The Six Keys to a Young Person’s Heart

This tension—the feeling of being set adrift and isolated from everyone else competing with the need to keep moving forward in figuring out how to interact with a world perceived as uncaring and even hostile—fights against any authentic self-discovery process. The greatest tension between adults and teenagers comes down to this inner struggle.

The deeper longing expressed by this attitude, however, is one that gets to the core of our kids' daily journey. When you hear, or even feel, teenagers communicate that it is their life they are dealing with, the only choice they make available to you is to stand beside them and let them know that, yes, it is their life, and you know it. Again, timing is crucial and so are facial expressions, genuine care and compassion; and any other tool in your kit that assures them of your committed belief in them.

No. 6: 'Nobody Cares about Me' vs. 'I Long to Be Wanted'

When you hear or even sense that one of your kids is feeling like no one cares, what they are doing is offering you a gift: he or she being vulnerable and letting you into the pain of their personal world. This gift needs to be handled with kid gloves, gently caressing the wounds beneath the words and embracing the feelings behind the despair. In real life, we get swept up in attitudes that can easily slam the door on the exposed raw places we have been offered.

Granted, excessive complaining or nonstop whining needs to be dealt with when it is used as a tool for self-indulgence or to somehow manipulate the response of others. Especially during mid-adolescence, when the very essence of the stage is marked by self-interest and self-protection, we can find it hard to drum up too much sympathy when our child wants attention.

We need to discern when we are getting played and when we are being allowed into that tender part of our kids' souls where they are scared or sad. Sometimes repeated self-loathing or self-deprecating messages and behaviors may be both manipulative and at the same time an unveiling of a deeper pain. We believe this is true in almost every case.

Your teens, even though they may not even be aware of it, carry around inside of them messages that criticize and question their worth. What they need, several times a day, are words and acts that consistently and without qualification proclaim their worth and value.

Love Is the Answer

Our role and calling is to be the adult. Our job is to listen and look as deeply as we can to what is behind their words and underneath their behavior. Discipline, nurture and training require that we work hard to show compassion and to understand what adolescents feel, experience and mean. What they are longing for is love.

Chap Clark is Senior Editor of YouthWorker Journal. His wife Dee Clark is a family therapist and the coauthor of Let Me Ask You This and Daughters and Dads. Article is adapted from Disconnected: Parenting Teens in a MySpace World by Chap Clark and Dee Clark (Baker Books, 2007). Used by permission.