3 Ways to Foster Well-Being in Teens

Adolescents aren’t just big kids. Their hormone-driven behaviors and attitudes are evolution’s way of showing us that they are seeking independence and autonomy. Yes, they’re big kids. But they’re not just big kids.

Neither are they adults. Their brains won’t be fully developed until their mid-20s, and their desire for independence doesn’t usually also bring with it an understanding of responsibility. Yes, 18 is the legal age in the U.S., but we all know that age is more about capability than ability.

Adolescents are in the process of becoming adults. In fact, prior to modern schooling, adolescence didn’t exist as a separate thing: adolescence was literally the beginning of adulthood.

Adolescents’ biological readiness for parenthood (i.e., sexual development) helps propel their social and emotional drive for independence and autonomy, and their risk-taking was likely crucial in our ancestors’ exploration of new lands and lifestyles. However, just because they’re in a state of social, emotional, and biological becoming, doesn’t mean that they’re in any way deficient.

I love the perspective that Joseph and Claudia Allen take in their book, Escaping the Endless Adolescence: “seeing adolescent brains as different should not automatically mean seeing them as less capable.”

Students often progress through adolescence in our classrooms and schools without really growing much closer to the potential of adulthood (at least not with much help from schools themselves). We graduate high schoolers with a pat on the back that somehow the right of passage of high school graduation marks a coming of age in their becoming. I’ve sat through nearly 15 years of high school graduations filled with well-meaning platitudes and aspirational messages to which the actual measures of high school rarely apply.

I think there’s an inherent opportunity in our schools to better foster, encourage, teach, and model the behaviors, attitudes, and well being of a fully realized adult.

Here are three ways to foster adult well-being in our students:

1. Trust that our teens are innately well, wise, and capable.

I remember learning as a new parent that talking to a child in baby-talk can limit their growth - talk to them with big words and with big trust that they can and will understand. Similarly, teens are capable of adult conversations: talk to them like they can handle it, and they will be able to handle it. Trust that teens have the capacity to understand and care about those things with which we approach them with meaning, care, and honesty. Trust is an invitation to grow and develop. Teens are craving it.

2. Allow teens to answer their own questions about life, choices, and pursuits.

Perhaps we adults have that 30,000-foot view and can anticipate what will happen next. So what. We certainly don’t know what will happen next for the specific teen in front of us. Give them space and encouragement to develop their own answers and to allow their own insights to arise. The truths that stick for us are the ones that we’ve seen for ourselves. Teens don’t need us to impart our wisdom to them; they do, however, need us to guide them to hearing and trusting their own innate wisdom.

3. Model the behavior and attitudes that we want to see from teens.

From my post The Capacity to Respond Without Constraint: there’s an immense opportunity to positively impact the lives of our students by modeling the being of an adult. By demonstrating thoughtfulness, creativity, compassion, enjoyment, engagement, and satisfaction. By demonstrating honesty, courage, understanding, respect, and collaboration. By demonstrating ease, love, and passion.

Time and again I am reminded how much teens want to be heard and trusted. Most of them will rise to meet our expectations, so let’s keep our expectations high and trust our teens to rise to meet them.

We don’t want our students to make the same dumb, dangerous, selfish, and unwise choices that we, our friends, and kids we grew up with made. We’ve now got our own kids’ safety in mind, and for many of us, society seems to be sitting precariously on a dangerous precipice. But our fears and insecurities are partly what’s holding them back. Our fears and insecurities are certainly holding us back.

Many adolescents are craving our trust and partnership. By fostering adult well-being in our adolescents, we invite them to join us in fulfilling the possibilities and potential of being an adult.

Thanks for reading ❤️.

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We've Had Agency All Along

We were five minutes into our high school senior-level engineering design course when Amin (a pseudonym) walked into class late. A presentation had run long in his previous class, and he apologized when he came in.

I asked him, “What does the presentation running long have to do with your being late to this class?”

He was taken aback. “Um, the presentation ran long and I couldn’t leave to make this class on time.” He obviously felt called out and that he was getting into some kind of trouble. This particular school where I was working had demerits and detention to induce the right behaviors in students, though I maybe gave out two or three actual demerits in my seven years there (I gave them all in my first year).

I told him: “Amin, I don’t actually care that you’re late to class. I 100% trust you. But I do think there’s another level of honesty and awareness that you can get to with yourself and with me.”

So I asked my question again: “What does the presentation running long have to do with your being late to this class?”

He thought about it and then gave more reasons, each following by more questions from me:

• “The teacher didn’t dismiss us until the presentation was over.” And couldn’t you have asked to leave when class ended?

