Parents: Your Kid Needs You to Engage Purposefully in Their Life
Adolescence is a tumultuous period not just for the teen experiencing it, but for their parents trying to love their child through it.
Rev. Susan Eaton, Author of “You’re Gonna Be Okay”
“One of both the realities and the challenges of being an adolescent is that they feel a lot of things and what they do feel, they feel really big,” says Susan Eaton, author of You’re Gonna Be Okay. “That can be an adventurous thing, but it can also become a reason to be really self-conscious.”
On top of the normal things teens are exploring during this life stage–from learning to build their own relationships to creating their own identity to discovering how they fit in the world–today’s kids are faced with the pressure of performing for likes and weighing their worth based on how their posts perform on social media.
“They have so much more access to the world than we as parents had when we were their age,” Susan adds.
It shouldn’t be surprising that anxiety and depression in adolescents are on the rise. Seven in ten teens today see both as major problems among their peers, according to the Pew Research Center.
7 in 10 teens today see both anxiety and depression as major problems among their peers. (Pew Research Center)
And because these struggles are deeply personal, students oftentimes don’t know how, or feel like, they can’t talk about their negative feelings with adults around them. Likewise, parents oftentimes assume that if there’s a problem, their child will tell them or that it might be obvious.
This is why purposefully engaging in your teen, or preteen’s, life is important.
How to Engage Purposefully
On a recent episode of “Talk It Up,” Mt. Bethel’s monthly podcast for parents, Susan shared with hosts Matt Lake and Elley Lee about her experience as a parent of a son who struggles with depression.
“Once I knew he was struggling, I started engaging purposefully,” Susan admits. “There was not a day that I didn’t come home and purposefully knock on his door. I talked about things that he liked. I spent hours playing video games and watching T.V. shows, that I had no interest in, with him because he enjoyed it.”
“What I found was that in those moments of being more present and engaging and building the relationship, naturally, things would come up that he normally would not have told me.”
To be clear, Susan’s purposeful engagement didn’t “fix” her son’s depression. In fact, one of the first things Susan and her husband did, after learning from their son’s student pastor that their child was struggling, was help their son find a licensed therapist.
What engaging purposefully did, was give Susan and her husband a pathway into learning what their son needed. It also fostered a safe, supportive environment that helped him know he wasn’t facing his struggles alone.
Engaging purposefully is something every parent can do to benefit their child’s well-being. Whether they’re struggling with normal anxiety, that comes with life, or they’re struggling with a bigger mental health issue.
You can learn more from Susan about the differences between anxiety as a feeling and anxiety disorders, signs to look for in your child, how to walk with your child through mental health issues, and more by listening to the full episode below or on your favorite podcast platform!