A Second Adolescence

One terrifying truth and several reasons to welcome it

It’s easy to say you’re open to change. Kind of like saying you might be open to skydiving one day. For most of us, that appeal is protected by words like “might” and “in the future.” Get any closer and the fear gets real very fast, as does our memory of just how comfortable our familiar habits are. So as a result, deep change — the kind that makes you shift your sense of identity — is rarely something we choose. Instead, it happens to us.

Deep change comes when the way we’re meeting the world simply doesn’t work anymore. Some part of ourselves can’t respond to the demands around us, and it breaks. In its place something new emerges.

In case this doesn’t sound familiar, look back to your adolescence. There, immense forces took us and tossed us into the adult world. Our child-like ways of understanding broke. We began to know that we were in a social field, always being judged, categorized, ranked by others. Powerful drives within us activated — to understand our identity, make sense of our sexuality, try to connect with peers, learn how to feel valuable, and more — and these would take us years, decades even, to integrate. The changes were intense, beautiful, troubling — not an easy journey, not something you would casually jump back into.

So it’s easy to feel relief that we adults are in calmer waters, relatively speaking. Perhaps you’ve worked hard to integrate those drives that emerged in adolescence. Now the changes we seek are often modest, too modest really. We make New Year’s Resolutions and then forget them. We shift jobs, sometimes we move. Compared to an adolescent, we change at a sloth’s pace.

But you’re in luck. If you’ve had a child and they’re heading toward their own adolescence, then you’re about to have a chance to grow unlike any you’ve had in years or even decades. Back to the skydiving metaphor — you may not have noticed, but you’re on the airplane now at 10,000 feet and they’ve just opened the door. The change coming is big enough that it may even feel like you’re back to your own teen years at times. Welcome to your second adolescence.  

The Gift

An adolescent is like someone on fire. They’re transforming on every level we can imagine — bursts of physical development, intensifying emotions, rapidly changing social insights, and simply huge leaps of cognitive development. If you’re close to a human changing this much, then some of that uncontrolled intensity is bound to affect you. You may catch fire too.

Their behaviors and mistakes may trigger you, may spiral you into fear. Just as much, their dreams and openness and ambitions may inspire you, or make you long for a sense of possibility you used to have. Their self-righteous questioning of the world, and of you, may enrage you but also awaken part of you that wants to question too. After all, maybe we’ve gotten a little too used to this strange world, taking its beauties and its tragedies for granted.

There’s more. Parents, some of the comfortable routines you’ve built with your child are not going to work anymore. Resistance will appear where you didn’t expect it. And alongside this come so many new opportunities. Your child can begin to see what you see. They can even see things you forgot how to see. You may be stunned to realize that you don’t have to simplify things for them anymore. You can share insights. You can enlighten each other.

Now enter a curious coincidence, bringing yet more fuel to your fire. For parents, this intensity may arrive just as a good old-fashioned midlife crisis is kindling. The term may be overdramatic but the feeling of existential questioning is real for many. We’ve shifted our perception of which phase of the journey we’re in. It’s clearly not the beginning anymore. And the ending is no longer impossible to imagine. If that arrives right as your parenting methods are breaking down and your child is acting dramatically different, then you have the ingredients for a moment of profound change.

This is the gift of raising or teaching adolescents. They lend us a bit of their fire. And we need it. For all the ways we’ve integrated the messy first adolescence into our now more comfortable routines, we need to keep evolving, to stay fresh and vital by discovering more of ourselves.

And this time, this second round of adolescence, we are much stronger. We can return to old wounds with greater resources in the forms of insight, empathy, and support from trusted others. We can tap into hopes and passions more playfully and with perspective. This is your second adolescence. Your gift. Your chance to do it better. Here are four suggestions to make use of this moment:

1. Look for triggers, assume they are about you, and accept the invitation if you can. When you are “triggered” by your child or student — meaning an emotional response that seems disproportionate to the situation at hand — then it’s as if a big, golden invitation letter has arrived for you. This is not about your child or student now. It’s for you. You are invited to open up an issue that has clearly stuck with you, and gain the learning that’s been waiting. Of course, there’s no shame in saying you’re not ready yet—some issues and wounds from the past are too great. But chances are, there are some issues you have not unpacked yet, that you do have the resources to handle now. So, when you notice you’re getting triggered, remind yourself that this is your work to do, and apply the insight and supports you have in your life to dig deeper than you have before.

