Apathetic. Disengaged. Unmotivated. These are just a few of the words I’ve heard used to describe teens today.
A rather cynical picture, don’t you think?
But during my six years in youth ministry, what I’ve witnessed is quite different.
The teens I know routinely arrive at school by 7AM for their zero period class, and they stay well after dismissal to spend hours practicing their sport. For most, 10 and sometimes 12 hour days aren’t the exception, but simply the norm.
And it doesn’t end there. Once they wrap their extracurricular activities, they go home to attend to the daily rigors of honors, AP, and IB courses. Essays, problem sets, test prep – their academic load is hefty, keeping them up well into the night.
This is their grind. Rinse and repeat.
As it turns out, this isn’t only distinctive of the teens at my local church, but it’s a trend we’re seeing across the country. According to a recent piece in the New York Times, high schools are more competitive than ever as they churn out record numbers of valedictorians each year. This past spring, Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, California, named 39 valedictorians from a graduating class of 606. And the class of 2019 at Washington Liberty High School in Arlington, Virginia, boasted 213 valedictorians from a total of 595 graduates.1
The Relentless Pursuit of Success
All this striving does, however, come at a cost. Studies show that rates of anxiety and depression2 among young people are on the rise. Former Division I collegiate athlete, Victoria Garrick Browne, speaks to this in her Tedx Talk, “The Hidden Opponent.”
Browne, who began as a walk-on, worked her way to becoming a starter who helped lead USC’s women’s volleyball team to the national championship. But the pressure to consistently perform at an elite level took a tremendous toll:
Mentally, I started on this high, right? Because I was living my dream, but all of a sudden I began to feel differently. I became anxious…. I worried about my athletic performance constantly…. I had this dark cloud over my head and it followed me everywhere. It was there when I woke up. It was there when I went to sleep. It was there in practice everyday passing balls. And do you know how hard that is when you have to be good at your craft every single day and all you want to do is lay into a ball and just cry?3 [emphasis added]
This is how performance anxiety operates. It compels our kids to white-knuckle their way through life, motivated by the lie that it’s up to them – and only them – to control their world. Unchecked anxiety is a tyrannical taskmaster, and it leaves no room for error.
Seeing as God Sees
As a parent of three children ranging from 12 to 17, I sometimes feel at a loss when I consider this generation of teens. Young people are clearly overworked, overextended, and just plain overwhelmed. My instinctive response is to remove every obstacle – to shield them from hardship.
Yet it’s this very instinct that reminds me I am not unlike them. Just as teens get entangled in patterns of unhealthy striving, I forget that God doesn’t leave me to sort everything out and solve every difficulty. Instead, He graciously reorients me to the truth of His Word.
Scripture affirms that stressful situations are never by chance, nor are they ever outside the bounds of His loving and wise rule. Only by seeing our circumstances as God sees can we then recognize that even the restlessness taking residence in our teens’ hearts is ultimately purposeful (Job 42:2).
As I rest in His absolute care and authority, I take comfort in knowing I was never meant to save my children in the first place. Jesus alone saves, and His promise to “hold all things together” means He holds my kids completely and perfectly, as part of His greater redemptive plan to renew and restore His people (Col 1:17).
These are gospel realities, and we want our teens to see them. How, then, can parents help teens see the details of their lives with eyes of faith? For our family, this is a work in progress, but here are four ways we’re aiming to make God’s grace visible:
1. Pursue your teen as Jesus pursues you.
When fears and anxieties grip the heart, it becomes all too easy to functionally believe we have to shoulder the burden on our own. But we’re never alone because Jesus promises to be with us always, and we make His presence felt when we pursue our teens just as He pursues us (Matt 28:20).
Jesus knows us fully and personally, with the same closeness and intimacy the Son shares in relationship with the Father (Jn 10:14-15). By knowing us completely, He isn’t repulsed or exasperated by our tendency to trust in our own plans. He instead promises to be our “good shepherd” – to be faithful in seeking us and gently leading us away from our wandering.
As parents, we incarnate our Good Shepherd when we take an active interest in knowing our teens’ thought lives. Knowing them well won’t be accomplished in one fell swoop. But over many conversations, as we sit with them in the midst of their insecurities, we ask questions to uncover the deep concerns of their hearts.
What we’re after is to make our teens feel seen and known in the best way possible, just as Jesus sees and knows us.
2. Speak truth…
Drawing out your teen’s story presents you with the opportunity to help him trace his thoughts and behavior to the very desires that fuel his incessant striving. The clues are found in the way your teen communicates stress:
I have to get an A on this test. My entire GPA depends on it.
What am I going to do if I get benched this week?
I can’t stop thinking about all the things I have going on. What will I do if I make a mistake?
Wanting good grades, to excel in a sport, and to do well in one’s commitments are not bad endeavors. The problem is when good wants go awry, masking idolatries that misplace and displace ultimate trust and hope in the Lord.
What or who makes him feel approved and valued? What activity or achievement stirs up his pride? What misstep is the hardest to get over? Our kids’ disclosures serve as the gateway to their fundamental heart attitudes about God, themselves, and their world. Use your findings to demonstrate how relying on our own efforts is akin to setting all our hopes on shifting sand (Matt 7:26-27).
3. …But speak it in love.
The process of increasingly knowing the interior of your teens’ hearts is not without its challenges. You’ll find that the urge to swiftly and pointedly correct their errors or to insert your judgments is very close at hand.
God reminds us, however, that truth must always be spoken in love (Eph 4:15). When we apply God’s truth without God’s grace, that truth becomes law – and thus another demand your teen will strive to fulfill.
When you’re tempted by the desire to see immediate change, take a moment to remember how our God loves with a persevering love. His steadfast love is evident time and again throughout history: in His pursuit of the Israelites, of David, of Peter, of Paul… And in His pursuit of you and your teen.
And because you are in Christ, His enabling grace will allow you to love as He loves, so you can prayerfully walk alongside your teen with all humility, gentleness, and patience (Eph 4:2).
4. Show your teen you need Jesus, too.
Faith that seeks to trust in the Lord amid life’s pressures is the exact counter-narrative needed for teens who default to frantically taking matters into their own hands.
Faith is more caught than taught, which means praying not only for but with your teens shows them in real time how you need God’s ever present help just as much as they do (Ps 46:1). Joined together, parents and teens can come before the Lord as He intends: as dependent children who are welcome to surrender their worries, fears, and doubts to the One who not only understands but bears our struggles with us (Heb 4:15).
God calls parents to raise their children in the instruction of the Lord, and this is far from easy (Eph 6:4). However, our good Father doesn’t call us to anything without first promising to supply us with the very grace we need to do His will. So Parents, let’s take God at His word, trusting “him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Eph 3:20).
This article is part of our Teen Mental Health Series.
- Tim Donahue, “High Schoolers Need to Do Less So That They Can Do Better,” New York Times, September 7, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/07/opinion/high-school-students-free-time.html?searchResultPosition=8.
- “Roughly 1 in 5 Adolescents Report Experiencing Symptoms of Anxiety or Depression,” KFF, Accessed on September 7, 2024, https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/press-release/roughly-1-in-5-adolescents-report-experiencing-symptoms-of-anxiety-or-depression/.
- Victoria Garrick Browne, “The Hidden Opponent,” YouTube, uploaded by Tedx Talks, June 2, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sdk7pLpbIls.