Teenage Mentality
I have been working with teenagers since I was one myself. I have noticed some patterns of behavior in my travels. I don't know if the experts or books would back up my musings but none the less, I will share them with anyone who wants to read this post!
Everyone knows that the biggest challenge of adolescence is establishing independence. The idea of depending on adults for guidance seems childlike and is therefore deplorable (which is why junior high teachers should be paid $1,000,000 a year in my opinion!).
This desire to break away from dependence on adults is exciting and terrifying at the same time resulting in crazy behaviour. Youth can behave both childish, impulsive, controlling and WAY too mature for their age...all in the same hour! You can imagine how crazy this seems to the adults who have charge of these little schisms, not to mention how scary it is for the youth!
You take this volatile mindset and add hormones and what you get is a ticking time bomb! (This explains why "good kids" can do such stupid things.) So you add crazy and hormonal rage together and ask kids to start thinking about what they want to be when they grow up! That is an overwhelming task to think about and the conclusions to this query are often impulsive, unattainable, if they are forthcoming at all. This difficult decision about WHAT they want to be comes at a time when they are trying to figure out WHO they want to be.
The easiest substitute for self-discovery (which requires fore-thought, commitment, and energy) is to look at all the things they don't want to become. Its takes much less effort to state what you dislike compared with discovering what you do like. Have you ever noticed how negative adolscent children can be? Did you ever wonder why? Did you ever want to pummel them because of it? Me too.
Let's add together impulsivity, hormones, desire to break away from adult input with the ease of communicating what you don't want to do or be. Is it any wonder that people have always said teenagers are rebellious?
How is that so many people remember their teenage years fondling when they spent much of it entrenched in a sesspool of insecurity, confusion and hormonal rage?
I think the answer lies in freedom, hope and potential.
Freedom
While many teens seem to hate their parents and hope to be nothing like them when they grow up, they are still being fed, clothed, housed and entertained by said pathetic beasts of burden.
Freedom from the constraints of the reality in our demanding, stressful culture makes it easy to stand outside of an adult perspective and see all that is wrong with it. For example, "When I'm move out on my own I'm going to just order pizza every night and I won't complain about how much it cost like my dad!" This freedom which is mostly taken for granted due to lack of experience with the demands of reality allows for hope for better things.
Hope
Teens often look at all the things that are wrong with the world and explain how they will fix it as soon as they get the chance. How often have I heard youth say things like "just stop pollution, people don't need to make so much money" or "I'm just going to make people stop going to war, war is stupid". This simplistic view of the world is not fettered by the contraints of reality, which feeds such a hopeful view of the future. Many youth feel that the world is in a crappy state (clearly done by their parents, teachers and politicians) but they would do it all differently and we'd all be better off if we'd just listen to them! They have the potential to make a difference.
Potential
The truth is that teenagers (no matter what it looks like from the outside) are full of potential. I think many teachers, coaches, parents, youth leaders recognize this potential, which is why they are willing to pour time and energy into this often ungrateful and rebellious population. Teens really have lived so little of their lives, they still have incredible amounts of energy, their intellectual abilities are just on the upward swing towards full capability.
(Ever wonder why the entertainment industry invests so heavily into this population? Must be a pretty big pay-off!)
This is why I like working with youth.
They have energy that is not being tapped, looking for some place to invest themselves (provided it isn't boring). They live with freedom that allows them to do wild, silly and funny things. They have a great sense of humor. Because they are the center of their universe, they often have the confidence to lead their peers even if they are truly terrified that they are doing it wrong. They are full of hope for the future and they have potential to shape their world (and ours). Whether or not we adults like it, they are our future, and that future is not that far off.
I think that my investment is a good one. Even if I am often frustrated with impulsivity, rebellion and silliness that accompanies this group of people. Much like a teenager, I still have hope that I making a difference in the lives of adolescents who careen through each day full of hope, confusion, negativity, humor, hormones, freedom, despair and potential.
Everyone knows that the biggest challenge of adolescence is establishing independence. The idea of depending on adults for guidance seems childlike and is therefore deplorable (which is why junior high teachers should be paid $1,000,000 a year in my opinion!).
This desire to break away from dependence on adults is exciting and terrifying at the same time resulting in crazy behaviour. Youth can behave both childish, impulsive, controlling and WAY too mature for their age...all in the same hour! You can imagine how crazy this seems to the adults who have charge of these little schisms, not to mention how scary it is for the youth!
You take this volatile mindset and add hormones and what you get is a ticking time bomb! (This explains why "good kids" can do such stupid things.) So you add crazy and hormonal rage together and ask kids to start thinking about what they want to be when they grow up! That is an overwhelming task to think about and the conclusions to this query are often impulsive, unattainable, if they are forthcoming at all. This difficult decision about WHAT they want to be comes at a time when they are trying to figure out WHO they want to be.
The easiest substitute for self-discovery (which requires fore-thought, commitment, and energy) is to look at all the things they don't want to become. Its takes much less effort to state what you dislike compared with discovering what you do like. Have you ever noticed how negative adolscent children can be? Did you ever wonder why? Did you ever want to pummel them because of it? Me too.
Let's add together impulsivity, hormones, desire to break away from adult input with the ease of communicating what you don't want to do or be. Is it any wonder that people have always said teenagers are rebellious?
How is that so many people remember their teenage years fondling when they spent much of it entrenched in a sesspool of insecurity, confusion and hormonal rage?
I think the answer lies in freedom, hope and potential.
Freedom
While many teens seem to hate their parents and hope to be nothing like them when they grow up, they are still being fed, clothed, housed and entertained by said pathetic beasts of burden.
Freedom from the constraints of the reality in our demanding, stressful culture makes it easy to stand outside of an adult perspective and see all that is wrong with it. For example, "When I'm move out on my own I'm going to just order pizza every night and I won't complain about how much it cost like my dad!" This freedom which is mostly taken for granted due to lack of experience with the demands of reality allows for hope for better things.
Hope
Teens often look at all the things that are wrong with the world and explain how they will fix it as soon as they get the chance. How often have I heard youth say things like "just stop pollution, people don't need to make so much money" or "I'm just going to make people stop going to war, war is stupid". This simplistic view of the world is not fettered by the contraints of reality, which feeds such a hopeful view of the future. Many youth feel that the world is in a crappy state (clearly done by their parents, teachers and politicians) but they would do it all differently and we'd all be better off if we'd just listen to them! They have the potential to make a difference.
Potential
The truth is that teenagers (no matter what it looks like from the outside) are full of potential. I think many teachers, coaches, parents, youth leaders recognize this potential, which is why they are willing to pour time and energy into this often ungrateful and rebellious population. Teens really have lived so little of their lives, they still have incredible amounts of energy, their intellectual abilities are just on the upward swing towards full capability.
(Ever wonder why the entertainment industry invests so heavily into this population? Must be a pretty big pay-off!)
This is why I like working with youth.
They have energy that is not being tapped, looking for some place to invest themselves (provided it isn't boring). They live with freedom that allows them to do wild, silly and funny things. They have a great sense of humor. Because they are the center of their universe, they often have the confidence to lead their peers even if they are truly terrified that they are doing it wrong. They are full of hope for the future and they have potential to shape their world (and ours). Whether or not we adults like it, they are our future, and that future is not that far off.
I think that my investment is a good one. Even if I am often frustrated with impulsivity, rebellion and silliness that accompanies this group of people. Much like a teenager, I still have hope that I making a difference in the lives of adolescents who careen through each day full of hope, confusion, negativity, humor, hormones, freedom, despair and potential.
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