response are understandable and OK.
Teens also wrestle with the question “Who am I?”
after someone has died. Figuring out his or her role
in a family, with friends, and in the world is always
a big part of adolescence. A teen’s identity,
especially in relation to the person who has died,
gets called into question after a death. “Am I still
my Dad’s daughter if he’s not around anymore?” “Will
I be disloyal to my dead friend if I make new
friends?” are the kind of things teens work to
understand about their changed
world after a death.
Behaviors and Signs of Grief
Grieving teens may not talk about
their feelings, but they might do lots of crying,
withdraw, or throw themselves into lots of activity.
Teens may act out with defiance, irritability, poor
grades or fights, risk-taking or experimentation
with drugs and alcohol.
It’s important to talk about these behaviors, and
remind your teen that, while he or she always has your love
and support, the same rules about negative behavior
still apply. You can be understanding and still set
appropriate limits. Teens may complain, but
they often secretly crave the reassurance that some
things haven't changed and someone (you) is still in
charge. As we mentioned above, if troubling
feelings or behavior persist a long time or seem to
take over your teen’s life, talk it over and
consider checking in with a professional.
Re-Grieving
When someone a child loves dies,
that child copes with the event in age-specific
ways. He or she may have a very limited
understanding of what has happened. As the child
matures, that event will be re-processed with new,
more mature understanding. That’s why a teen will
sometimes re-grieve a loss that happened much
earlier. If a teen becomes sad or angry about a
death that occurred years ago, he or she needs the
same love and support that they might need for a
death that occurred yesterday.
Grief and Trauma
Sometimes a loss can be made more
complicated, if the teen has also experienced trauma
related to the death. Seeing someone die
unexpectedly, losing someone to violence or suicide,
or feeling somehow responsible for the death can
lead to post-trauma stress reactions. These
reactions can cause a lot of distress for your teen,
and slow the grieving and healing process. Some
symptoms of traumatic stress include nightmares,
flashbacks, irritability and severe mood swings,
long periods of feeling
"numbed out" or detached from reality, intense
feelings of guilt, fear or anxiety. If you feel you
teen may be dealing with the aftereffects of trauma,
contact a mental health professional right away for an
assessment and treatment.
Ways to Support Your Grieving Teen
Like adults, teens need to be
reassured that there is no “right” way to grieve and
that any feelings are OK, including feeling angry at
the person who died, or not always feeling sad.
Adults need to share the fact that they, too, are
working hard to figure out how to deal with the
death and sometimes feel overwhelmed or confused.
Teens should not be pressured to talk, but should be
reminded that they can talk whenever they need to.
Above all, they need to be reassured that they are
loved, and that someone will always be there to
support and help care for them.
Grief can make people feel very alone. Make
sure your teen knows that love and support is
available. |
