So how’s your quarantine been going? If you’ve got a teenager at home, I’m betting there have been some…challenges. But I’d also bet there have been some unexpected bright spots. Every kid I work with in my role as a life coach for teens has uncovered gems in the midst of the Covid pandemic. At the start of their coaching sessions, they’re…
It was the last in a long string of messages. Each text read like a mini-nightmare, an expression of teen stress about how their work is perceived by classmates. The final line was sheer poetry: “Not to be angsty, but.” Angsty equals anxious equals stressed out. The lingo changes with the generations, but the feeling remains the same: a serrated-edge fear that…
Got a teenager at home? I bet you’re on the struggle bus. Anxiety. Mood swings. Defiance. Lack of motivation. Teens are going through a lot, and the hardest part is, they don’t want to talk about it. At least that’s how it appears. Of course they want to talk about their problems — they just don’t want to talk to them with…
It’s one of those things that’s understood, but not spoken: our starry-eyed notion of the “glorious high school experience” is a farce. On the surface, there’s this thick layer of frosting: AP courses, athletic achievement and prom photos. We shut our eyes to the cake underneath, the stuff supporting the frosting: our teens’ social and emotional experience as they strive for mega-achievement.…
Are you a trend-spotter? If so, you’ve probably noticed the hottest new thing: listening. Listening is hot. It’s about to blow up bigger than mindfulness, even. It’s been lurking backstage, this “listening” trend, biding its time as we saturate ourselves with news feeds and social updates and Kardashian-Jenner product shills. Maybe you caught a whiff with the new business model, where companies replace their pummeling sales…