Why Smart Teens and Young Adults Still Get Stuck

Do you ever look at your teen or young adult and think, “I know you’re smart. I know you’re capable. So why do you seem so stuck?”

In this episode, I’m talking directly to parents who are watching their teen or young adult struggle with motivation, confidence, decision-making, friendships, school, work, or taking the next step in life.

So often, what looks like laziness, avoidance, or lack of motivation is really overwhelm, uncertainty, or not knowing themselves well enough yet.

In this conversation, I share:

Why self-awareness matters so much for teens and young adults
What may really be underneath procrastination, hesitation, and shutdown
Why a trusted adult outside the family can make such a difference
How coaching can help young people understand themselves, manage emotions, and move forward with more confidence

I also talk about the relief parents feel when they do not have to carry this alone.

If your teen or young adult needs help figuring themselves out, building confidence, and taking their next step, this episode is for you.

To learn more about working with me, reach out here: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com

Subscribe for more support for parents, teens, and young adults navigating anxiety, self-awareness, and life decisions.

#ParentingTeens #YoungAdults #TeenCoaching 

 Struggling with anxiety in your family? If anxiety is causing tension, fights, or disconnect in your home, you don’t have to face it alone. I help parents bring more peace, confidence, and connection to their families. Let’s talk—schedule a free consultation today or email me: ccoufal@cynthiacoufalcoaching.com

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Transcript

Parents, you know that time when you look at your teen or young adult and you think. I know you are smart. I know you're capable. You have proven yourself so many times, and yet you are not using what I know you have available to you to make decisions and to go out into the world and do things, and it's really confusing for parents.
 
I am a parent and I have seen this happen before and I see it. Every day with the parents and the teens and young adults that I work with, that they have all this potential. And they are so smart and they know so many things, and yet something is getting in the way of them having the life that they wanna have.
 
So I wanna talk to you about that today. I am Cynthia Koval, and I work with young adults. I work with teens and young [00:01:00] adults, and I help them figure out all sorts of things about themselves, and I do help them with anxiety, but part of helping. All people with anxiety is teaching them about themselves because once we know all sorts of things about ourselves and we can really take our thoughts and our ideas and really put them together with who we know that we are, it just makes life so much easier and.
 
Teens and young adults are at a disadvantage because of their age. They don't have as much experience in the world as we do. But if you remember how we learned about ourselves, it was a lot of trial and error. It was a lot of mistakes. It was a lot of confusion. It was a lot of crying, at least for me. A lot of anger.
 
I had a ton of anger about knowing or feeling certain [00:02:00] things, but then no one taking me seriously or no one thinking that I could do it. And then I was doubting myself and. I, it really took until almost 50 for me to realize so many things about myself. And when I look back now, I'm like, oh, if I would've just done this would've been so much easier.
 
My parents would've done this would've been so much easier. And of course, hindsight is 2020, and we can always look back and think about how we could have done things differently or what could have been a better situation for us. But why don't we just set our kids up? Ahead of time to have a much better experience.
 
I am actually surprised at this point that most if not all teens and young adults had a coach or some mentor or someone in their life besides their parents that was helping them through all the life stuff. So we're gonna talk about that today.
 
[00:03:00] So here's what it might look like. Maybe your teen or young adult has already gotten the degree, but now they don't get a job. They don't put themselves out there to get interviews or try to do next step. Or maybe they have a job, but it's not a job that. Really creates a lot of leadership for them, or they don't have a lot of responsibility and they like it that way, and we're thinking, why don't you wanna move up the ladder?
 
Why don't you want to, you know, be the, the boss of this company and they're standing back like, I don't want the responsibility of that. Or maybe it is a teen in high school that. They really want some independence, but they won't go get their driver's license. Or they say they want to do those things, but then they don't make the appointments or [00:04:00] study or go to the thing.
 
Or maybe they want to have more friends, but you see them staying at home and. Kind of standing back and letting other things just sort of happen and they're not involved in those things or getting involved in the things that maybe they used to, or they're just like really reluctant to do that. We as parents see our kids, and sometimes really a lot of times we can see the true potential of our kids before they do, obviously.
 
