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Key points
- Parents need to honor adolescent fears.
- Fear is an emotional response to perceived danger.
- Growing up takes braving what is risky, untried, and unknown.
- "Saying "yes" and saying "no" to daring peers can both feel scary to do.
Except when it's deployed for entertainment and excitement, fear is generally an unpopular emotion. Who wants to feel truly afraid?
People who contend with ongoing anxiety can testify how stressful daily dread can be. As for adolescents, fearfulness is often not a socially admired state. “What’s the matter—are you scared?”
Sometimes fear can be considered a weakness or failing. Feeling this way, young people can rashly act to prove they are not afraid, or instead hide their fear and treat it as a cause for shame.
Fear is Useful
In general, the best parental advice is not: “Don’t be afraid.” Better is to say: “Honor your fear for what it may have to tell. For safety’s sake, use it to monitor risks and to heighten self and social awareness. Fear alerts us to possible danger, so treat it as an emotional warning response. Treat fear as sensitive. Ask yourself: ‘Is this just me feeling insecure, or is there really something to beware?’”
Fear puts one on scared alert; one can feel ignorant, anxious, insecure, distrustful, vulnerable, exposed, surprised, shocked, threatened, endangered, or otherwise unsafe. Fear is not a fault, a weakness, or failing. It is a valuable sensitivity, a cautionary response, and a protection.
Trying Takes Daring
Come adolescence, that age of increased adventure, when growing insecurity is more common, among anxious peers expressing fear can be given a bad name: “You’re scared to do that?”
Honoring fear in adolescence can often be an act of courage, going against the flow—not following along with what companions are urging you to do. Also is the other side of effort: giving what’s unfamiliar, what’s difficult, what takes daring: “I’m going to try!”
One reason why peer groups are so powerful is that young members can feel pressed to join in more dangerous activities than they personally want. The “collective courage” of companions can motivate scary experimentation and adventure that an individual would never dare alone. So, now one fear (“This is too dangerous to do!”) may yield to another (“They’ll think less of me if I refuse!”)
In a youthful world rife with many anxieties, sometimes it feels like one must pick one’s poison. You feel pressed to go along with what you don’t really want to do because refusing feels too socially costly. Saying “no” and saying “yes” can both require courage.
Fear and Survival
Parents can suggest many ways that fear has life survival value:
- Fear senses possible threats and dangers;
- Fear detects harmful risks to consider;
- Fear helps to proceed with caution;
- Fear inspires emergency coping;
- Fear thinks ahead;
- Fear seeks protection and prevention;
- Fear motivates courage and inspires effort;
- Fear creates vigilance and provides protection;
- Fear is an essential source of self and situational awareness.
It’s important that young people honor fear so they don’t think something is “wrong” with them when feeling insecure or afraid. Such growing anxieties are honorably come by, as the coming-of-age passage takes courage at times, empowering them to dare the untried and to refuse risks that are too dangerous to take.
Saying "yes” and saying "no" to daring can both feel scary to do. With its growing uncertainties and challenges, adolescence is usually a more frightening age.
Managing Fear
Fear is tricky to manage; while it can be a good informant, fear can also be a bad adviser.
- To the good, the power of fear can focus attention on danger: “I need to watch out because the situation has become more risky now.”
- To the bad, the power of fear can let alarm overrule better judgment: “I panicked, and in the moment I made a frightened choice.”
Because fear imagines the likelihood of injury, it is a prediction that is not always correct. So the anxious freshman confesses: “Most of what I feared about high school never came true.” However, it can usually be discomforting. “It’s no fun feeling frightened all the time.”
Since the alarming energy of fear can be anxiety, there can be more denial. “I’ll just focus on the fun,” “I won’t think about danger!” “Nothing bad will happen to me!” Now parents need to weigh in: “If it feels scary to do, listen to what your fears are warning, keep a clear head, and if deciding to proceed, do so mindfully and soberly, with care. Sometimes right and sometimes wrong, fear is always weighing risks and watching out for you.”
Predictive Responsibility
A hard part of parenting a teenager is being willing to use fear as an advisor by practicing predictive responsibility—thinking ahead. This requires taking time to consider dangerous possibilities and precautions before allowing some new freedom, and teaching their teenager to do the same.
Rather than dismiss fear as needless worry or foolish imagining, rather than criticize fear as timid or cowardly, treat it as possibly sensitive and wise. “Whenever you feel scared, stop and think and ask yourself: ‘Is there some risk or danger that I need to stop and consider?’”
Common Adolescent Fears
For the young person, adolescence can be a scary experience in many painful ways. So, consider many common teenage fears.
- Fear of Rejection: “I’ll be turned down.”
- Fear of Failure: “I won’t succeed.”
- Fear of Disapproval: "I will be criticized."
- Fear of Embarrassment: “I’ll look foolish.”
- Fear of Injury: “I’ll get hurt.”
- Fear of Exposure: “I’ll show inability.”
- Fear of Teasing: “I’ll be put down.”
- Fear of Helplessness: “I won’t be able to cope.”
- Fear of Inadequacy: “I won’t measure up.”
- Fear of Ignorance: “I won’t know how.”
- Fear of Isolation: “I won’t belong.”
- Fear of Exclusion: "I won't be included."
- Fear of Fear: "I won't feel safe."
Add these up, and adolescence can sometimes be a pretty scary passage. So, with these common fears in mind, parents need to be sure they don’t criticize or make light of such adolescent insecurities. Rather, they need to appreciate how for most adolescents, each day requires braving their way through an increasingly risky world where growing and knowing and not knowing and acting older is demanded.
As for parents, on their side, they often feel more ignorant, uninformed, uncertain, anxious, and perplexed. Thus they have their own litany of fears for the young person in their care. They have fears about worldly dangers, and fears that they won't always make a wise decision, thereby exposing their daughter or son to harm.
What is the takeaway? At times adolescence causes both teenagers and parents to feel more afraid, so it is also a time for each to act more brave.
