What Does It Mean to Raise a Successful Teen?

What does it mean to raise a successful teen?

Whether it is teachers in the staff room or police considering a suspect, adults are quick to catalog teens by a few measures—GPA, SAT scores, and Lettering in sports. Parents standing around at a party mention the same accolades, and by senior year college acceptances are added to the recitation.

But do these measures correlate to being a successful adult? Maybe yes, but in of themselves no.

What does it mean to be a successful adult?

To answer the question of whether or not a teen is truly successful, one must first ask what it takes to be a successful adult as that is the ultimate goal.

So, what is a successful adult? A successful adult is a self-reliant individual who is able to support herself while making a positive contribution to the world. Hopefully, she also finds happiness and satisfaction in her life.

While academic and athletic accomplishments can develop many useful adult skills, there are other qualities that are still more important.

Emotional Intelligence: an essential skill for adulthood

There is a strong correlation between success and having a high EQ. 

A central aspect of emotional intelligence is being in touch with and being able to regulate one’s emotions appropriately.  When you are aware of your own feelings, you are better able to get your underlying needs met.

Additionally, it is being able to be aware of and handle one's own emotions that opens individuals up to being perceptive about and empathetic to other people’s feelings and situations. That, in turn, makes finding win-win solutions to conflicts or problems easier. Teens with high emotional intelligence have more internal resources to take on the challenges that adulthood will bring: They are more resilient, more open to feedback, more likely to be optimistic and have a growth mindset, and more likely to see themselves as being in the process.

Teens with high emotional intelligence likely have parents who have spent years being present with their kids’ emotions, helping them to process them. Their parents have probably asked their children over and over to consider other people’s feelings and points of view. They have taught them how to communicate in such a way as to create more peace and harmony even while bringing up concerns and counterarguments.

Initiative Taking: a highly sought-after adult skill

One quality that many teens today lack that certainly future bosses if not colleges are looking for is initiative taking. While highly attentive parenting can result in high-achieving kids, often kids are only successful with highly defined tasks, managed by their parents or teacher. Left on their own, many teens don’t know where to begin.

Parents can do much to develop initiative in their teens by training their kids to have an understanding of the big picture and then to look around and ask what still needs to be done. Let’s say, for example, that the big-picture goal is spring cleaning. Kids need to recognize that at the end of a day of spring cleaning, the work won’t be done, but that in general, the house will be physically cleaner and better organized. Together as a family, parents and teens should start by listing all the tasks that need doing and then prioritizing what order to do them in. Parents should engage student’s critical thinking skills by asking questions like, “If this job is done in a way that exceeds expectations, what will it look like?” At the end of the day, the parent might ask, “What is something you did today that is not on the list?” These kinds of questions encourage kids to apply their own standards and to take on ownership of the task.

In my classroom, I never worried about the students who could figure out a way to make my classroom neater and more efficient without having to be told what to do.

Practical Skills for #Adulting

Today, successful teens are typically excelling in their classrooms and in their extracurricular activities. Where they are less successful is in the so-called #adulting skills. If being self-reliant is a big part of being a successful adult, parents need to spend the same time on life skills that teachers and coaches are spending in their arenas.

Consider, for example, that most states require a driver with a learner’s permit to spend 50 hours behind the wheel, being given hands-on instruction and practice from a parent. How many parents spend 50 hours teaching their kids how to cook? How to keep house? How to budget or pay bills? If parents want to raise adults, they have to teach them the day-to-day #adulting skills. And while, of course, a person can get to adulthood and catch up on figuring daily life out, the successful teen is well on his way to learning those skills.

Are you Raising an Adult?

If you don’t yet have it, sign up for my Are You Raising an Adult? checklist to see if your teens are on track!