And so we know what they could be doing. And unfortunately as parents, sometimes we know what they should be doing or what we think they should be doing, and they're not doing those things. And then we start looking at ourselves like, well, what did I do wrong? Or What is going on? And then. That frustration can come out and towards our kids, and we're, hopefully, we're not saying these things, but our [00:05:00] kids can read us, even if we're not saying them somehow, we're judging, you know, like, why aren't you doing these things or.
 
We feel like they're lazy or unmotivated or maybe we start worrying that they're not capable of doing the things that we thought they were capable of doing. And that can be really scary for parents. And it also then makes our kids think, oh my mom or dad thinks I can't do it. Maybe I can't do it.
 
And then they start doubting themselves and it's really a vicious cycle.
 
Parents come to me exhausted. They, I'm sort of like the last resort a lot of times because as I did as a parent and as well as probably most parents, we wanna try to figure the things out first. Are kids doing this or not doing this? What are all the things I need to do to make this happen? And we're Googling everything and we're staying up late [00:06:00] at night thinking about, oh my gosh, what if I did this?
 
Or, what if I said this? Or maybe they need therapy or maybe they need medication or maybe there's something more serious wrong and maybe they're mixed up in things I don't know about. I remember my son still teases me to this day that. Because I was a school counselor, I saw a lot of things that went on that parents didn't know about that kids were doing.
 
And so I was like, I am not gonna be that parent who doesn't know what's going on. And so I was always like pretty much accusing him of things that he was not doing. One time he had white out in his room 'cause this was. Way back in the day when whiteout was being used, when you were like typing or, well, maybe not type, I don't think he was typing, but writing.
 
And you could use whiteout for things and kids in my school were using whiteout to huff to get high. And so he had this whiteout in his room and I'm accusing him of using it for that reason. And he was like, I [00:07:00] use, I'm using it for the right reason. We do get in our heads about. What do we do or not do?
 
What are, what's happening with them? What, what do we not know? What are we missing? Who do we need to, how do we need to do things to fix this problem? And I am, a lot of times or whatever, you know, at that, those outside agencies or entities, or a lot of times the last people that you go to, but whenever you get to me is fine.
 
But you hold a lot in your family as a parent. We don't talk about this. We talk about the kids and their behavior and what they need to do or not do, but we sort of ignore that parents are holding so much. You are dealing with the whole logistics of your family and keeping your house going and paying your bills and going to work and keeping the calendar and.
 
Depending on how many kids you have, you know, keeping all sorts of different schedules with different classes and [00:08:00] different activities, and you have your own things that are going on and maybe you have older parents that you're taking care of or you have other family members around that you're having, like other extended family that you're having to deal with.
 
Um. There's just like so many things that parents are holding and juggling at that time, and I love that. A parent told me one day when I was working with her boys, she said, you're taking one thing off my plate. And I love that because I want to be a support. I want to be a help for those families that.
 
Those parents that are just doing everything and juggling everything. Let me take one thing and that one thing is let me help your child learn about themselves and know about themselves so that they aren't so stuck in I don't know what to do and I, I don't know how to make friends, or I don't know how to [00:09:00] move forward when I want to drive, but I don't go do the driving test.
 
Or maybe they're not wanting to go to school anymore for. A myriad of reasons, and they just need a neutral party, a an outside source that they can sort through all of these things with. And that has been the missing piece for so long. Kids do have other people in their lives, um, other extended family members, which is beautiful.
 
Some people do have other adults trusted adults in their lives that they do spend a lot of time with or do get to talk with. But I would say. More than 50% of teens and young adults do not have a trusted adult outside of their family that they feel like they're safe to talk to. And I think we need to introduce kids more to those trusted adults in the world that can help them with all of these things that they're dealing with.[00:10:00]

And. Not that the parents aren't important because you're certainly important, and I feel like I instilled a lot of beautiful things in my kids by role modeling and talking to them. But I still wanted them to have someone else. I wanted them to have other people in their lives because the more times they hear the same message, the better it is for them to.
 
