What Our Teens Really Need

I recently had to fill in a questionnaire to join a new coaching programme that Sam and I have signed up to to support us and the Young Fire Academy.

One thing I was asked was: “what question goes round and round in your head, keeping you awake at night and taking up an extraordinary amount of your attention?”  (or words to that effect).

I loved this question.

It made me feel like I was in the right place.

No one’s ever asked me that actually.

It made me feel like I was entering a community that would understand the level of passion, obsession really, that I bring to my coaching work and business.

It often seems to me that ALL I think about, day and night, are (multiple) variations on this simple question:

For actionable steps on how to implement the ‘What Teens Really Need’ principles in your parenting, you can download our free guide here.

I don’t know how or why I became blessed / burdened by this seemingly unending obsession.

It’s been 25 years now…

I suppose one reason is that I had SO many questions growing up.

So much didn’t add up to me in my way of perceiving the world.

I worried about, and was fascinated by, lots of the big questions around these concepts:

Fundamentally I rejected many of the adults around me as potential guides and mentors.

I didn’t really trust them. 

I didn’t see eye to eye with most of my teachers and parents’ contemporaries.

I didn’t really see eye to eye with my own contemporaries actually.

Somehow I just couldn’t go along with things the way they were.

I was, on paper and in practice, a successful student – academics, sports, music, friends.

And I was a very privileged child too – born into a great and loving family, given a very expensive and exclusive education, safe and advantaged in so many ways.

But somehow, by the time I emerged from University I was so much more lost than found, more confused than clear, more messed up than sorted.

I didn’t really know it at the time but my journey in life since school turned out to be a quest to find true life meaning and purpose.

 I was apparently given so much but so much was missing for me.

– What was that exactly?

– What could have been better?

– What could my parents have done differently?

– How could my schooling have been optimised?

– What was it exactly that I needed, that I didn’t get or didn’t understand until now?

Well, I’ve got a lot to say on these topics.

I’ve dedicated my entire adult life to refining what I can provide for teenagers, as a tutor, mentor and coach, to set them up for a life of meaning and purpose, a lifetime of satisfaction and fulfilment, a life of service and benefit to all, themselves included.

And I’ve found a lot of answers.

So much that I share and pass on, when appropriate, to the teenagers (and parents) that I am working with each day.

For actionable steps on how to implement the ‘What Teens Really Need’ principles in your parenting, you can download our free guide here.

So here, in a crude list is some imperfect measure of some of what I discovered I needed and subsequently want to pass on to those who are open and willing in this young, bright and brilliant Gen Z.

It’s also heavily influenced by what they are telling me and showing me what they want and need.

Here’s what’s worked so far also for the teens I’ve coached, the parents I’ve coached and for my own tween children and family:

1. Teens need to be trusted (to be fundamentally believed in, not suspected)
2. Teens ultimately crave responsibility (and we have a lot to learn about how to effectively pass this on)
3. Teens need time and space away from us and other adults (as much as is good for them)
4. Teens need us to take good, calculated risks (to get over our ‘what ifs..?’ and empower real, lived safety in the world through experience, not molly-coddling)
5. Teens need to find adults and leadership that they can trust and relate to
6. Teens need to be seen and heard, to be validated in their opinions, supported to self-lead and agreed with, when it is safe, beneficial and possible to back them
7. Teens also need trusted adults to know how and when to call them out and guide them with strong, clear boundaries and powerful, wrathful speech
8. Teens need us to role model with our actions, not lecture them with our words
9. Teens need us to have fun with them and spend time with them regularly in order for us to then have any say or ‘skin in the game’ with the harder stuff.
10. Teens need us to support them in what they want to do, to say ‘yes’ when we can (as well as ‘no’ when we need to)
11. Teens need to feel safe and loved at home and at school in their adult and sibling / peer relationships otherwise parenting and education outcomes will be severely compromised
12. Teens need to be told sometimes, for us to take the time to educate them in what’s expected of them in social, household or formal situations, and given the opportunity to question tradition, culture and institutions.
13. Teens need us, as adults, parents and teachers, to be educated in the basics of leading a happy and healthy human life ourselves, to be able to role model sleep routines, healthy diet, exercising, relationship with technology and friendships.
14. Teens need a formal education in how the mind works, a basic understanding of our thoughts and emotions and how to navigate these in a way that keeps everyone safe and creates benefit, not harm, for them and for all others around them.
15. Teens need to learn how to relax in all circumstances, to feel basically secure in the world and to deal with social anxiety, paranoias and other uncomfortable feelings and experiences (when there is no immediate threat to them or others)
16. Teens need to learn compassion, for their parents, for themselves and for all other people.  Gossip, blame, criticism and judgement of others is also self-harm.
17. Teens need to learn that generosity is the only way to achieve abundance.  That cooperation and the championing of others, as well as ourselves, liberates and exalts all, is a far superior lifestyle than greed, competition and self-focus.
18. Teens need to have mentors they trust and like who can help them avoid typical teenage pitfalls and dead ends, ‘fake wins’ like doing the ‘bare minimum’ at school, excessive social media, gaming or screen usage and to find what will actually serve them in life.
19. Teens need to learn that self-talk and speech in general is critical to life success and well-being.  How we speak about ourselves and others creates our reality and can severely limit our enjoyment and potential in all fields of human experience.
20. Teens need to know how to resolve conflict, how to not act out on their negative emotions but rather to use these as fuel for beneficial action and to create change.
21. Teens need to know the point of what they are doing in order for them to gain any momentum or empower intrinsic motivation in it and we need to explore these profound questions with them, boldly and openly to help them find meaning and purpose.
22. Teens need to continue to enjoy social activities, spending time regularly with friends (and family), offline as well as online, not to lose touch with face-to-face interactivity in favour of isolated gaming or social media messaging in their bedrooms.
23. Teens need to learn authentic gratitude, to learn to feel it for themselves and to be taught how to recognise the generosity and kindness of others and know how to express their thanks for this without being shamed or forced into it (same with apology/remorse).
24. Teens need to find what they genuinely like to do and be empowered and enabled by those around them to do more of it with a view to helping them grow closer and closer to finding meaningful lifework, employment and activity in adult life.
25. Teens need to learn how to identify, set and achieve desired goals week-to-week, to see the ‘cumulative interest’ in consistently showing up to an activity, group or passion and to become active in their own self-development.
26. Teens need to understand that we are all really here, on this planet, to do stuff, to work, to find purposeful activity; to show up fully, for ourselves and for others, in some form of service and benefit to ourselves and to others; to find a way out of compulsive inaction, avoidance of responsibility or indulgence. 

For actionable steps on how to implement the ‘What Teens Really Need’ principles in your parenting, you can download our free guide here.

Of course, I expect that many of us that read this whole list will have had the same realisation.  Each of these sentences begins with, ‘Teens need…’ but really it should say ‘Humans need…’ or ‘We all need…’

Some of us may have learned much of this and therefore be able to role model to our teens how to live.  

For most of us though there is plenty of our own work to be done.  

I know there was for me and, for whatever reason, I came out of my Private School education hell-bent on filling in as many of these gaps as I could.  I ended up dedicating the entirety of the first ‘half’ of my life, at least 20 years of adult and professional life, to exploring, experimenting and resolving these questions and struggles for myself so that now I can help others.  

My coach taught me that the coach always has to ‘go first’ before we can effectively pass on any of our realisations to others.  We have to walk the talk first.

My teacher taught me that all the challenges and pain that we resolve, clarify and empower, become the gifts that we can share with others facing the same issues we have overcome. 

We cannot teach what we haven’t yet mastered ourselves.

I am excited for all I have learned and at the same time, like Socrates, know how inexhaustible this journey is.  The more I know the more I know I don’t know (the more I know there is to learn…).

With teenagers and with anyone I never present myself as having all the answers.  I often have suggestions, insights and solutions that have worked for me but my role as a coach is more about asking the right questions and letting the student find their own solutions.

This is how I was taught and empowered, by the best teachers and coaches out there.

By finding our own way, having our own realisations, our own breakthroughs of understanding in the right time, place and circumstance, we really can change and be effectively guided by another.

It rarely, if ever, works to be just flatly given a solution by someone else, who is enthusiastically and well-meaningly just showering us with all of their own realisations, their truth.

We all need and want to learn and familiarise ourselves with our own truth, not someone else’s (even if they turn out in the end to be similar or the same).

Love to know what resonates with you (or doesn’t)?

Always appreciate hearing encouragement or questioning of how we are helping teenagers and parents in these dynamic, challenging and exciting times.

Wishing you and your families all the very best as always,

Henry

Want a free summary with actionable steps?

If you’re looking for a reference guide with practical tips on how to implement these principles in your parenting, I’ve created a pdf guide called ‘What Teens Really Need to Find True Life Meaning and Purpose In and Out of School’

To receive your free copy, simply click here for access!