A.J. (age 8), Meadow (age 16), and Tony (age 28) are all children of the Soprano family. Each of them is about to experience a loss as the result of the death of their mother, Sally. Describe the similarities and differences that you would expect concerning the reactions of these individuals to their loss

What will be an ideal response?

Each of the children is developmentally capable of cognitively understanding death and what happened to their mother. Emotionally, children who are A.J.'s age often flip between grief and normal activity. A.J. may experience problems at school, anger, and physical ailments as a result of going through the death of his mother. Problems are more likely to occur if A.J. does not receive adequate care and attention following the death. Meadow may have trouble making sense of the death of her mother if it is her first experience of death. The effects of bereavement in adolescence can be quite severe, especially when the death was unexpected, and can be expressed in many ways, such as chronic illness, enduring guilt, low self-esteem, poorer performance in school and on the job, substance abuse, problems in interpersonal relationships, and suicidal thinking. Adolescents are typically unwilling to talk about their grief and the death event. As a young adult, Tony is likely to experience intense feelings about the death of his mother. He is likely to feel that his mother was cheated out of her future.