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Have Teens Lost the Joy of Childhood?
Rena Black
Mar 11, 2021
The snow fell heavily outside my window as I booted up the Zoom meeting for Sunday evening faith formation. My volunteers were giddy with anticipation since our local school system had just called a snow day. We knew the teens would be bouncing off the (virtual) walls!
Well, maybe not the high schoolers. When we asked if they had gone out and done anything fun in the snow, I wasn’t totally shocked that most answered, “Nah, it’s too cold outside.”
But when the middle schoolers answered the same, my heart sank. Some of these “teens” were very young, childlike sixth graders. But they seemed so beaten down. What happened to joy?!
Perhaps you’ve experienced something similar since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. My middle-class teens are carrying the consequences of global and national reality in a way they’ve never had to before. The mental health impacts of isolation, stress, grief, unrest, and all the other (sometimes more sinister) effects of the past year are staggering. It goes well beyond a lack of excitement for a snow day – many teens are dealing with a lack of enthusiasm for life itself.
It’s bleak out there. So what are we called to do?
Well, unless you are a licensed mental health care provider, it’s important to know your limits. We are not called to do the work of counseling or therapy but to speak words of encouragement and truth around the relationship between Christian practice and mental health. A simple statement (to teens AND their parents) that counseling and therapy are 100% compatible with faith goes a long way! To adapt a popular meme, it’s MORE THAN okay to have Jesus AND a therapist!
However, what we CAN and SHOULD do is to listen, learn, cast a vision of hope, and cultivate joy.
Listen. Just listen. Don’t assume you know where your community is feeling wounded and beaten down. The contours of stress, loss, and suffering vary considerably based on your teens’ particular circumstances. Listen to what is said (verbally and otherwise), and listen to what is NOT said. Listen lovingly and attentively, and resist the urge to hurry to the Resurrection response when someone is still in the midst of Good Friday or Holy Saturday.
Learn. Keep learning. Even if you have experience with mental illness and suffering, there is always more to discover and understand what others experience. A licensed counselor and disciple, Roy Petitfils is an excellent resource for all things related to the intersection of teens, parents, mental health, and discipleship. The Body Keeps the Score is an excellent (dense!) secular book about the effects of trauma and various therapeutic modalities used to treat it. The book of Job offers language for the tremendous overwhelm of suffering and reminds us that suffering is a deeply personal mystery, not a philosophical problem to be solved with a perfectly articulated theodicy. There is always more to learn!
Cast a Vision of Hope. The beauty of the Christian kerygma is that it offers hope both to the sinner in need of a savior and the suffering in need of compassion (literally “suffering-with”). Jesus comes among us to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Where are your teens, parents, volunteers, and the community at large afflicted? (You can only answer that if you’ve done “Listen” and “Learn” well!) Where do they need to be challenged? Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, the Paschal Mystery, offers hope for a new way when we’ve gotten off track and offers hope for meaning in the midst of suffering. Our job is to proclaim that hope and equip those we work with to “Always be ready to explain to anyone who asks [them] for a reason for [their] hope” (1 Peter 3:15)
Cultivate Joy. We need to help our teens and adults reclaim the joy of living. 1 Peter 3:10-11, quoting Psalm 34, tells us:
Whoever would love life and see good days
must keep the tongue from evil and the lips from speaking deceit,
must turn from evil and do good, seek peace and follow after it.
Keep your complaints to yourself or your own inner circle, but don’t lie. Don’t pretend everything is okay when it’s abundantly clear that it’s not. Remember that peace comes by not merely the absence (or ignorance) of strife but the presence of justice.
In this case, we turn from evil by acknowledging suffering but not wallowing in it. Give teens and adults opportunities to do good – to take action (virtual or otherwise). Guide them to become people of service within their families, their neighborhoods, their teams, and the community at large. Help them seek peace (not numbness) by identifying the flickers of good, the transformation God is always bringing out of suffering. Encourage silliness, low-stakes competition, and genuine laughter! Identify moments of joy and enthusiasm, even if it’s something as seemingly mundane and fleeting as playing in the snow.
After all, the joy of a child rests on the knowledge that her parent cares for her, and her parent is the one ultimately in control. When she pushes off at the top of the hill, she knows she’s sledding toward her Father, who will catch her and keep her from harm. Even if she takes a tumble, she trusts that he will be able to soothe her wounds. Her confidence in him allows her to enthusiastically experience the thrill of flying across the expanse of white, momentarily overwhelmed by joy.
Enthusiasm comes from Greek roots meaning “possessed or inspired by God.” Enthusiasm arises out of the deep knowledge that God is present and working in my life personally, that God is real, loving, powerful, and can be trusted with my life, come what may. Our job as youth workers is to accompany others in the process of recognizing, with joy, the presence and work of God in their own lives, right here and right now.
Do you see a lack of enthusiasm and childlike joy in your ministry?