TONY BATES MIND MOVESMaking adolescents feel secure while taking risks is crucial for their self-esteem
I ADDRESSED the Foróige's youth leaders annual conference recently on how to foster mental health and wellbeing in young people.
These leaders represented 5,000 volunteers who work with 50,000 of our young people through youth clubs across the State. Their conference this year was dedicated to addressing how to build mental health and wellbeing in young people attending these clubs.
Together we looked at some of the factors that facilitate young people in achieving a positive sense of themselves so that they discover their own particular way of belonging in the world and what it is that they have to uniquely contribute to others.
Adolescence is a time when young people can feel very vulnerable emotionally as they become aware of themselves and try to pull their bodies, minds and souls into some coherent sense of identity.
This proves to be a considerable challenge for all young people.
However, for those whose early lives have been marked by negative experiences, this can prove to be particularly difficult.
As our discussion developed, we agreed that, whether we were speaking as parents or youth workers, our wish for all our young people is that they would learn to believe in themselves. That each of them would discover that he or she is fundamentally "okay as a person".
This self-esteem is what gives all of us resilience. Out of this inner self-confidence we develop our capacity and our willingness to engage with the full spectrum of life's experiences, from the moments when we feel everything is falling apart, to times when life's possibilities seem endless.
There is no cast-iron set of guidelines that can ensure young people a smooth path to maturity and wellbeing. If we adults ever came up with such a list, the first they would do is tear it up.
We are not supposed to have all the answers for any young person's life. They have their own adventure, which has to be lived by them.
Rigid guidelines can steal away those opportunities to find and lose their way, and discover who they are and what matters most to them in the process.
What young people need is a living relationship with an adult who listens respectfully, allows them some elbow room, makes them feel safe and offers guidance - but only after they have tried to see life through their eyes.
Security comes to a young person through repeated experiences of being around adults who relate to them in this manner and prove themselves to be reliable.
Knowing there is someone who can be counted on provides an anchor for young people when their inner world feels likes a hurricane that is pushing them beyond the limits of their capacity to cope.
In time, they will learn to internalise a capacity to steady themselves and feel safe in the world.
However, adolescence is a time when they need adults to make the world a secure place and identify for them the limits beyond which they run the risk of doing serious damage to themselves and their futures.
Feeling secure is a fundamental need, but is not an end in itself. The point of having a secure base is that you can leave it and come back to it.
Our lives become a living hell if all we do is to cling to what makes us feels secure and back away from anything that seems unfamiliar, unpredictable and risky.
So, just when a healthy adolescent seems to be settling down, you should expect that they will shake things up, take risks and push the boundaries.
Teenagers are hard-wired to take risks. If they are overly cocooned in safe routines, they fail to learn their limits and develop ways to cope with life's challenges.
Taking risks in a responsible way also helps keep alive in children a sense of wonder and appreciation for life - a quality that I described in my talk as "the wow factor".
This was something I observed in my own children as they grew up. They seemed to find life constantly challenging and to revel in learning new things and new skills.
As I look back now, I think that part of this was that we, as parents, tried to arrange learning experiences for them in such a way that there was a good fit between what they were able for at any given point and what was being asked of them in terms of new skills.
If the gap is too great between what you know at any point and what new skills are being asked of you, life can feel overwhelming; if there is nothing being asked of you to stretch you, life can feel very boring.
Spending time with these youth leaders, I discovered that their greatest gift to young people was that they had managed to keep alive the "wow" factor in their own lives.
I had no doubt that for the young people with whom they worked, this quality, which they brought into all their interactions, would matter just as much as any of the activities and learning opportunities they provide.
• Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (www.headstrong.ie)
tbates@irish-times.ie