Mattering..... It's important!
Have I told you how amazing some of the interviews are for Season 2 of The Teen Code?
Not yet, well let me tell you right now, they are awesome, and I can’t wait to share them with you the first week in October!
I’m pretty sure my life would be complete if I just got to have deep, meaningful conversations with a few people every single day.
Oh wait, I do get to do this quite often. That’s what coaching is, and that’s what interviewing people for TTC is too! What a lucky girl I am.
(There is a lot of work that goes into the back end of making all this happen, but the end results are great!)
A common theme that keeps coming up in these conversations is this:
Teens want to be seen and heard.
They want to know they matter.
They want to belong and feel important.
This can be hard when they are pushing all the limits, and seem like the only thing they care about is their social life.
But let’s be serious, it’s what we all want. All the time. To know we matter.
The challenge with teens is that they are pushing! For their autonomy, limits, and probably your buttons.
So, how do you show your teen they matter?
There are a million things you have to manage. Yourself and your life and their sports, activities, homework, sleep, food, mental health, social life, etc.
Sometimes reminding them of how much they matter just for being themselves falls through the cracks.
But it is one of the most important things to focus on. The modern world is full of self-worth being tied to likes, number of friends on social media, comments, etc.
People do insane things just to get likes. Like cracking an egg on their small child’s head, recording it, and posting it, just because it’s trending, and they’ll get likes, with zero thought on what it will do to their 3-year-old’s mental wellbeing. 🤯😳😡
And these are adults.
Imagine what an undeveloped frontal lobe will do for a few likes!
This is the world our teens live in. And the truth is we cannot take them out of it or block them completely from it, but we can do things to counteract it in our own homes.
Connect with them just for the sake of connecting
💗 Tell them you adore them just for being themself
💗 Tell them you love them randomly
💗 Notice when they’re working hard on something, an assignment or their lines for the play, or their free throws - not only when they get a good grade, nail their part, or win the game
💗 If they had a big test, ask how their day was, not how they did on the test right when they walk through the door
Show them that they matter to you regardless of any outside achievement or how they look.
If it’s not something you already do, it might feel a little awkward at first. Let it be. Keep doing it.
Take some time to think about non-cringy (I got this word from a teen, it was cool when I was a teen, and it's making a comeback💪🏽) ways that you can do this more with your teen.
