My Experience: Sarah Newton – Your Gen-Y Guide is here to demystify the world of the next generation. Through her coaching and consulting she helps parents, schools and companies connect, engage and motivate young people for lasting results. http://www.genyguide.com.
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I have recently being doing some work in a school, which has been very interesting. However, what has come to my attention most is that all the teachers seem to do is shout – in fact they don’t even appear to like the children at all. Now, I am sure that when they went into this job they were passionate, excited and really thought they could make a difference. What happened? Well, I am sure the system happened…. to them, the pressure of achieving certain measurements and the effect of the attitudes on those around them.

It is a bit like being a parent really. When our children are born we are full of time, admiration and love for them and like these teachers, the longer we spend with them, the more this seems to wear off until, when they are teenagers, we seem, just like the teachers, to have contempt for them. We have no time, no patience and sometimes it can seem that we don’t even like them very much.

So what is this all about?

Well, I think it is something to do with the expectations we have. Firstly, the expectations we have of what young people are capable of and secondly, the preconceptions we have of young people.

It appears that we are so willing to make allowances for younger children as they don’t know any better, but when they get to their teens, we appear to suddenly think that they know better, that they know how to behave and we expect so much of them it is like we forget they are still children and that we perhaps, in our wisdom, have failed to actually show them how to be responsible and respectable. We will spend ages teaching smaller children to eat properly, to walk, to crawl but somehow, just expect that older children know how to be responsible without very much training at all. Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it! It is the You Should Know How to Behave by Now syndrome! And for anyone who knows anything about the teenage brain and the teenage physiology, we knew that actually, in the teenage years they go backwards cognitively for a short while, not forwards!

Also, I think that there are messages we get about teenagers about how difficult, turbulent and troublesome the teenager years are, In fact, it is without a shadow of a doubt the things that parents fear the most.

I wonder what would happen if we got rid of the word teenager altogether and treated our children like children? I mean, real human beings for all the time they are with us.

How about if we took as much time teaching them how to be and behave like an adult as we do teaching them how to crawl, walk, eat, etc: How about if we decided to think of teenagers as helpful, exciting and interesting, would they maybe change?

There is a great quote from Wayne Dwyer that says, “show me your circumstances and I will show you not what you are, but what you think you are.” We are the product of our own minds and we also create the teenager that we expect. Maybe, if we thought differently, we would get something different. As Pliny the Elder put it, “What we do to our children, they do to society.” In fact, we could re-phase the quote to say, “Show me the circumstances and I will show you not what the teenager is, but what you think they are!”

Think about your own teenager for a moment, what words comes to mind? Annoying? Difficult? Whatever they are, I bet they are mostly negative. What would happen if you turned those around to positives? Would you see something different? What if annoying became persistent? What if challenging became an opportunity? The other day, I was observing what was, for the teacher, a very difficult lesson and when I met with the head she asked me, “What did you think to 9F then?” She had that look on her face that let me know her thoughts exactly. I just looked, smiled and said, “Well, they are certainly a spirited and exciting bunch!” She paused, looked at me and said, “What a refreshing way to look at it!”

So this week, I want to stress that patience really is a virtue and maturity is something that comes from adults, not the teenagers. Lets all erase the “Stop being Childish” line from our vocabulary. After all, they are children!

So, when you find yourself thinking that they need to grow up, see this as an opportunity to teach them maturity, just as you taught them to walk. I mean, you did not shout at your toddler when they fell down the first time, did you?

Also, think about how you personally, as the parent, view your child. How do you see them? You, their parents, their biggest advocate, how do you describe them?