To put it inside of them and actually use that message. And I think, I mean, we're all like this no matter how old we are, that the more repetitious that a message is, the more times we hear something, the more likely our brain is to be like, oh, I think that's a truth. I think that is something that I need to pay attention to.
 
And as a parent, if you're the only person saying some in something like that in the adult world, and they see. Other adults doing other things or other peers doing other things, they might think that's just my parents. That's just what they say. But that's [00:11:00] not really the truth. And I thought that constantly about my parents is pretty much everything they told me.
 
I thought, no, that is not right, and that is not the way the world is just because either I didn't want that to be the truth or. They were, they were doing something a little different than other people, and I saw what other people were doing and that seemed more like what I wanted to do. And so I would just disregard what they said because there was more noise over here saying the things that I wanted to hear.
 
And so. You. It's really important to find those other trusted adults in your world that are saying the same messages that you are, but your child is gonna be more likely to hear them from another person.
 
One of the things about emotions and mental health and thought processes is that. None of us really were taught any of that information, like the education that it [00:12:00] takes to have good, healthy mental health and what is it about our emotions and how do we. How do we reframe thoughts so that we can think differently or have different energy about something?
 
I didn't learn this even in my counseling program. I learned a tiny bit of it, but it wasn't until I was coached myself by a life coach and then I went through a life coach training where I really learned a lot about how our brain works and how thoughts work and how they can get in our way many times.
 
Put barriers up, and I never realized that that's where my barriers were coming from. And so now that I know those things, I use a lot of that information in my own life so that I can overcome things that seem scary or things that I. Want to believe, but I don't quite believe I can use my thoughts to start creating [00:13:00] those things.
 
And as soon as I learned that, I knew that I wanted to teach kids this, because when we see kids that are not doing their schoolwork, we just think, oh well. You know, they're not motivated or they're lazy or they don't wanna do the work, but almost always it's about being overwhelmed in some way.
 
There's too much information, or maybe they are missing a skill, but we are looking at it as like the whole thing instead of like one tiny piece that could change and be different, that could open up a whole different area or world for them. And when we think about. Um, when kids have a bad attitude or they're moody.
 
Now, of course some of that is hormonal, but there's also a sense of. Like a survival thing with them. Like they realize that they don't quite know enough or have enough skills to regulate themselves, but then they don't really know what that [00:14:00] means. And they don't even know sometimes that there are different ways to do things and their parents don't know that there are different ways to do things.
 
And so it's just the cycle of fighting or frustration or resentment with the family because the. The young person isn't doing what they're supposed to be doing and the parents don't understand it, and then they're fighting with them and telling them to do certain things, and sometimes you just need this person over to the side that is not emotionally involved, that can just kind of.
 
Pick all the pieces apart, look at them and help mirror back to the teen or the young adult like, well, here's all the things. Let's talk about that. What do you think's going on here? What? What other decisions can be made? And it's just amazing what young people come up with when they have the opportunity to have a safe space to just look through everything and start figuring out.
 
What you know, what does this mean for me? And when [00:15:00] I had this reaction, what was really going on there? And how could my strengths play into this? Maybe I'm overusing my strengths. Maybe I'm underusing, my strengths. What am I valuing here? If I value this, then why do I have this behavior? And if I value this.
 
What kind of behaviors match that value? And here's the things I'm really good at, and here's the things that really drain me. How much of my day is the draining activities and how can I use the things that excite me to get my day going forward? And. What are the things about me that I can use? Being social or really liking to work with my hands, or learning by listening to music or whatever it is.
 
Like how can I use those things that are innate in me that will help me to make better [00:16:00] decisions and be more excited and do things that I wanna do in this life? And so I have, I have a whole program, but I have an assessment that I can give that helps them to see those things, and then we just go through all of those pieces so that they can start figuring out how does that work in their lives.
 
