Teen Tips for Surviving to Adulthood, Spiritually Intact
A friend of mine’s daughter is graduating from 8th grade today. When my son graduated, I confess I didn’t quite take it all in, as we were dealing with a new baby who was in and out of the hospital at the time, so I wasn’t able to write something beautiful or lasting to honor this milestone in his life.
However, there isn’t an excuse like that this time around, and as such, here are my tips for surviving the transition from childhood to adult, known as the teen-age years and high school.
1. Love yourself well enough to say no to yourself. This means taking care of your body, not abusing it with alcohol or drugs, sex or excessive diets. Wait on all those fads like tattoos and piercings. Wait on the things which are adult. Some day you won’t be fifteen. Some day, you will be glad you waited.
2. Surround yourself with people who dream big and work hard, who care and who have enthusiasm for life and for the world outside themselves. Their zeal will rub off on you.
3. Give people the benefit of the doubt and don’t harp on people’s failings. It doesn’t help you and it doesn’t help them. Be charitable in your heart and mind and actions and you won’t regret a word you say or a thing you’ve done.
4. Recognize that these years are very Very VERY temporary. The teachers that frustrated you, the peers that made life hard, and the assignments you wished would go away, will fade as you age and grow and discover the bigger world. The friends that stood by you, the teachers you loved and that demanded the most, these will become all the dearer as you mature.
5. Stay close to your parents. These are your past and your future, they know you, they know your strengths and your weaknesses. They will be sources of support you could not have imagined as you age. For now, when they act in a way you find unfathomable, remember two things:
1) They were teens once as well and
2) you won’t always be.
6. Fill your brain with good things, classics, books that push your sensibilities, work that requires hard time studying. Just as bearing weight builds muscle, building a well rounded intellect takes ruthless commitment to discovering what you don’t know you don’t know.
7. Stay humble. Recognize there is a divine spirit in every person. Every person from the janitor to your brother to the President is worthy of if nothing else, courtesy. It shows class. Showing off one’s intellect at another’s expense isn’t proof of a higher IQ, it’s proof of an insensitive soul.
8. Be unafraid. The corollary of #7 is to be willing to speak to any person about things which matter. Speak well, speak often, and speak to people who can address your concerns or who need to hear something they are ignoring.
9. Laugh often. It’s good for the mind and the soul, it brightens the day and helps make the sufferings and annoyances of everyday bearable. Much of laughter comes from being surrounded by good people, the rest of it comes from not taking the world or yourself so seriously as to become grim.
10. Spend time each day in prayer. Your relationship with the Divine is your own to manage now. If you would know God, you must seek Him out. Knowing God’s will in your life will lead to paths you could not imagine, anymore than Saul could have seen himself an Apostle, or Mary, Christ’s mother. Be open to God’s plan by being open to God period.
Good luck and we’re all excited for you and the adult you will become, just as we are delighted by the young person you are now.
Spiritual Hot Cocoa
Sherry Antonetti is a mother of eight children and a freelance writer of humor and family life columns with prior publications in Absolutewrite, the Catholic Standard, Beaumont Enterprise and the Washington Post. She can be reached at 
