The Gift of Teenagers: Connect More, Worry Less
- Rachel Kelly
- Jun 12
- 5 min read
We live in a time of huge worry about our teenagers and their mental health – from fears of a phone-obsessed adolescence to concerns about an offline world of bullying and drugs. But what if we parents, caregivers and teachers don’t need to be so fearful? What if our teenagers are a gift we can all learn from?
You may be reading this and thinking, She’s mad! Teenagers a gift? More like a nightmare! Moody. Snappy. Communicating via the occasional WhatsApp from a darkened room. Indeed, when I told a friend about the putative title of the book I’ve just written on the subject ‘The Gift of Teenagers: Connect More, Worry Less’, he joked that it must be a slim volume.
It’s true that in general, the lot of the teenage parent is a sorry one: right now, parents are generally less happy than non-parents, something known as the ‘parental unhappiness gap’. In this, Britain comes a close second to the USA.
More colloquially, there’s talk of the ‘motherhood penalty’, and even the view that parental stress is a public health issue. Society has made parenting harder by forcing people to work longer hours for shrinking pay and raising the costs of getting any help. And grandparents are often too frail to help by the time their children become parents. It’s tough out there. I get it.
But stay with me. I really believe that raising my own five children in an anxious age has led to several gifts, the first being some psychological growth of my own (and I hope that doesn’t sound smug: I’ve plenty more to learn and there are plenty of other ways to learn apart from being a parent of teenagers). And maybe it can contribute to yours.
In a series of blogs for Inspire the Mind, I will be sharing my recent finds. I’ve spent the best part of five years visiting schools, talking to adolescents, their teachers and parents, and to lots of experts ending with ‘ist’ – psychologists, therapists, neuroscientists and psychiatrists. I’ve long been interested in mental health, and consider myself an ambassador into that world, someone who has written a book or two on the subject and has links with charities, academics and experts in the field, and a person who can report on sensible ways to worry less about teenagers, and connect with them more. I feel I can share useful strategies I’ve learned having shepherded five adolescents of my own through this challenging stage, and perhaps help others do the same.
I have three boys and two girls. Our eldest son is now 30; our second son is 28; our elder daughter is 25; and the youngest two are twins, a boy and a girl, now 21. ,
Raising resilient teenagers begins with becoming a more resilient – and better informed – parent and person, someone who has learned to manage their own emotions and thinking patterns, become aware of their parenting style, and understand the world teenagers are growing up in.
If we nurture our own psychological health, we can be examples to our teenagers, who can learn from us. Calm parents or caregivers; calmer teenagers. Thus armed, we can engage with our adolescents better and discover how their brains work (short answer: not always like ours!).
Which brings me to the second gift that teenagers can deliver to us parents: the chance to connect with them as burgeoning adults. We can establish a new relationship with them, a blessing that can last a lifetime.
Raising teenagers taught me to accept a different role for myself as a mother. I realised that my children no longer needed me in the same way as when they were small – to make them their favourite spaghetti Bolognese (not so secret ingredient: a splosh of red wine) or drop them off at school. More independence for children (a good thing) can make us parents feel redundant (not such a good thing).
I have also had personal reasons to be especially concerned that any teenager of mine might succumb to mental health problems, as it was something I had experienced myself, albeit as a young adult. I had been a highly anxious teenager and succumbed to two serious depressive episodes as a young mother.
There were so many worries, both in the world and inside my head, that at first I found it tricky to stop being the ‘anxious mother’ looking at my offspring with pitying eyes.
Indeed, in some ways, it’s easier to be someone who worries. There’s a widespread view that worrying about our children’s welfare is a good thing, and the more we worry, the better parents we must be. At least if we’re worrying, we’re doing something. I know I’ve done this countless times myself, bonding with other parents about quite how concerned I am about my child, and the difficulties young people today face (like the horrors of social media, or the turbulent world in which they are growing up). And the thing is, all these concerns are valid.
But the calmer we are, I’ve found, the more we have to offer to others, our teenagers included. If we worry, they will worry in turn. Instead, we can model what a more accepting and compassionate person looks like and share ways we have found to be less stressed and cope with difficulties. This approach invites teenagers in turn, to find their own answers when facing challenges, from social media to mental health issues.
Throughout my series with Inspire the Mind, I will discuss several topics where we can have a role in supporting teenagers.
First, smartphones – how can we keep our teenagers safe in a digital age? Second, strategies to help understand alcohol, its appeal to teenagers and ways to encourage responsible drinking. Third, dealing with drugs: how we might set boundaries and rules for teenagers. Fourth, addressing adolescent loneliness - why it has become an issue for young people since Covid, and ways to help adolescents make friendships and connections. Next, handling the easy availability of pornography. What can we say and do to help our adolescents develop a more positive approach to their sexuality and romantic relationships? And sixth and finally, coping with adolescent mental health problems. How can we support young people finding life hard?
No parent can ever not worry at all about these and other issues, and I’ve had plenty of heart-stopping moments myself on what has inevitably been a choppy ride. But my aim in this series is to help you bring your parental anxiety levels down from, say, an eight or nine out of ten to a more manageable three or four, and take your enjoyment levels up to an eight or nine, to the point where you can see this period as one that contains blessings as well as bruisings. Ultimately, my aim is to help you appreciate your children’s teenage years, the people they are becoming, the life lessons they teach you, and yes, on occasion, to tell them what’s what as the adult in the room.
The Gift of Teenagers: Connect More, Worry Less is published by Hachette and now available.
