Often, when I talk with other adults about my work with teens, I am met with a gasp, a raised eyebrow, a funny look, a wince, a shrug of the shoulders, and almost always, a wonder-filled question about how tough it must be to work with teenagers. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I love working with teens. Like people at any age, teens are nuanced, fun and funny, kind, and almost always vulnerable. Through years of working with teens, I’ve discovered two critical experiences nearly every teen yearns for. I'm sharing the first today, and will be back next week with the second.
We swaddle babies, we wipe away the tears of toddlers, and we hug and kiss elementary school-aged kids, all in order to remind the people we love best that they are safe, loved, important and cared for. When our children enter their teenage years (and sometimes as early as tween-hood) it’s common for kids to reject the physical expression of their parents’ affection and support. And so, as the adults in their lives, we are forced to pivot in order to find a new way to give teens the emotional experience of receiving a hug sometimes without actually hugging them.
The job of the teen is to push outward, exploring the outer edges of their emotional landscape and boundaries. The work of the caring adults in their lives is to push inward, providing gentle, yet firm, consistent pressure against the outward teenage push. That's the hug! Every kid needs it. Although this hug takes as many forms as there are teens in the world, some examples include: setting boundaries and sticking to them, even if everyone else’s parents are doing something different; providing reasonable, measured consequences when boundaries are crossed; carving out time to connect on a regular basis; creating a ritual shared only by you and your teen. If you’d like to come up with your own list, and you’re stumped, try asking your teen to talk about when s/he is most aware of your love. It’s possible you’ll be met with a shrug, but you might be surprised by a more inciteful response.
If you'd like some homework, spend some time thinking, talking or writing about what you think your child's hug might look like, and if you don't have a teen to practice on at home, think about what your highly individual hug might have looked like when you were a teen.