Helping Children and Adolescents Think About Death,Dying and Bereavement by Carter,M. (2016)

Reviewed by: Claudia Lingertat-Putnam, The College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY, USA

Parents and professionals searching for ways to support bereaved children and adolescents will find an invaluable resource in this comprehensive book by Marian Carter. Drawing on her extensive work training teachers, social workers, and clergy in bereavement care, Carter weaves current thinking about best practices with practical advice to help adults understand and support bereaved youth. Using examples from her professional and volunteer experiences as a teacher and hospice chaplain, she examines issues related to death and dying from a child-centered perspective.

Carter weaves the developmental experiences of bereaved youth together with interesting insights from varying social, psychological, historical, and cultural perspectives, including perspectives from the major world faiths. She offers multiple examples from her own work to assist adults in understanding developmental differences in working with children and adolescents around issues of death and dying. Chapters are replete with case studies, helpful suggestions, and practical interventions; each chapter ends with reflective questions and activities designed to connect the material directly to the reader’s experiences in supporting grieving children and adolescents.

Included in the book are foundational chapters covering death, grief, and bereavement that address developmental stages and models of grieving. Carter encourages adults to listen to children and offers practical advice to adults on how to talk to children about death and dying. She skillfully addresses the important subject of the attendance and participation of children and adolescents at funerals, devoting an entire chapter to this subject. Woven into each chapter is the believer’s experience through the major world faiths. She covers Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. At the end of each chapter are activities to help readers process what they have read. These activities offer helpful suggestions to readers wishing to reflect further on the material. There are extensive resources in the Appendices and Further Reading as well.

The chapter on Challenging Factors Influencing Grief comprehensively covers children and adolescents’ responses to a variety of losses including terrorism, suicide, and murder. Carter writes in depth about the terminal illness of a child or a parent and addresses in detail how and what to tell children and adolescents about death and dying in an age-appropriate fashion. She addresses the relevant cultural, social, and historical influences of various types of loss such as the moral and ethical issues surrounding suicide and infant death. For example, she engages the reader in a fascinating discussion about the care of terminally ill babies and the controversy around infant and child euthanasia, including the policies some European countries have adopted to assist physicians in these situations.

The section on helping schools develop policies to assist children coping with death and dying is helpful for those working in and with schools. Carter covers topics that school professionals may encounter such as the terminal illness of a student, suicide of a student or a known adult, death of a parent, and responding to traumatic events in the media. She offers practical advice for teachers about how to care for students returning to school after a loss such as creating strategies if a student experiences distress during the school day and preparing other students in the class to be supportive. She also advocates for schools to create a policy for the exploration of loss in the school curriculum and offers specific suggestions in the chapter and the helpful appendices.

Readers should note that Carter’s experience is grounded in the United Kingdom, and therefore, many of the statistics and examples she uses are relevant to that part of the world. There are also colloquialisms unique to the United Kingdom sprinkled throughout the text. She does include research from many different perspectives and also includes perspectives that are North American at times. Carter includes a list of 28 websites for further reference and resources. Although many of these are U.K.-linked, the sites will be useful across countries and cultures. Also, the text is limited to losses connected to death and dying; missing from the book in general is discussion about and reference to the effects of divorce as a significant loss.

Overall, caregivers and professionals searching for a well-written introduction to responding to children and adolescents coping with death and dying will find this book beneficial. The perspectives from the major world faiths woven throughout the book are particularly valuable. Her practical suggestions and relatable examples add to the depth and richness of this book. Parents and professionals searching for ways to support bereaved children and adolescents in navigating a myriad of losses will find in this book useful insights and direction forward.