Setting Teens Up for Success

Source: DALL-E / OpenAI

As another school year gets underway, parents are hearing a cacophony of sentiments from their teens. A high schooler moaning when it’s time to get up for what is actually a ridiculously early time for a high school class: “It’s too early! I need to sleep longer.” A college freshman sobbing into the phone: “I can’t do this. I feel so lost and I am never going to meet people.” A seventh grader stomping in the house, slamming the door and in tears of confusion proclaiming: “All my friends stopped talking to me!” Another year sure to bring new and increasing expectations for teens adapting to inevitable yet daunting developmental growth.

Parents are understandably emotional (worried, anxious, scared, upset, or helpless) in the face of their teens’ distress. It can feel so hard to tolerate seeing our kids upset and struggling. It is even harder to strike the right balance between offering validation and empowering them to manage hard things and cope through their own solutions. Parents are wired to instinctively protect their young and therefore feel urges to jump in and make things better. After all, parents have the value of life experience and broad perspectives and can be excellent problem solvers. Alternatively, it can be tempting to minimize or brush off teens’ concerns or upsets with, “You know this will pass. It is going to be fine.” If we are being honest with ourselves, there is also a self-serving motivation to relieve our own very real distress as we bear witness to teens’ clumsy, ineffective, or failing attempts to achieve, be it academic, social, or self-regulation and reliance.

The truth is, teens need to struggle, hurt, feel scared, try, fail, experience natural consequences, learn, move forward, persist, and do better at each next challenge. It is the nature and necessity of adolescence in order to mature toward independence. If we don’t allow teens to see they can err, cope with the after-effects, and survive, how will it occur to them that they can rely on themselves? The best thing we as parents and helping adults can do to nurture our teens is to respect their ability to handle and manage their own experiences, especially when they are negative. Allowing them to own their life experiences makes it more likely we can influence behaviors, they will be open to connection, and be receptive to our valuable guidance. It also empowers them to feel responsible for their own behavior and demonstrate accountability.

When caretakers invest in teens’ success they

1. Acknowledge their challenge by naming it and validating the emotions teens are experiencing (even when the teens may bear responsibility in the situation). Start by describing as literally as possible what you are hearing and observing.
2. Listen to their description of the situation. If they are having trouble coherently expressing themselves, specifically ask, “Can you describe what happened?”
3. Ask what they need from you or how you can be helpful. Ask if you may ask some additional questions. If they say no or that they don’t want to talk about it, let them know you are available if they change their mind, then leave it. If they allow further discussion, ask if they have thought about how they might handle the situation. If they have no ideas or you have additional ones, ask if you may offer some thoughts or ideas for them to consider.
4. Resist urges to fix, take over, blame, minimize, or take personally the real and relevant emotions they are feeling about the situation (which they may inadvertently take out on you). Warning: This is hard. Sometimes we have to resist our urges over and over and over.
5. Allow and tolerate hard-to-tolerate emotions, theirs and your own. It can help to name how you are feeling, take time to walk away from the situation and think it through, or take a break. When hard things happen that cannot be changed or reversed, accepting the situation as it is and resolving to move forward can be a powerful distress tolerance skill. Also allowing teens ownership builds responsibility. If parents take over, the responsibility lies with them rather than where parents really want it to be, on that teen.
6. Follow up by checking in to see how teens are managing and feeling and how they decided to handle the situation. Once the situation has resolved (all situations resolve by virtue of passing time), reflect on their strength in managing something hard (even if the result is undesired) and focus on the specific coping skills or problem-solving they were able to practice so they know they have it in them when the next challenge arises.

Because there is always a next challenge.

Allowing teens to achieve success by relinquishing efforts to control has great benefit for all involved. Quick fixes may relieve our discomfort in the moment, though contribute to mounting anxiety over time and unintended dependence. The inadvertent message we are sending when parents over-manage is that they do not trust teens to be successful. When parents take over, how are teens supposed to feel accountable? Let’s try to create new relational patterns that focus on connecting rather than controlling. If teens are to be set up for success, they must have the opportunities to fully experience their trials and errors so they can feel prepared for whatever life offers next.