When you were a teenager, did you ever come across an adult who crushed your dreams? How did you react? What life lessons did you learn from that experience?
Fortunately, all the people who nurtured me as a young person encouraged me to chase my dreams; through the ups and downs, the winding paths of life’s journey. I shall forever be grateful to so many for that.
“Cindy wanted to be a Paramedic, but I crushed her dream and told her to do nursing,” Cindy’s mum shared with me. “And now Gemma wants to go into law or something like that and I am trying to get her to do nursing. I crushed Cindy’s dream and now I am crushing Gemma’s dream. You know, I think she could be a great teacher!”
I found it challenging to have this conversation with Cindy and Gemma’s mum. “Never crush a dream,” I said. “No wonder Gemma is not sure what she wants to do with her life.”
Anyone working with young people will have heard many stories like this.
What we should do is encourage all young people to chase their dreams.
The dreams will reveal a passion and, once that passion is identified, it is so much easier for teenagers to set realistic and achievable goals, and feel that their lives have purpose and meaning.
This underlines the importance of sowing the seeds of the spirit of mentoring when we are working with young people especially, although there are some common threads that will cross all mentoring relationships.
8 Strategies to develop meaningful relationships
My research over the years has led me to put together these eight tips to develop meaningful relationships with teenagers journeying through the adolescent years of challenge and confusion as their brains are developing.
It is a useful check-list for a mentor reflecting on how the mentoring relationship is developing.
- Accept and appreciate your mentee as a young person, even though you may not accept their behavior. That involves offering unconditional love and care.
- Display empathy toward your mentee i.e., place yourself in their shoes and think about how they are feeling about something you are discussing. Remember your teenage years?
- Respect your mentee for who they are and also respect privacy. Mutual respect is likely to foster trust and confidence.
- Be prepared to lead in keeping the lines of communication open, especially during times of conflict.
- Show trust in your mentee. You need to work at establishing this trust. It is an important process on the way to establishing a two-way mentoring relationship.
- Be able and willing to reveal your own personality to your mentee without fear. Sometimes your openness will help empathy — your mentee will see that you have been there, done that, and learned from the experience.
- Be spontaneous and natural when relating with your mentee.
- Have fun and take pleasure in each other’s company.
Persevere and be surprised
Sometimes the relationship building can be hard work, though I always try and keep the fun element, possibly because I know that a sense of humor is one of my resilient qualities.
Then, out of the blue, I received a thank you card from Nick about two months before he finished his schooling:
“No words can express my gratitude towards you and all your help this year. I honestly don’t think I could have done it without you. Here’s to the final stretch.”
What did I do?
I sat down with a young man trying to find his way, became a cheerleader, helped him set and achieve some personal and realistic goals, allowed him to dictate the pace of building this relationship, and we had a few laughs.
When Nick wanted to speak to me, I made myself available. On occasions, always with his permission, we had some tough chats about what it means to step up and work hard towards fulfilling one’s potential, and the choices we make along the way.
Nick had a dream of playing professional basketball in the USA. Many thought he was crazy.
Perhaps I’ll share his story in another blog — it was a fascinating, frustrating, incredible journey for a young man with talent, ‘get up and go,’ a friendly personality, and who failed to fully appreciate what was needed to achieve one’s dreams. However, he was willing to learn, and is achieving his dream.
Also, with Nick’s permission, I networked with his mum, thus ensuring that Nick was receiving consistent messages from some of the adults in his life.
A partnership between parent, student, educator (mentor) is incredibly powerful in a teenager’s life journey.
Building meaningful relationships lies at the heart of mentoring young people.
Who did you build a meaningful relationship with as a teenager? Did you have someone special who encouraged you to chase your dreams? If so, you have an important story to share with teenagers.