When I work with young people, I just start. Where they are, what is going on? Let's look at what does a normal day look like for you? What are the things that are getting in your way? What are the things that you wish you were doing that you're not doing? What do you keep getting in trouble for? What if they, after they say the things that they wish they were doing, that they're not doing, you know, what, what do you think is getting in the way?
 
Let's look at all of those things and then once we. We start looking at what's going on right now. Then we have the assessment. These are all the things that you, that are your strengths, your values, your skills, and your interests. How do all of those things play [00:17:00] into what we just saw in this present picture of who you are?
 
Then we start looking at what are all the tools that you could use that I teach about? Regulating yourself, figuring out where different thoughts are coming from. How do you reframe thoughts? What does that look like? How do you do that in regular life? Then we have a plan for action. How are we gonna get back to school?
 
How are we going to go get your driver's license? How are you gonna go get a job? What, you know, what is, what are all the pieces there? What? What do you anticipate as your obstacles and how can we plan for those as well using. All of the tools that we've already learned using all the amazing things about you, and then how do you go forward with those things?
 
You know, just a few weeks ago I met with a, a couple of girls I saw them several years ago when they were [00:18:00] in high school, and I used to see them together because for one, they were both too afraid to come to an appointment by themselves, and they lived near me, so I saw them in person and. One of the girls was not going to school because she was too afraid to go to school and she didn't have a driver's license either, and she, well, at the time, I wasn't sure that she would ever get over her fear enough to be able to go get a driver's license and.
 
She also wanted a job, but she was really, she had a hard time talking to adults and saying what she needed, and she would get really teary in any situation where she got anxious. So fast forward two years, maybe even three years now, but I just recently had like a catch up meeting with them just to see what was all going on with them.
 
The girl that was too afraid to go to school [00:19:00] or to drive, drove to the meeting herself. She had an amazing job that she loves and she's just gotten a promotion where she's kind of like the director of the place that she's working, and it's just like amazing and I am so excited for her. And I just think when you know about yourself and you realize that you have so many strengths that you didn't know you had, you know how to use them and you know how to use other thought tools to help you.
 
There's really nothing that you can't do. And I am, I'm still just like so excited for her and her sister is doing great too, but her sister was already driving and already had a job, so she was kind of doing the things that she wanted to do. But they both are productive, successful adults and it's so fun to be able to recheck in to see how people are doing.
 
And I see that so often with former students. I had, when [00:20:00] I. I'm friends with them on Facebook and I see the things that they're doing and I'm like, of course they're doing that. Like they learned the things and they are, they had a mentor, a safe space in their school that they could talk to that helped them, and they're ready to move on with their lives and it's so beautiful to watch.
 
You know, we just finished the Olympics and. An Olympic athlete is an elite performer. They are at the top of the top and all of them, I mean, think about that, like they are the best of the best in the world and they all have coaches. Now I realize that those coaches are teaching a different thing than what I do.
 
They're teaching the, the physical stuff that they need to do and probably sometimes the mental. The mindset thinking stuff that they need to have to be an elite athlete. But when you think about. We get people, coaches for [00:21:00] sports or for those type of things, but we don't really get coaches for people for their lives, and we all have a life and we all a hundred percent of the humans a.
 
Want to thrive and be happy in that life. Why are we not getting coaches for young people to learn about how to be good at life? We only have one and we're only here for such a short time, so we wanna make the best of it. We having a coach is. The perfect way to make the best of your life because it's somebody who can mirror back to you things.
 
It's somebody who can listen and hear you and give you a place to doubt and wonder and be angry and like say your inner most secrets that you probably wouldn't say to your parents. But somebody that can just listen to them and help make sense of all of that. Like, [00:22:00] how does that make sense with who you are?
 
How does that make sense with how you wanna be in this life? And then let's create a, a life. That fits all of these things and feels comfortable and good, and I love being able to do that. And I've been able to do it so many times, and so I want your child to be able to experience that as well. Somebody that can just help them see all of these things and become the person that you know they can be.
 