2. Take the chance to be messy again. Adolescence, round 1, is messy and you don’t have a choice about it. As adults, sometimes with a sigh of relief we decide to tuck our messy parts away somewhere, and stick with places where we feel calm and confident (or can convincingly pretend to be). It’s not a good bargain, though. Not only does this cost us the vitality that comes from trying new things, but it misses the chance to model something important for the adolescents in our lives: growth is messy! So since they don’t have a choice about it, what if you joined them in the messiness? What if you tried new things — whether hobbies or explorations into yourself or the reconsidering of old stories and habits — and did this publicly, where the adolescents around you can see what it’s like for someone older to tinker, fail, recover, and keep growing?

3. Be wary of planning. If a 14-year-old told you that they had planned out all the ways they would change during their adolescence, complete with a timeline, it would probably sound touchingly naïve. You can’t plan out transformation. And that’s precisely the point — transformation of this degree is beyond what your mind is capable of designing for you, because your mind itself is going to change. So don’t squander this opportunity by trying to turn it into a to-do list. Stay with the feeling that is emerging in you, and keep returning to that feeling to choose your next step, rather than following an abstract plan. As the poet David Whyte wrote, “What you can plan is too small for you to live.”

4. Don’t do this alone. One of the tragedies of adolescence — tragic because it’s not necessary — is when a young person goes through such intensity without feeling accompanied by anyone. A wild ride becomes a terrifying ride when you’re alone. But with close friends or mentors, you get to turn that chaos into meaning and connection. So it is with our second adolescence. If you don’t already have parents or colleagues with whom you can have blisteringly honest conversations, make this a priority as much as you can.
   
   While we’re at it, for parents reading this, your child’s adolescence is an excellent time to start poking at the old, isolating, model of the nuclear family, in which one or two adults are supposed to be able to meet every single possible need of the young people under the roof. It was never true, but it especially doesn’t work for adolescents. They need to be able to walk over to the friend or neighbor’s or auntie’s house when they’ve had enough of you, and walk back in when they’re missing you and wanting to connect again.
   

Jung Closes the Case

This second adolescence is not just a gift — it’s what the young people around you need you to do.

A quote from Carl Jung makes the stakes all too clear. This hit me hard when I first heard it: “The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of its parents.”

That line, and the tenderness and anxiety it evokes, are with me as I write this. My oldest child is entering adolescence and all of these ideas I’ve enjoyed playing with for 20+ years as an educator are becoming even more personal and real.

As she walks deeper into adolescence, I feel the ground beneath me become less steady. Parenting habits that have built over time no longer seem to work. I discover that I’ve underestimated her. I notice how I try to make her similar to me, and how I make the mistake of thinking that when she is not being like me, she is being difficult on purpose. My parenting world is tilting, alarmingly but excitingly.

I can resist these changes, stay stubbornly the same, and lose connection with her, burden her with my unfinished work. Or I can leap into the growth of a second adolescence. I don’t remember volunteering to skydive today, but here I am on the plane, and it doesn’t appear there’s any way down but out the door.

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In other news…

• Diving Boards: With thanks to those who have been so patient on the waitlist, I’m happy to say that the third edition of the Diving Boards curriculum is now being printed. You can order it here, to ship in November. This is a curriculum I first wrote several years ago for middle school advisory groups, or other facilitated groups of early adolescents. It’s a deck of cards, each with a prompt and some guidance for a meaningful conversation that builds social and emotional insight. I hope you enjoy it!

• Hiring: I feel very lucky to be co-leading an initiative to build a new international lab school in Japan, where we’re putting many of these ideas about a more humane, student-centered education into practice. It doesn’t hurt that it’s in one of the most beautiful places in the world, in the village of Hakuba in the Japanese Alps. The school is hiring for a variety of roles for next year, from faculty to administrators. If you or friends are interested, see more on this webpage.

• Finding the Magic in Middle School: In the last month, I’ve had some of the best adventures of my professional life in speaking at schools and organizations around the US who are interested in changing the story of middle school. Through speaking, writing, and training, I’m hoping to show people that middle school is not the worst time in life — though it may be the worst-understood — and that we can tap the potential of this age with better practices as educators and parents. If this resonates with you, please check out the book and let me know what you think!