Last Updated on August 5, 2015
I maintain a group called Human Empowerment over on LinkedIn (a professional/social networking site). You can access that group HERE.
Recently a member raised the following question:
What are your thoughts on how to empower teenagers?
Their brains aren’t fully developed until 25 years of age, they require some guidance for functional develop, but they also need to create distance for their own growth. Thoughts?
I gave this question some considering and wrote the following reply. It was somewhat lengthy and interesting, so I shall share it here.
Here are a few perspectives on this question…
In what I write here, I will not be attempting to provide specific methods to work with teenagers. Rather it is my intention to elucidate the challenge. In clearly understanding the challenge at hand, the steps to face that challenge will become increasingly self-apparent.
The biggest challenge I see in society today with specific regard to the youth is that they are–increasingly so, and more so than ever before–born into a society that is unconsciously intent on dumbing them down as thoroughly as possible by the time they reach adulthood. This dumbing down starts foremost with the parents who have also been subjected to the same, and to the medical system many parents (for whatever reason) choose to birth their children into…. along with all the toxic chemical injections they receive, the completely disrespectful and unnatural methods of birthing utilised, and so on.
You mention the development of their brains. Already, to me, that level of thinking is starting to suggest a way of approaching Man that is innately dysfunctional and has a partial or perhaps complete disregard to the true nature of these young people we identify as “teenagers”. I am well past 25 and I would not for a moment consider that my “brain”, or more accurately my “mental/intellectual/intuitive capacity”, has in any way reached its peak. It is expanding and increasing every day, and what I have thus far tapped into is just a tiny smidgen relative to the potential that is there. Of course, in a society where the complete disregard for the true nature of Man has been actively and passively played out since any given teenager’s conception, those well-intentioned people working with such teenagers are going to have to make do with what they have got… including approaches to these youth that are anything but integral and holistic.
Using a related example… I see this situation with people who have allowed their health to massively deteriorate and who have depended on the medical establishment to manager their diseased state. For many such people switching to a holistic and integral approach to their healing seems close to impossible… and thus they may have to initially rely on dumbed-down medical procedures just to survive, or simply die. The road to being fully weaned from a drug/surgery based medical enterprise can be long and hard… most of all challenging. It will require them to reclaim their power.
In the same way, the road to a teenager weaning him/herself off of the social constructs and conditioning that are based on their being dumbed down so they can fit into a mechanised, materialistic, post-industrialised society intent on using them for its own self-centred and money orientated ends… that too is a tough challenge. A challenge for them, and for those loving people inspired enough to be wanting to assist them in that regard. Of course, I have no idea what your particular intention is as you work with youth, though as you are raising this question in a forum dedicated to Human Empowerment, I am hereby assuming you are first and foremost interested in assisting teenagers to be empowered, liberated, self-defining, sovereign, and socially constructive/creative individuals.
The genius that is innate within Man is all but dead by the time most children reach their teenage years. My observation is that this typically establishes an immense frustration in teenagers. As Jonathan C mentioned… often by this age period they are pushing out in order to find their boundaries. This is an act of establishing self-definition. Yet I think many young people innately know or feel or subconsciously suspect that what they are pushing out into is essentially unreal, unauthentic, and non-fulfilling on all levels. They consciously or unconsciously recognise that the world around them is basically a huge self-perpetuating lie.
I think that all-to-often, the result is that the boundaries they establish… the sense of self-definition that they carve out for themselves… does not accurately re-present who they really are, what they really feel, what they are most inspired by and passionate about, and what it is they are here to create. Their self-definition thus also takes on the quality of being a self-perpetuating lie. They feel that, and in doing so they (the more spirited ones, at least) may inititially find ways to rebel. In my observation, such rebelling is typically (and sadly) fruitless, or at least of very little significance because they are already dumbed down to a point where they no longer feel their Divinity. Without feeling That, the social pressure they are up against (which is massive) is generally the winner when it comes to this battle for their power. Thus, one way or another many youth simply pick up on yet another predefined box into which they can at least feel relatively comfortable whilst deep down being strangers in a strange land.
A challenge if ever I have seen one!
Some keywords that come to mind…
- Respect
- Honesty
- Authenticity
- Open expression of true feeling, emotion, and thought
- Clear, clean, and empowering communication
- Trust
- Sharing and modelling Reality based approaches to life
We are first and foremost models for our youth, not teachers, care givers, or anything else. The youth are first and foremost internalising us (and the false or real world we present them with) as models. Thus it is not so much a question of what you tell them… or even how you tell it to them… but more especially a question of who you are whilst telling them, being around them, being with them, working with them, loveing them, and so on.
I highly recommend you check out the inspiring work of Mikhail Petrovich Shchetinin. If nothing else, it may give you an indication of what WAS possible… what these teenagers you are working with were (and to some degree still are) readily capable of. I say “still are”, though I realise that this potential is all but completely obscured and not easily accessible within most modern teenagers today. It would require extraordinary circumstances to draw out their extraordinary potential. I see it as our challenge, however, to be present to the possibility of our youth tapping into that potential despite a brief life-time of it being suppressed and obscured. The first step is increasingly tapping into that potential ourselves… living that, being true to that, and thus modelling that for our youth. How extraordinary are WE as adults willing to be, and thus model for our youth?
Here is a link to some excellent info on Mikhail and the school he co-created with many hundreds of children:
http://www.loveforlife.com.au/node/5173
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