Hi, I’m Max, a professional life coach with over a decade of experience in coaching teenagers in both athletic performance and personal development.
Teenage years can be very disorienting for both the adolescent as well as mum and dad. Hormonal changes, the pressure of exam results, the potential for ending up in the wrong crowd are just some of the many challenges and opportunities that lay ahead. Let me ask you this question – what is the goal of parenting? Odd that we don’t think about this, nor has anyone ever asked us.
Allow me to share with you my definition of this goal – to build a human being who can make effective decisions before the age of 25.
Today’s reading will focus on the four most important skills for teens to develop which creates their foundation for decision making that leads to a healthy, happy and effective human being. This is highly recommended reading for parents, particularly those who desire raising high performing adolescents. Today’s reading will lean heavily on my work in my private practice.
Let’s begin!
Skill Number One – Communication
In my assessment, this is the most important skill for young people to develop, or any person for that matter. All our results and our mistakes as human beings come from our communication skills. Career advancement comes from communication, sales in business come from communication, healthy relationships come from communication, forgiveness comes from communication, making friends comes from communication – communication is the master key.
One of the first skills that I teach teenagers is that concept of active listening to move conversations forward, building the skills for having effective conversations. What most teenagers do not understand is that no one can read their mind. And having the ability to effectively communicate what is happening in their experience so that people around them can understand, creates opportunities to develop deeper connection with their parents, friends and teachers.
A second key component to developing these communication skills is the art of active listening. I’ve had many parents send their teen to work with me because they claim that “they won’t listen to me, maybe they’ll listen to you”. And so, developing the skill of listening and understanding other human beings is critical as it begins to develop a sense of consideration for others which is very helpful in building connections in life. Not to mention, it makes mum and dad’s lives a lot easier too!
An Easy Tip For Parents Here: If your son or daughter struggles to communicate effectively, rather than dismissing this as teenage angst, take a deeper interest, ask more questions.
Skill Number Two – Gratitude
Every self aware adult will know that most, if not all of our emotional trigger points and pain comes from formative experiences in childhood and adolescence. And so, a huge component of my work with teenagers is create a pathway for them to habitually focus on what is going well for them in their lives, rather than what isn’t. I have had multiple parents cite a lack of gratitude and consideration when first entering the program, and this is immediately addressed in a profound shift of focus towards an attitude of gratitude.
As I have said countless times in these posts, human beings are meaning making machines. In that, we attribute meaning to our experiences, and during formative years, our “emotional home” gets created. And by working through an active process of not only feeling grateful but being able to express it also, we are able to effectively build a happy emotional home, rather than a resentful or anxious one.
An Easy Tip For Parents: 5 minutes of gratitude journaling before bed will begin to shift this emotional home.
Skill Number Three – A Powerful Vision
The earlier one can find what their career path is, the easier life becomes. In my private practice I have taken people through a three month long process to find their dream career, and the pattern that I’ve noticed whenever I work with someone in this space is that they went to school, went to university, got out, got a job that they worked in for many years and then they come to me usually after the age of 30 seeking a change.
Another pattern that I notice in speaking with teenagers when I ask them about what they’d like to do when they are older, is the answers I am given are often very vague. “I don’t know”, or “I want to be rich” are some of the common answers I get. And so, I work through a process of guiding teenagers to finding how they want to contribute back to the world in a way that not only will financially reward them, but also contributes to others in a way they find meaningful.
Imagine if your son or daughter was able to find exactly what they wanted to dedicate their life to articulate it with perfect clarity. And they were able to begin planning and orienting themselves towards that goal now, and what advantages that will yield into adulthood.
An Easy Tip For Parents: Help your son or daughter become interested in
Skill Number Four – Health
Health is by far one of the most important pillars to get in place, not just for young people, but for anyone to live a meaningful life. Video games, junk food, phone habits, sleep deprivation and mental health are just a few of the many challenges teens face. And by getting this health pillar in place, it provides an amazing foundation for their development.
One of the challenges for parents is that they truly do know what is best for their teen, but getting their teen to see that is a completely different ball game, and it’s key. It’s amazing how many parents have said to me “I’ve told him to stop playing his video games a hundred times, how come when you ask him, he stops doing it straight away?” – the answer to that question is really quite simple. It’s about getting your son or daughter to understand why it’s BENEFICIAL TO THEM to spend their time on something more exciting than playing video games, rather than simply “doing what they are told”.
And so, by creating a relationship with health that is grounded in their own experience, effective decisions come far more easily.
An Easy Tip For Parents: Recognize that if your teen is making unhealthy choices, it’s simply due to not seeing the value in making more effective decisions.
Being a parent is both the most challenging and most rewarding endeavour.
Do not forget, your son or daughter simply “doing as they are told” will yield more convenient results for you as the parent in the short term, but will hurt them in the long term. What will help both you and your teen the most is when they are able to make effective decisions for themselves, without the need to be told.
If any of this resonated with you, I’d encourage you to reach out and let’s have a 30 minute complimentary conversation here.
Max. Life Coach.
