Category: News

Tragedy is a reality. We all face it at times. The question we might have as parents and youth workers is, “How can we help our kids process this kind of grief?”

My city has been dealing with this recently as three young people were killed in a car wreck. The intriguing thing I’m noticing is the different advice we’re hearing about helping kids deal with this.

Our Sacramento Bee newspaper offered some interesting observations in their recent article about the incident, noting that teenagers don’t grieve like adults. The article contends that teenagers bury their feelings deep because of the pressure to look good and seem confident.

I’m not sure I agree with that generalization at all. I have seen plenty of evidence to the contrary, where kids will almost have complete meltdowns over even trivial matters. Youth workers like to call this “drama.” We’ve all seen it. Billy breaks up with Ali and Ali reacts no better than “Bella” in the recent movie New Moon… complete emotional breakdown.

I think some teenagers probably do have a propensity to repress feelings or “gunnysack,” but I wouldn’t try to rubberstamp that as a diagnosis for all teenagers. It would be difficult to generalize “all students” as grieving one way. Students are so diverse in how they process things.

But the same Bee article also noted something I found quite interesting- something I definitely have observed mainstream- the desire teenagers have to just be together and process grief with their friends.

“A lot of times, kids don’t necessarily want to talk, they just want to be together,” said Lissa Morgan, counselor at Rocklin. “They just want to go into the room and feel supported by one another.”

A steady rotation of students filled a conference room at Rocklin on Monday and Tuesday, where chaplains and counselors were on call. Most students sat quietly, Morgan said, or signed a poster with notes to Pak, a junior who died in the car crash.

Students at Folsom also taped a banner to an outside wall for Shaw, a senior who died in the crash. Throughout the day, students picked up Crayola markers to write notes or draw pictures. Or they gathered at the wall to share memories of Shaw.

“You didn’t have to know him for this to affect you,” said Yasi Saderi, 17, senior class president, who plans to give the completed banner to Shaw’s mother. “We wanted everyone to express what they felt.”

The wall is especially effective for teens, White said, because it gives them permission to express their feelings without being put on the spot. Reading others’ comments helps teens understand their own feelings.

I emailed this article to my buddy Lane Palmer to ask his two cents. Lane has a counseling background and was a youth pastor in Columbine during the 1999 incident. Lane, a regular contributor to our website, has written articles for us about dealing with school shooting tragedies and how to process this kind of grief as a group. Lane chimed in on this particular Sacramento Bee article and how students can process grief in a healthy way:

Every teen to some extent will go through the grieving period during adolescence, so youth workers need to be aware and ready to help.  It could be the death of a parent, friend suicide, or even a grieving of moving out of childhood.  It’s a great opportunity to help students understand and process both the joys and loss that relationships and life brings.

I agree that letting the teens just ‘hang out’ and process on a peer level is important, but equally important is encouraging them to process their feelings in some way- talking, journaling, drawing, etc.  With some of the Columbine students, I just sat and let the conversation flow.

Avoid any ‘you need to be strong’ or ‘you need to move on’ stuff.  Every teen grieves in a different way and time.

I think hanging a huge butcher paper in the youth room and make a general opportunity to write thoughts, names, struggles, etc. would be a great thing for any youth group

Great advice from Lane.

You can check out the entire Sacramento Bee article here.

Why are teenagers growing up so slowly? It’s not that hard to figure out. Just compare the responsibilities of your great grampa to kids today.

100 years ago: Help dad with the farm…. or Mom, sister and the rest of you won’t have any food.

Today: “Mom… I want the new iPhone! All my friends have it!”

Hmmmmm.

For years I’ve been reading about the increasing length of Adolescence and theories as to why. Last week, Newsweek highlighted a new book by Dr. Joe Allen titled, Escaping the Endless Adolescence (more on that in a minute). I loved the article, especially the timing of it- the same week as our most recent podcast, Episode #30, a conversation between Walt Mueller and I about today’s youth culture. In this podcast, Walt describes the crucial time of parenting adolescents as “the space between” (The title of his book on the subject).

Here’s his logic:

We all know that when our kids are young- we think for them.

We all know that someday- our kids will have to think for themselves.

How do we get them from “us thinking for them” to “thinking for themselves?”

Hence, the space between, when we think with them. (Simple, but profound, huh?)

In this podcast (free on iTunes), Walt and I have a great time talking about what this actually looks like day to day for parents who are raising teenagers. Fun stuff.

Back to the Newsweek article. It basically argues that teenagers are growing up slower because our society is not giving them opportunities to think and act for themselves… so we think for them, protecting them from “real life.”

Here’s just a snippet:

Allen has concluded that our urge to protect teenagers from real life – because we don’t think they’re ready yet – has tragically backfired. By insulating them from adult-like work, adult social relationships, and adult consequences, we have only delayed their development. We have made it harder for them to grow up. Maybe even made it impossible to grow up on time.

Basically, we long ago decided that teens ought to be in school, not in the labor force. Education was their future. But the structure of schools is endlessly repetitive. “From a Martian’s perspective, high schools look virtually the same as sixth grade,” said Allen. “There’s no recognition, in the structure of school, that these are very different people with different capabilities.” Strapped to desks for 13+ years, school becomes both incredibly monotonous, artificial, and cookie-cutter.

As Allen writes, “We place kids in schools together with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of other kids typically from similar economic and cultural backgrounds. We group them all within a year or so of one another in age. We equip them with similar gadgets, expose them to the same TV shows, lessons, and sports. We ask them all to take almost the exact same courses and do the exact same work and be graded relative to one another. We give them only a handful of ways in which they can meaningfully demonstrate their competencies. And then we’re surprised they have some difficulty establishing a sense of their own individuality.”

And we wonder why it’s taking so long for them to mature…

Fascinating stuff.

(ht to Adam for highlighting the article in the YS Update)