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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. The next time you spend time with your son, or perhaps even during the first time, depending on how things go, you ask some of the same types of questions about the new beginning at hand. How do you want to use the time that has been freed up since basketball ended? Any ideas you're wrestling with? Then wait. Listen to what he says and then fish for more. Anything else? And feel free to throw out suggestions. Do something new at school, maybe go out for the play? Get a part-time job to save for car insurance? Volunteer at the camp you worked at last summer? Put the ideas out there, but don't get too attached because most likely whatever he decides won't come from your list, which is the whole point. Your intention of encouraging him to think about the new beginning in front of him paves the way for him to create and choose from his own list.

Predictable and reoccurring transitions (such as the end of a season or a school year) are often ritualized into some annual event for the family. This is when you celebrate an ending and when the reflection begins. In this regard, there is no greater transition for a high school student than graduation, and for all intents and purposes it begins at the onset of second semester senior year.

Quite simply, your teenager is vulnerable for the entire second semester of senior year. This is the beginning of the end of his high school career, and every senior knows this and outwardly celebrates the ending while inwardly suffering from a range of self-doubts. For most seniors, their final semester of high school is all about friends: solidifying old friendships, meeting new friends, and taking flyers with new acquaintances. It's also a time to test their wings, to try new activities and behaviors: from taking an independent study in poetry to playing intramural softball; from teaching a Sunday school class to racing their parents' cars on a Saturday night; from deepening a commitment to community service to experimenting with drugs, sex, and rock and roll. For better and worse, they try all sorts of new things.

In the midst of this second semester, parents are hard pressed for time with their seniors, so the idea of deepening your connection to your teenager during this time seems, at first glance, far-fetched. Take a second look. Sure your teenager's focus is outside the family, but the extent to which she extends herself in a healthy way during this time is to a large degree dependent on how secure she feels at home. The more connected she feels to you, the more able she is to explore the world about her.

The last few months of school were a little strange. There was so much I wanted to do, and then there were my parents looking so sad and forlorn because I wasn't spending any time with them. They just couldn't understand that you only graduate high school once in your life, but your family is always there. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it's true. They kept inviting me to do all sorts of things—go out for dinner, camping, movies—but I said no practically every time. But what's really weird is that their constant invites helped me to get more outside of my self during this time. It was as if I knew that they loved me and wanted to spend time with me, which set me free to go and explore things I would have otherwise been too tentative to try.

I have heard the above account one way or another too many times to count. They need you to reach out to them to feel connected, which in turn allows them to say no so that they can explore the world around them. It reminds me of the consummate sales person: In my business, the percentage of sales to calls is steadfast at 10 percent. The way I figure it is that sales people who are better than I am haven't been able to make that percentage budge, so my best bet is to work on the other side of the equation by making as many calls as possible. That's the secret of my success: I make three times as many calls as my colleagues, which is why my sales are roughly three times theirs.

Parents need to take this pragmatic advice to heart. Your teenager will say yes to your invites at the going rate (whatever that is in your family), so your best bet is to invite him more often and not take a no personally. Therein lies the danger to your connection to your teenager. If you take a no personally, then you'll feel hurt and as result stop tendering invitations, just when your teenager needs you to reach out. The reaching out is what deepens the connection, especially during the huge transitions such as senior year.