When your teen is stressing about their future
Ivy Griffin
Teens have a lot of pressure on them these days. They’re a generation that’s more “on” and connected than ever before. They can feel pressure from friends and peers to constantly be available online and responding to messages (or risk missing out on important social happenings), they may feel the stress of navigating AP classes or taking college classes in conjunction with their regular high school coursework, and many teens can fixate on worrying about their SAT/ACT scores, GPAs, extra-curriculars, athletics, and what all of those mean for what colleges they will get into. Many teens believe that making the “right” decisions around college will dictate the course of their entire lives, their income, and their future happiness.
Whew! It’s a lot. I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it. It’s no wonder that teens--with their big emotions, impulsiveness, and lack of life experience--can feel such pressure and anxiety around planning for their futures. The good news is that we adults can help guide them and can support them in how to slow down and balance focusing on today with planning for their futures.
How, you ask?
Share the benefit of your life experience. Even though adolescents can be insightful, deep, abstract thinkers, they don’t yet have much lived experience to know how decisions can change over time, how there’s room for mistakes and uncertainty, and how life often doesn’t go according to our best laid plans. For many teens, every single decision they make and every single action they take can feel so. utterly. important. So, tell your teen stories about your own or other family members’ experiences with navigating high school into college, particularly if you felt lost, didn’t know what you wanted to do, or didn’t have the perfect grades. Talk about how you’ve been uncertain about your career or how you changed majors/jobs/career paths or how your actions in high school did not dictate your entire future. Give your teen permission to not have their whole future all planned out now because, let’s face it--whatever plans they make now are likely to change. Discuss how it’s okay to make changes if a decision isn’t working out for them and that picking a college isn’t do-or-die.
Help your teen have a broader perspective. Normalize uncertainty, and encourage exploration and consideration of different options for what comes after high school including community college, a four year university, a gap year, or even getting a job. If you had no idea what you wanted to do after high school, share that. Validate that there are a ton of options and that the types of work available are ever-changing as technology develops. You might even daydream with your kid about the different possibilities for their adult lives. What would it be like to go to a 4 year vs. community college? What about living in a city vs. somewhere suburban or rural? Owning a car vs. rideshare? Working in a creative office, being a teacher or care provider, developing innovative tech, etc.? Talking about the details helps paint a picture, allows an opportunity to try that option on for size, and makes the possibilities feel more real and attainable.
Encourage and practice mindfulness. While it can be fun and exciting to think about the future, of course, there’s still all the day-to-day stuff that needs to be accomplished and the tons of papers, quizzes, tests, and projects to navigate before high school is finished. If you see your kid getting overwhelmed with it all or if they’re spending so much time on planning for the future that they’re neglecting the present, discuss slowing down. Maybe talk with your teen about how to cope with stress and about how doing some mindfulness like taking deep breaths for one minute or noticing one thing with each of your 5 senses can help them get focused back on the moment at hand. As a family, you could put on a youtube yoga video to do together, or check out a free yoga class through yogamovesus. Modeling and practicing mindfulness to manage stress can teach your teen a great tool to use now and later.
While it’s completely natural for teens to feel some nervousness and stress about the future, that worry does not need to take over their lives now. Your guidance and mentorship (even when they roll their eyes or seem uninterested) can help your kid have a healthy sense of perspective and know how to manage the stresses that are bound to arise in the process.
Warmly,
Ivy Griffing, LMFT #51714
Program Director
https://thrivetherapyandcounseling.com/new-clients