By Brooks Kaskela, TBRI® Program Director for The Adoption Exchange

What comes to mind for you when I say the word “adolescence”? Does it cause an involuntary shudder? Does it conjure a memory of a silly escapade? Does it take you back a decade, or more, to a particular story or feeling? We’ve all been there, come through that stage of life, and are left with our own impressions, memories, and lessons. Adolescence is a formative stage of development for all of us in many ways. Early childhood is an ego-centric phase, centered around understanding who you are and the accumulation of facts about the world around you. The next phase, adolescence, is related to understanding who you are in relation to the world and who you are as an individual with unique characteristics within that world.

Dr. Daniel Siegel describes adolescence as having “ESSENCE”. In this acronym, he is referring to the Emotional Spark, Social Engagement, Novelty seeking, and Creative Exploration of this stage. He goes so far as to say that if one can manage to keep some aspects of these attributes alive beyond adolescence, then one is truly living one’s best life. We need this difficult stage to evolve, not just as a person, but as a society as a whole. Without the innovation and energy of adolescence, circumstances and solutions can become stagnant.

I don’t know about you, but I find this positive reframe of adolescence refreshing. I find it refreshing for my own context and that of the teenager at hand. In general, it seems that teenagers get a bad reputation. It is easy to say, “She is a punk,” or “He doesn’t care,” or “It doesn’t matter what I say to him, he just won’t listen.” They are listening. They do care. They are wired to do this. So were you. My challenge to you is to adjust your expectations. I challenge you to be on their side. As adults, we forget how many things we have learned along the way. When I hear my middle schooler answer his new phone for the first several times and his responses are: “Yes,” “Maybe,” and then he hangs up with no “Goodbye,” I am reminded that the social skills needed for a phone call are learned skills. So many things are. We learn to make positive choices. We learn to consider ramifications of actions. We learn to calm ourselves down. We have to grow the capacity for intuition. Oh yeah, and we do all of these during adolescence while we are learning about risks, sex, driving, calculus, and what it takes to be an adult. So, let’s give them a break.

I challenge you to be an advocate for our teens. I challenge you to find the beauty in the argument. Novel thinking is a good thing, right? I challenge you to find one concrete thing you can do or say to remind that teenager of their ESSENCE and beauty every day. If you don’t believe in them, they won’t either.

References:
Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, Brainstorm, Penguin 2013