If the teens' parents are toxic, who should mentor them?

Teen dramas normalized the idea that teenagers are supposed to turn to their fellow adolescents when they need counseling. In such TV shows, young people were portrayed as wiser and more empathizing than adults.

The truth is the exact opposite. Teens must mainly receive mentoring from wise adults even if there are benefits to having friends of the same age. The problem is, how will teenagers know if an adult is trustworthy?

Ideally, their primary mentors should be their parents. It’s only right that those young people cooperate with their parents’ instructions if the latter are loving, responsible, and are paying for the teens’ daily expenses.

If the parents are abusive, teens should report the crime to the authorities. The government has a process for rescuing abused kids and placing them in the care of adults who are capable of guiding them.

But it’s not easy for victims to leave abusive situations, especially if the type of abuse being inflicted does not meet the conditions specified in the law. There are also times when loving parents become a corrupting influence on their children due to the former’s unresolved issues. In these cases, the Philippines’ Family Code says that parental authority can actually be suspended (Art. 231).

So who can be a good mentor for teenagers?

# 1 Competent and ethical mental health professionals

These include, but are not limited to, Biblical counselors, guidance counselors, therapists, family physicians, psychiatrists, and developmental pediatricians. Look up their credentials as well as their clinical experiences online to find the one who is most qualified to address your concerns.

# 2 Adults who ground you on ethical principles

This would eliminate adults that exploit young people to enable abusive churches, communist fronts, violent organizations, and dishonest businesses.

# 3 Adults whose careers and personal lives are generally in order

They don’t have to be perfect. They just need to be capable of living out what they preach in their jobs and in their families.

# 4 Open-minded adults

Good mentors appreciate each teenager’s unique identity and bring the best out of it. On the other hand, the bad ones make unhealthy comparisons among kids. They then force children to conform to their narrow definition of what is acceptable.

In college, a few of my schoolmates flunked out despite their academic brilliance because their parents forced them to take up degrees that did not interest them. A lot of Filipino parents at that time were so pressured to get their kids into the health sciences because of the prospects of earning money abroad. They didn’t realize that there were other in-demand college courses that my schoolmates could’ve found more inherently motivating.

# 5 Mentors who will embolden you to accomplish difficult things.

If it weren’t for our clinical training coordinator (CTC) in college, I too would not have finished my occupational therapy degree. When I was an intern, there were instances when I wished some bus would run me over on the way to the Philippine General Hospital (PGH). I also thought many times of jumping on an oncoming train because I was just so overwhelmed and discouraged with the pressures of internship.

I decided to seek counseling from our CTC before I did anything stupid. I cried my heart out to her. She then told me that I was getting depressed because aside from my fear of failing in PGH, I also absorbed the discouragement that the people around me were feeling as well as their unfair criticisms of me. She said that I thought that their emotions were my own.

That was the first time that someone pointed out to me that weakness. I was unaware of it because mirroring other people’s feelings or behaviors comes naturally to my personality type. Because of that, I learned to reframe my internship difficulties in ways that helped me achieve my goals instead of trying to fix other people’s problems or worrying about what they thought of me.

That revelation from our CTC was life-saving during internship and in most aspects of my life today. It’s a great illustration of why teens must mainly seek counseling from wise adults, not from other adolescents. Adults are farther down the road and can see tendencies in young people that might pose problems in the future. Mentoring can correct those weaknesses so that the youth may become successful in their endeavors.

(Photo by Perfect Snacks)