So…I’d like to talk to you about the kids.

For the past few years, I have been working with tweens, teens, and young adults. It has been very eye opening. Like so many therapists, I have been seeing a pattern of anxiety, depression, and just a general lack of resilience.

We may notice that this younger generation does not seem to handle challenges well, and can easily panic if their plans get derailed. Many of us will blame this pattern on the influence of social media or on society in general. We would be correct. But that is definitely not the whole story.

The other part of the equation is us. We may start off well. We understand the concept of a child falling down, and struggling to get back up. When they are little, we might be very good at encouraging this self reliance and tenacity. But the hard part comes. We start to feel it when our kid is not invited to the sleepover but her friends all are. We feel it when our son gets a stomachache in the morning before school and asks to stay home. We feel it when we see other kids achieving astronomical GPAs while our teen is average, all the while knowing that some of those high achievers are cheating (with their parents help). We see it when the popular kids are given so much attention but their character is sorely lacking. And we definitely feel it as other parents “humble brag” about their kid’s latest achievement or admission. It can leave us feeling such shame, and sadness over what our child is not experiencing and/or achieving.

It is here, at this point, that I believe, we need to stop. Breathe. In raising these children into young adults, who are we hoping to create? This is a tough question. Sometimes, the answer might shock us. Is this young person just a reflection of myself? My vision of success, beauty, power? We may see the answer in certain behaviors: trying to fix our kids problems so that they avoid hardship, micromanaging their relationships and hovering over their schoolwork, forcing them into activities for which they have no passion or excitement, treating them like “best friends” when they actually need a steady, calm, but authorative voice. The above behaviors ultimately backfire.

The fallout of such an approach is as follows: your child will become a young adult who does not trust his or her own ability to deal with struggle. They will continually question anything in life which does not give them an automatic yes or no ( the way a grade does, but not the way a job does!). They will need to lean on you more and more emotionally as they age into adulthood because the lines of how to live life will widen, and this will make them more anxious.

The answer lies in staying fluid. As your child grows into a teen, while expectations are important, connection is just as important. Spending time attempting to understand them, and paying attention to their interests builds an increasing trust that will pay dividends. Giving them space to make mistakes is absolutely essential. There is no way to avoid it. It is how we all learn.

Resist the urge to constantly buffer them from tough things. The tough things make us tough. Instead, sit with them. Acknowledge something is hard. Then ask them, “how do YOU want to handle it?’