Finding a Mentor for your teen helps them thrive in the challenging landscape of adolescence and the times we’re within. Our children are canaries in the coal mine. Blinders on, we keep all systems chugging along. Do the essay. Get the grades. Continue the dream of excess. And in the meantime, our kids find endless ways to numb.
We are human animals on a living planet who have separated ourselves from ourselves. We’ve become fragmented. It’s easier for us to drop into the media on our phones than to approach the complexity of our inner landscapes. We addictively look outside ourselves, while expecting our kids to know what’s true for them and how to navigate.
What I notice, consistently, is how difficult it is for a teen person to tell me how they feel. They either don’t want to go there or they haven’t checked.
“I’m fine,” they say. Their fine is so far from fine.
It takes trust, non-judgment, and safety to explore this inner landscape with them. Any agenda we might carry, even for their healing, has to be laid at the door. Their healing might be our intention and deepest heart’s calling, but we must set it on the altar of their unique destiny and path. It’s not ours to impose. We must skillfully tune into what is theirs, what is ours, and how best to guide them by offering to sit at their table with them. By asking them, inviting them, remaining curious, and honoring their expression.
The renaissance will be that you, the parents of this generation of teens, will be pushed into a rite-of-passage with them. You will be asked to come to the edge of all you have held as a good parent and to lay that down and be honest with the moment your child is in. They will require you to trade in your ideas of what you think “you should do” for your deeper intuitive knowing. This will require you to heal the places within yourself that your children trigger, or at least to take a real honest look, so that you can be with them clearly. They will need to watch you sacrifice your impulsive reactivity for your deeper knowing and trust in them and life. You’ll need to listen and ask questions and guide from the heart.
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I have two openings for Mentoring that just became available and Parenting From the Pulse, an online course for parents, begins in January.
You don’t have to do this alone.
Reach out to learn more: www.kellytisdel.com, 541-324-9003
