Middle Adolescence (14-18/21):
Continuing on the Tightrope

Book Cover and link to Amazon.com

Source: Google Images. Our teens are lonely even oftentimes when they tell noone.

Source: Google Images - Our teens are crying. They are in pain, and we adults have a lot to do with it. With the help of God, only we can fix it.

Gentle Reminders

• As mentioned on the Early Adolescent Page, the Tightrope is a metaphor describing the unstable and tricky ground adolescents walk, run and stumble across in their race toward adulthood. 
  
• It is never too late to say I love you, please forgive me. 

• We must be non0defensive, non-accusatory and sincerely interested in our teens.
• We must be patient and sympathetic, realizing that a task of adolescence is to test boundaries, exercise new verbal and mental development, and take other small steps toward adulthood.

Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today's Teenagers (2011)

Chap Clark's book has been featured in at least two of our Youth, Family and Culture Courses at Fuller Theological Seminary, and I highly recommend it for ANY and EVERYONE interested in or called to minister you teens/middle adolescents.   In a nutshell, our children are in pain, and not just the growing pains former generations of teens are used to.  We often blame our teens for being difficult, destructive and even for leaving the church.  We are, however, the adults, and the blame is mostly ours.  There are ways we can come alongside our teens, love them, support them and yet slowly give them the independence and autonomy they crave.

Key Points

• We have abandoned our adolescence emotionally, physically and spiritually.
• Teens are spending entirely too much time a home or in the streets alone.
• Cliques are often harmful, but form the main communities for middle adolescents.
• Teens feel unsafe, unwanted and disconnected from community, and therefore they retreat to the "World Beneath".
• The World Beneath is a world where teens strike deals with one another to protect each other.  Friendships are unhealthy and often destructive.
• Teens pressure each other to do drugs, have sex, lie to parents, and ditch class.
• These groups have entire cultures, values, mores and practices of their own, and adults are NOT welcome.
• We cannot wait for teens to come to us, because they no longer trust us.  Like our Father in Heaven, we must gently pursue them, love them unconditionally, and put aside judgment of their dress, speech and behavior.
• Today's teens are what we have made them, and only we can repair the damage with a lot of prayers, time spent, honest introspection, and apologies.

Source: Google Images - Our teens are resorting to teens for life and beauty advice, experiences, friendship, protecting and support. These cliques are often unhealthy, and reactionary. Our teens are reacting to rejection, confusion, abandonment, and a need to be understood. God, help us heal our children and ourselves.

For Middle Adolescent Resources, please visit the AM Resources Page.