• “It would have been rude to leave the presentation early.” So?

• “I didn’t want my peers and teacher to think I was rude.” Could you have cleaned up any sense of rudeness with them?

• “Well, I guess. And I was actually interested in the presentation and wanted to stay.” What else?

The whole conversation took about 15 minutes of class. Initially, most of the class thought I was just being hard on Amin and that we were wasting class time. By the end of the conversation, though, I could tell that the students seemed to be starting to get something.

Amin wasn’t really getting it, though, so I asked other students to participate. What were they getting out of this conversation?

“Amin, you came in and basically blamed your last class for being late. Mick is trying to get you to just own up to the fact that you could have been on time, but it was your own actions that caused you to be late.”

Amin was an honest, thoughtful, kind, trustworthy, and hardworking student. I mean, he basically radiated integrity, maturity, and responsibility, and he had since freshman year. He was my advisee for two years, I taught him freshmen math, then I taught him for two years in this Engineering Design course. So when I told other teachers this story about him at lunch, they were shocked - you had that conversation with Amin??? You can't find a more honorable kid at the school!

And I told them: that’s exactly why I had the conversation with him. His baseline integrity was already solid, so we could go deeper. Why not reinforce that solid foundation. After all, a consistent appearance of integrity is not the same as actual integrity.

What I intended for Amin in that conversation was that he would get in touch with his real reasons for sticking around while the presentation ended. Yes, he could 100% still decide to stay in the presentation and be late to his next class. But at least then he would be clear that he had agency all along.

Our excuses and reasons are an easy way for us to avoid responsibility.

In my post last week on the question that always delivers insight, I shared about taking responsibility in a class of students. Only once after taking responsibility like that did a kid come up to me to challenge me on it: “You shouldn’t apologize. It makes you look weak.”

So I told him the truth: “Actually, taking responsibility is the most powerful thing I’ve ever done.”

Here’s what I want all my students to get by the end of high school: We tend to shy away from the truth because we think it will dictate our actions, when in fact integrity and responsibility free us to act from agency instead of leaving us at the effect of our reasons and excuses.

Responsibility: the capacity to respond.

Thanks for reading ❤️.

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The Magic Used Me

I began composing my last post, The Question that Always Delivers, on Friday of last week. I put myself as best I could into my mindset from nearly 15 years earlier, from before and after asking myself that profoundly insightful question: “What am I avoiding being responsible for?” In asking that question, even in memory, the question started to work on me again…

I’ve been struggling in my relationship with a colleague over the last couple years in ways that I’ve never struggled with a colleague before. It’s really felt like I’ve been doing the right thing, putting in my best effort, and making the best of the situation. Yet I’ve continued to feel alone, untrusted, and harassed in this relationship.

Initially I was in a state of self-doubt about it: what am I doing wrong here? But over time, after conversations with this person that didn’t seem to make a difference, and from talking with people I trust, the more clear it had become to me that again, the problem is over there with them. I still mostly did my best to foster a positive relationship, but I’ve certainly felt that something is still missing. Missing, that is, until last Friday.

Closing off authentic communication really made sense. When my shields went up to protect me from being vulnerable, my mouth closed and I separated myself. I wasn't talking directly with them about my experience. I wasn't expressing myself clearly, completely, or often at all.

Yes, my reasons were good, and my guardedness was 100% justified.

Yet the parallel was embarrassingly obvious: just as I had so naturally, easily, and justifiably blamed those 14-year-olds for my experience as a teacher, I was sure that I had done everything I could with this colleague and that they were so obviously at fault here. Just like with my freshmen, in this case I also had the opinions and perspectives of other people to support me.

And yet on Friday, the magic started working on me in this relationship. Surprisingly, the words just fell out of my mouth and it felt really good to say them: “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault. This problem isn’t over there on you. It’s just taken me a while to find my grounding, find my voice, and find the willingness to start speaking honestly in every single conversation with you. And now that I’m doing that, here’s what my experience has been like.”

I didn’t even plan to go there in my conversation with my colleague on Friday. All I had done in preparation for the conversation was listed out on a sticky note in front of me a few words that I intended to have guide me in the conversation:

I didn't have to use the power of the question that always delivers in this situation. Instead, it used me. And it felt good to be used by something so insightful, freeing, and grounding.

It starts with a willingness to be responsible.

Thanks for reading ❤️.

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Thanks for joining me on this exploration/reflection! If you'd like to receive blog updates via email twice weekly, be sure to subscribe here.