5 Tweens and Teens 123
(Malone, 2012). McFerran, Roberts, and O’Grady (2010) suggest that music
provides both a “window” into grief (opening dialogue when sad songs are
chosen) as well as a strategy to consciously use music for mood management.
Adolescents can select music that allows them to express their grief or music
that distracts or enlivens. Although adolescent groups may seem to avoid
overt discussions of grief and loss, using symbolic activities like lyric-writing
(McFerran et al., 2010) and focusing on somatic aspects of grief (Malone, 2012)
seem more acceptable and effective in work with teens.
Broderick and Frank (2014) suggest that adolescents benefit from learning
mindfulness-based techniques to build executive function and manage diffi-
cult emotions. A universal approach to teaching the skills of body scan, self-
compassion, empowerment, and emotion management (Broderick & Metz,
2009), the Learn to BREATHE program offers skills that may allow bereaved
or ill adolescents to cope with the intensity of grief.
An interesting “intervention” is happening with teens in Israel at the
Miriam Rodman School in Kiryat Yam. The teens of the school interview fami-
lies of young Israeli soldiers who have died and they create a life book to give
the family. In developing these books, the teens are guided by a faculty men-
tor, but they are expected to meet with the bereaved family and hear the story
of the deceased. The books include pictures, stories, and other mementos of
the soldier’s life and death. Aside from the powerful and meaningful books
created for the family (along with a copy for the school’s library), the teens
also learn to be unafraid of talking with bereaved people, and to manage their
own emotional responses to both the death and the experience of interview-
ing the family. When teens are helped to understand the experience of grief
and mourning, they likely move into adulthood more capable of supporting
bereaved others and less frightened of managing their own emotions in the
face of grief.
Response to the Death of an Adolescent
When adolescents die, it is often sudden due to accident, homicide, or sui-
cide (Murphy, Johnson, Wu, Fan, & Lohan, 2003). Such losses betray parents’
assumptive world and may leave survivors (whether family or friends) with
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Boelen & Spuij, 2013; Murphy, Johnson,
Chung, and Beaton, 2003). Following traumatic death, parents must grapple
with the unfairness of life and often require a longer than usual time to adjust.
Adolescents (friends or siblings of the deceased), although in a period of rapid
development, may still be impulsive and engage in some magical thinking.
They may be more susceptible to complicated grieving (Melham, Moritz,
Walker, Shear, & Brent, 2007) precisely because of the many changes (and sub-
sequent maturational losses) that are naturally a part of adolescence.
Parents’ Loss of a Tween or Teen
Parents are the most common mourners of a teen. As noted earlier, a teen’s
death is often sudden. Traditionally, violent, sudden death, particularly sui-
cide, was believed to raise the risk of complicated grief and PTSD for survivors,
