A sure shot way to give teenagers exam stress or career confusion is to put our expectations on them. Teenagers hate being constantly evaluated.
Especially evaluated on parent’s expectations from them.
You see, teenagers do NOT want to live out of our expectations.
They would rather drive themselves on their own aspirations and capabilities.
No stress for our daughter
When our daughter was 15 she came to us and said I see no reason to give 10th. She said I can pretty much learn and do what I want to do by doing it.
She is 25 now and she continues to learn what she needs, and is pretty much doing what she wants to do (she is an entrepreneur)
One thing we did not do is evaluate her with our expectations of say being academically brilliant or being scoring high in exams or going to a big college.
These designs and demands are in our minds. In any case why give her exams and career stress.
👉🏼We let her lead as per own visions.
👉🏼We let her build her professional journey by doing actual industry work and developing skills on-the-go.
Why not have belief in your teenager?
Most parents, when they hear stories of teenagers like our daughter, love it!
But they are not ready to consider it for their own teenager.
Why?
Because they do not have BELIEF in the child. They rather have belief in education system which only pushes the teens to learn what and how the system deems important and it invariably compares them with other teenagers who score much higher.
Inviting parents to consider having deep belief in your child and his/her capabilities and let the child lead.
You see what is the point of pushing the child to cling to the rock, when he/she can actually swim.
If we let them swim in this ocean of abundant professional choices and resources then our teens will only grow as strong swimmers in the ever changing ocean of life.
Somehow parents, we have only evaluated our child on our own expectations or benchmarks set by the system. With every evaluation we parents have only lost belief in the child.
As we observe all the problems with our teens, our belief gets punched with holes. We so often hear statements like not interested in anything, or wasting too much time on gadgets, or not focusing on studies` and so on.
Realise with everything looking like a problem and we’re desperately out to hunt for solutions.
If we get a solution, we’re lucky. However In most cases we parents simply get even more anxious and desperate and end up putting much more stress on our teen.
Parents, not stress, choose HOPE
In our experience many parents would rather work on the premise of HOPE.
Hope not about the teen’s future, but HOPE in the CHILD himself or herself!
And hope comes only from BELIEF in the child.
When we believe in the child, the child believes in self and then avenues and possibilities open up.
So here are three ways in which we can build the belief back in our teenagers (and with it hope).
💗Find their key interests and give them real importance
💪🏼Find their key operating strengths and acknowledge them everywhere they exhibit using them.
🎆Consider taking a break of say one year and offer child-led and child-directed learning opportunities which inherently values the teen, his or her interests and grows their potential.