Imagine you’re embarking on a thrilling but perilous adventure. Say you’re hiking along glaciers and over crevasses in the Arctic wilderness, setting up camp each night far from civilization. You can hire one person to accompany you. What kind of guide do you want?
You might want a guide who is dependable, trustworthy, and honest. Someone you can share a laugh with, or a cry. You might want someone who has awe for the terrain around you, able to gasp at the night sky.
You probably want a guide who knows the terrain. But how do they show that knowledge? One who is constantly explaining or warning you about every little danger is not ideal. They should be ready to accompany you when you explore somewhere new. They should proactively warn you about something only if there is real and present danger.
Your guide would hopefully not take your mistakes personally. They would have that healthy psychological distance (so hard for a parent or teacher to have, but we can aspire) that allows them to notice things without getting triggered or trying to “fix” you. They would wait for your questions before providing an answer they think you need.
What if these qualities were your new job description? As the parent or teacher of an adolescent, you are surely accompanying someone on a thrilling and perilous journey. The closer you are to a guide, the more easily you’ll stay connected and influential as your child or student begins the adventure of adolescence.
We all need models to help us make sense of a new role, so take a moment to consider, have you met a guide like this in your life? Perhaps in a wilderness program; perhaps a therapist. For me, the most powerful examples I’ve witnessed personally, and the ones I think about on a nearly daily basis as I work with adolescents, were the midwives who delivered my second child.
I don’t know what I thought a midwife did—probably it was not so different from a stereotypical delivery-room doctor—but the reality was a huge surprise. When my second child was born in 2018, we were assisted by two midwives (taking turns so one was always with us) at a birth center. What they did for nearly all of the birth was to sit quietly in the room with us, waiting.
Theirs was the most active form of waiting I’ve ever seen. They were keenly observing, yet without a lot of eye contact or talk. They wanted to protect my wife’s experience of the birth. Their presence exuded warmth and security, and I knew that when they chose to say something, it was important. For the perhaps 2% of the time that they spoke, it was mostly to make a few gentle suggestions. And even more rarely, but when it was most needed, they could be strong and forceful, guiding her safely through the process.
They were never reactive. They never took things personally. My wife’s labor was her own—but she was not alone. There’s the connection to working with adolescents. Can you grant them their journey—but walk with them, unobtrusively, all the same?
The adventure is theirs. The identity forming is theirs. But our ability to accompany them makes all the difference. Adolescents don’t want adults to disappear—they just don’t want to be as controlled. They still want us with them. Can we be an active presence without imposing so many of our demands or fears on them? An adolescent who is accompanied in this way will feel stronger, trusted, more capable, and more willing to connect with adults.
This is your invitation: to be a guide to the adolescents in your life, rather than a boss.
In this mode, you are savvy to the terrain a child is walking through, but also aware that their particular path will be their own. You accompany them by offering a warm, stable, attentive presence. When tempted to give advice, you always take a breath first to ask yourself if they really need to hear it. You listen a lot. You laugh a lot, are amazed and curious a lot. Your authority comes naturally from your experience and groundedness.
If you can head in this direction, then you’ll be the companion they need. This job isn’t easy, but neither is being an adolescent. They’re on an adventure with all the ups and downs that entails. It’s a sweeter one with good company.
Book Update
Thank you so much to the sponsors and early buyers when my book Finding the Magic in Middle School launched last week on Kickstarter. The response was amazing, with the first funding goal met in 10 hours and the stretch goal in 4 days. Wow! I’m working toward one last stretch goal to create a first translated version, most likely into Spanish, to reach more parents and teachers. If you would still like to buy a copy, every purchase through the Kickstarter page helps build momentum for the book to succeed. Thank you again for all the support!