Transitions and Your Teenager

In general, during any transition, we all step back a bit from our normal patterns of behavior, a change that opens the door for a variety of experiences: from reflection to frustration; from anger to vulnerability; from increased flexibility to increased rigidity; from diminished consciousness to increased consciousness. But no matter how you experience a transition, all transitions are opportunities for connection between you and your teenager. Some of the transitions your teenagers face include the obvious ones such as the shift from school to summer schedule in the spring; and back from summer to school schedule in the fall; and graduation from high school beginning with all the changes that occur during the second semester of senior year. With a second glance, all sorts of other adolescent transitions are discernable in a variety of normal developmental areas: friendship, romance, employment, extracurricular involvement. There are other transitions that stem from the family: an older sibling moving away, the birth of a younger sibling, an illness, a divorce (often creating weekly, even daily, transitions if there is joint custody), income loss through unemployment, and relocation to a different community and school district.

According to author William Bridges, there are three stages in every transition: ending, middle, beginning. At first this seems obvious, but with a little examination many of us often realize that we act as if there were only two steps to transitions—endings and beginnings—which leaves us rushing from one activity to the next. Behaving this way leaves little room for genuine reflection, which is the precursor to change. That is, when you don't embrace the middle step, you miss some pivotal opportunities for improvement.

A powerful example is what happened on September 11, 2001. Our old way of living came to a sudden halt, and for a long time many of us were in the middle stage, unsure of how to move forward. During this time, we instinctively reached out to one another and reconnected with what was truly important in our lives. Many people changed their lives for the better in the ensuing months. Some reconfigured employment to make family a greater priority. Others sought out spiritual roots. But just about everybody engaged in serious reflection, essentially asking themselves what was important in their lives.

Although the tragedy that initiated this reflection was egregious in its horror and beyond words in the pain and suffering it caused, some were able to use this event as a catalyst for change and reconnection to the priorities that are so easily pushed aside in the chaos of everyday living. It was the middle stage of this transition that forced people to reconceptualize their lives and who they had become, most often for the better.

In every transition, your teenager has ample opportunities to reaffirm, reconnect, and redefine, just as long as they acknowledge this in-between state, a state that is neither ending nor beginning. This is where you come in. Your job is to get them to pause long enough to catch their breath and to recognize the upside of not rushing into a new beginning. The key to success here is a combination of knowing your teenager, observing the details of her life (or at least the ones that she lets you glimpse now and again), and your intention.

When basketball season ends and he has afternoons free, you adjust your schedule during those first few days and invite him to do something special with you. Maybe you take him to see the local professional team play or you go out to dinner at a nice restaurant or you take him shopping or you excuse him from school for the day and drag him to the golf course with you. What you do depends on how well you know your teenager, and this helps you come up with ideas about what he would like to do, even with you.

Then whatever you end up doing, you casually talk about your son's basketball season. You relive the highlights, shake your head at the bad breaks, laugh at the lucky ones, and generally listen to each other's stories. When this goes well, there are moments of silence—maybe during dinner, maybe during the ride home—when you both naturally reflect. This is also when you gently ask questions that encourage your son to recognize the opportunities of the middle stage that he is in. These questions come from your own experience with reflection as well as your observations about your son's life, in particular the just completed basketball season. Where did you surprise yourself this season? When did you let yourself down? If you could go back and change anything about this season, what would it be? As in other areas, don't expect ready-at-hand responses.