Some ideas to consider for teachers, parents and other professionals working with young people who have experienced a loss.

There is no “correct” way to grieve

Some teens cry lots. Some cry infrequently. Some teens feel angry. Some don’t. Some teens feel guilty, others don’t. Some teenagers want life to be “back to normal” ASAP, some don’t want life to go on as usual. All of these coping mechanisms are usually okay.
 
Sometimes teenagers don’t want to talk

This doesn’t necessarily mean a teenager “is not coping”. Teenagers are less prone to analysis and self-introspection and often don’t want to have lots of conversations about how they are feeling, thinking and acting.   This is generally okay.

I ran a seminar for parents of anxious kids last week and at the end one parent asked me this question:

"My daughter is having problems with the girls in her class.  I know we should talk about it - but every time I bring it up, she shuts it down.  She just doesn't want to talk with me about it.  What should I do?

Does this sound familiar?  Are you working on helping your own children talk about things they don't really want to talk about? 

If so, welcome to my world! :) :)

As a child psychologist, I know full well that helping children communicate about tricky topics is very difficult at times.   It's something I work on with kids constantly.  Here's a few things to know and a few things to try.

3 things to know about kids "not talking" 

1. It's quite normal for some children to not be interested in discussing difficult topics. 

In the last semester of the year, I speak to thousands of Year 11 and 12 students in Australia about effective revision technique. Here is some of the material I present.

Students should start revising for five minutes every day from now on. This might happen at the start of homework or study time, during the ‘ads’ on TV or while waiting at the bus stop. Spending five minutes per day going over something learnt last week will save hours of revision time overall because when tests and exams arrive most of the information will already be familiar. I also suggest to students the following key points:

When you revise, you need to WAKE YOUR BRAIN UP. No more limply reading over notes so that you can’t remember what you read at the end of the page. Revision should take a fair bit of mental effort. If you are zoning out while you revise, it’s not working. Here are some ways to revise effectively:

any teens are not especially communicative.  However some teenagers are particularly unlikely to share information or respond questions about their day or their interests.  Some tips for talking to these teens are below.

1. Talk while doing something else at the same time

For example, try conversations in the car, while taking the dog for a walk, while doing the ironing and so on.  If possible create spots in your house that a teenager can sit and eat or look at magazines etc while you are also doing something (cleaning up etc).

Many teenagers I work with feel hurt or sad about being excluded from friendship groups.  Usually one or more of their “friends” has done or said something to leave them feeling left out or not accepted.  This could be someone avoiding eye contact, ignoring them in conversation, not asking them to an event/gathering or not responding to invitations/communication.  This kind of exclusion can be mild (e.g. over the short term by one person only) or severe (long term and done by many).   

There are some tricky issues about exclusion.  First, many teens find it hard to admit it that it has happened.