Question

Teen Book Review: The grieving teen: A guide for teenagers and their frends.

ISBN:

0684868040

ISBN-13:

9780684868042

Authors:Helen FitzGerald

THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS ARE NOT CONTENT FROM THE BOOK BUT THOUGHTS FROM THE BOOK

Recently many publishers have responded to the need for books that are designed to help adults discuss a difficult topic, death, with young children, and/or teens. You are to select one book (many are on Amazon), written for teens, and evaluate it based on what we have learned thus far in class.

1) Does it fit the social-emotional and cognitive developmental level for adequate death comprehension that is required for the age group for which it was marketed?

2) Is it honest, or do you think that it further perpetuates the myths around teens and their grief process?

3) Explore a bit: You are a clinician, asked to work with a teen in that age group. Teenagers are notoriously difficult to reach in counseling session...often because they are forced to attend session by well-meaning adults. How would you, specifically, incorporate this book into a counseling session? Is there enough there to start a conversation? Did it leave too many things vague and unanswered? What kinds of questions do you think it would raise for the teen? How would you, based on what you now know, answer them?

4) Edgar Jackson has written, "Adolescents are apt to think that they are the discoverers of deep and powerful feelings and that no one has ever loved as they love." If this is true, what implications does it have for understanding and assisting bereaved adolescents?

Answer 1

Its nothing new and it had been a crisis always in the society to get help or suggestions about how to take care of the young adults or adolescents in any bad news like death etc.This is to mention that youngsters are shocked by getting such type of news because their mind is not always in the fixed state of mind. From the psychological point of view , I can say that sometimes they are asked to behave like teens and sometimes they have been told that they are mature enough to understand a particular thing as they have grown up and should not be childish etc etc, thus the problem occoured in their mind how to act in consideration to social self. Several books are there in the market for suggestions or as handbooks in this regard but nowhere it has been mentioned that the patterns of behaviour needs to get changed in those surroundings or environments. Its been a fearfull situations for them because a chemical named dopamine released by the neurons of the neorotransmitter losses from the body and it decreases the analytical power of the mind along with laziness.

1)Author, Helen Fitzgerald has written several books like Grieving teens and the Mourning handbook etc are quite popular in the market but it could not be said that social emotional or cognitive levels are maintained properly for the age group for which it is marketed , neither this is possible to do so. Its a common guidelines only and one can read for a rough idea only. For further penetrations into the problems personal counselling sessions are required from the professionals like parenting consultants etc.

2) Book is honest from its own point of view but the problem is that the readers are not trained enough to use the experiences in the proper way as it required . It would be better if the author would have wrote it by keeping in the mind for laymen only.

3) If someone is thinking or planning to start counselling for an adolescents by reading this book only , then it would be vague one. Professional counsellors who are ware of the facts and reactions can have a value additions by reading this book only. Reason is simple that books has discussed some facts and cases and if a layman wants to apply it to a problamatic child or adolescents it would be problem for the child to match the parity of the thing because something else might be running on his/her mind which that layman counsellor is unaware of.

4) Yes, this is true that their loves and respects are genuine in nature and based on this things, for assisting adolescents one thing always there should be in the mind that dont try to change their feelings on a particular matter, only one thing can be done is to follow their thinking styles, steps and ways which could be changed and if so trhen such changes will changed their thinking patterns accordingly.