One of the major tasks of adolescent development is self-discovery. The process of solidifying one’s identity and then relating that to family, peers and wider society. Adolescence involves consolidating unique strengths, while recognizing potential limitations and learning ways to overcome them. With all these lessons to be learned, there will be many processes of trial and error. While it is difficult for parents to witness poor judgement and bad decisions being made by their teens, it is important for them to understand the relevance of mistakes in overall development. Young people learn as much, or even more from poor outcomes as they do from successful ones. Parent need to make room for them to make some mistakes.
Peer relationships
Perhaps the most common and impactful lessons learned through adolescence relate to friendships. In general, tween and teen relationships are transient and fraught with disappointment and despair. This happens particularly within all-female friend groups. With time, learning and experience young people are better able to distinguish between meaningful relationships and more superficial social attachments. They can only learn these lessons through the lived experiences that they navigate. As difficult and devastating as it can be to watch your teen be excluded, become too attached or frankly be disrespected, parents do need to allow some peer related dynamics to play out for themselves. Parents are encouraged to keep a watchful eye and communicate freely with their teens but yet provide consistent but distant support. It is all too tempting for parents to want to rush in and accost or even confront other teens (or their parents)! But in so doing, they remove vital opportunities for learning.
Decision making
Through the teen years, there are numerous decisions that young people will insist on making for themselves. Fashion and style choices; extra-curricular activities and even everyday matters including nutrition, exercise or social media use. Parents very often can clearly ‘see’ the most likely outcome of choices their teens make. This wisdom, however was developed through their own learning. There must be room to allow young people to make decisions, for better or for worse and then live with the consequences. Attempts to protect young people from every potential negative outcome work counterintuitively as they sometimes become unable to make decisions at all. Apart from choices that involve high-risk or threats to safety, parents are encouraged to allow young people the latitude to choose and equally permit them to navigate the outcomes of those choices, regardless of how immediately challenging they may be.
Self-Efficacy
The term self-efficacy simply describes a person’s perception of their own abilities. If a teen has low self-efficacy, they generally feel as though their ability to accomplish a particular task or persevere through a task is poor. If their self-efficacy is high, they usually believe that they can accomplish what they set their minds on and intuitively understand that to master this task it will take multiple attempts despite challenges. This is perhaps the most powerful attribute to be gained through making mistakes. When young people are empowered to make decisions that do not immediately work well, and then have the space to problem solve, realize resilience and then thrive, for the rest of their lives, they have the belief that they can accomplish and achieve. As adolescents emerge into young adulthood, they are required to have a strong sense of self-efficacy in order to function independently. Young adults who do not, unfortunately remain reliant on parents or partners for years to come. By allowing young people to safely experience the challenges of life, they naturally develop the skills to change their lives. Making space for mistakes does not mean leaving teens neglected and unsupervised, but rather permitting them to express themselves, understand themselves and advocate for themselves, even when the immediate outcomes may be challenging.
