All the parents and educators out there – do you ever feel like your best efforts to guide your students to success are falling on deaf ears? Maybe you try to explain to them the importance of studying hard, getting a good education, taking care of their health, developing good professional habits; and they just sort of nod and go back to surfing social media or playing video games? Yeah, I know that’s a real thing. But don’t lose heart just yet.
Sometimes the ground isn’t quite fertile yet. But we still need to put in the effort to plant seeds, in preparation for the day when those seeds will grow into trees and bear wonderful fruit. And working to help students, that is essentially what we all do. We plant seeds in the hope that they will bear fruit at least some time in the future, if not right away. Keep the faith and do not give up.
My Own Parents’ Influence
I know personally that many of my habits and aspects of my mindset are a result of my parents’ guidance, despite the fact that as a teenager I talked back and was defiant toward my parents on many occasions, similar to a lot of teenagers. Some of these habits and mindset I find to be quite beneficial, and embrace. Other habits and mindset, I object to and strenuously, continuously try to deprogram from myself. My experience is only one example, but I think it shows the influence that parents can have on their kids, and how powerfully the programming given by parents to their kids, can affect kids well into adulthood.
My Own Instructors’ Influence
Some of the things my teachers tried to teach me took time to percolate in my mind before I fully accepted and embraced. Sometimes it was my experience as a working adult (time in the so called “real world”) that drove home to me that yes, my teachers were actually right about certain things. Some things, I still disagree with, and that is normal and okay. But the attempts of my instructors over the years was, on balance, worth their effort and I appreciate most of them to this day.
Plant Seeds and Hope They Grow
Sometimes you have to let the “seed” (your attempted guidance) sit in the student’s mind for a while, without pressuring them, and eventually they might come around. As with any difficult interpersonal dealings, patience is certainly a virtue. Pressuring the student too much will likely be counterproductive in such cases, so we need to walk a fine line between planting the seeds intentionally, but not pushing so hard that we just drive the student into a hole that they will never emerge from. Inspiration is more powerful than intimidation in positively affecting someone’s behavior and mindset. In the book Hope Unseen, Captain Scotty Smiley discusses the difference between transactional leadership and transformational leadership, with transformational leadership being the more powerful and long lasting model.
Understanding Teenage Difficulties
The teenage years can by a trying time for both teens and parents. A teenager is old enough that they are seeking independence, to establish themselves, yet they still lack the necessary abilities to fully function and be independent in the modern professional world. This should not be surprising if you consider that for most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers. A teenage boy is old enough to hunt and gather food, fight other males to establish dominance in a tribal hierarchy, and so on. In an earlier day and age a teenage boy would already be capable of independence, or at least very close to it. The modern professional world, requiring much more education and professional training to be a fully functioning adult in society, does not allow a young teenage boy the independence that is biologically ingrained in him over many millennia of human history. Maybe this does not make dealing with a defiant teen easier, but at least it may grant some perspective and understanding.
But what do you think? Please leave a comment below. Thanks for reading.