But maybe they're just stumbling around because they don't have certain skills or they don't know certain things about themselves that they really need to make those decisions and to be confident and to be resilient, and to be whatever it is that they need to do that next step.
 
You probably have experienced this yourself 'cause I know I have, but when you don't know. About yourself or you don't have some of these skills to manage your life or manage your emotions [00:23:00] when things are going wrong. You start to believe things about yourself that are not true. Well, I guess I'm just lazy, or I guess I'll never amount to anything, or, I am not capable of getting a driver's license, or, I'm not capable of being in a good relationship, or I will never be able to make this work, or I should just give up and.
 
All of this has to do with our mental health as well. And if you don't do anything, if you don't help your child, teens or young adults to figure out these skills and have some direction and plan for the things that they wanna do it, I mean the, the least that could happen is that they're gonna waste a lot of time and maybe money trying to figure out these things on their own, which.
 
You don't want to see them wasting a lot of time and money trying to figure these things out. And worst case scenario with mental [00:24:00] health is that some kids do give up. They do stop trying to figure things out. And I've seen lives end because they just couldn't figure things out. But they probably didn't know how to figure things out.
 
And maybe it was just a matter of. Knowing more about themselves and figuring those things out, that could have saved some of those lives. And so I am not saying that to scare you. I'm just, I am very worried about the state of a lot of our young people, and I know that working with someone could solve so many of those problems.
 
And. I'm not even saying that they need to work with me, but just be looking for those trusted adults that your teen or young adult could have in their lives that can help them figure these things out. Because it is definitely, it has definitely changed my life knowing these things about myself. I like [00:25:00] myself so much more.
 
I. I believe I can do so many things I never thought I could do, and I just wish I would've thought this a long time ago, and I just wanna make sure that young people have this information sooner rather than later.
 
Not to mention that you might get your sleep back or you can stop worrying so much about, it's one thing off your plate. Your child is figuring themselves out with another person. You can still keep worrying about the calendar and what you're gonna cook for supper and. All the other things that you have to worry about in your job or in your relationships, or with all the things that you have to juggle and do in this world, you'll have one thing that you don't have to do and you can just have a little bit of relief.
 
A deep breath that, okay, one thing is being taken care of and I can do some of the other [00:26:00] things, a long time ago, and I don't remember who originally said it, that it takes a village to raise a child, but I've always believed that. And when I was in the school system years ago, when someone first started saying that, I was like, yes, it takes the people in the family and it, and then the extended family and then the people in the school.
 
'cause all kids, even if they're being homeschooled, there's usually other adults somehow involved in that. Your neighbors and the people in your community. Maybe you're in a church or some other type of extra clubs or activities, and those people are part of raising your child. You know, I grew up in the church and I remember when people would be baptized.
 
The pastor would turn around and ask the congregation, you know, are you also willing to help raise this child here in this church? And our answer was, I will, because [00:27:00] it does take a group of adults to take care of a child, and I am honored to be one of those adults supporting young people and.
 
If you don't feel like you have a trusted adult that you can go to to talk about some of these things, 'cause this is relief for you too, you like, I would be glad to sit down and talk to you about what are you experiencing and how can I help you and support you. But I also. Can then support your young person and I, if I was part of that village, that would be amazing to me.
 
That is what my life's purpose is to be part of Young People's Village, and I have been honored to be part of many, and I. This is something that I plan to do the rest of my life and so, or at least as long as as I can figure it out and do it. So just contact me if [00:28:00] you need a trusted adult and you just wanna ask some questions and talk about it and.
 
I can also, I know a lot of people who work with young people in specific areas that maybe I don't work in, and so I can always refer you to a specific kind of coach. Or a certain way of doing things. If it isn't me, I know people. So let's figure this out and let's have all of the young people that are in your world and in my world, let's get them that trusted adult that they can talk to so that they can love their lives.
 
And do all of these things that we want them to do, but also all the things that they wanna do because they all have the potential to have amazing lives, and I can't wait to talk to you next.