Panicking at the way your ‘layabout’ teens are failing to get on the career ladder? Helen Raine tells you not to despair. This phase, too, will pass.

For most teenagers, the end of school doesn’t pose any insurmountable problems; they go on to college or university and put off a personal crisis for another few years.

But for those who aren’t sure if they want to go on to further study at all, let alone what subject, leaving school can be a tough time; parents end up frustrated at finding an apparent lay-about cluttering up the house and the kids themselves have no idea what to do with their post-school lives.

One of my relations, let’s call him John, is in exactly this situation. Having pitched out of school last year with poor qualifications, he started a college course. One year later, he’s failed and is employed on a very part-time basis at a local pub, while he struggles through his re-sits.

His relationship with his father, already frayed, is down to the last few threads as John tries to spread his wings, only to find that his father doesn’t appreciate a 17-year-old stumbling back into his house in the early hours.

Nor is he overly keen on a son that sleeps until midday, emerging occasionally to demolish the contents of the fridge, which he hasn’t contributed to filling.

Most parents will be able to sympathise with John’s dad; no one wants to be treated like a free, full-board hotel that also provides driving lessons and a clothing allowance.

But it’s hard not to empathise with John too. He’s lost. He feels like he’s no good at anything. He’s washing dishes in a pub that hasn’t paid him for seven weeks and he’s too young and inexperienced to demand his wages. He has girl trouble. He’s straddling that line between boy and man, full of bravado, desperately wanting to be free, but not mature enough yet to make it happen.

This picture should ring familiar to us. Malta still has the second highest rate of early school leavers in the EU amounting to 20.8 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds who are leaving school without the necessary skills, according to an EU report published in 2014.

But the first thing to remember before you disown your feckless school dropout is that, aside from infancy, brain growth is most rapid during our teenage years. School leavers are developing the same decision-making skills as adults, but their thought processes are still heavily influenced by emotions so they do ridiculous and impulsive things.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years- Mark Twain

Sheryl Feinstein, author of Inside the Teenage Brain: Parenting a Work in Progress, says that’s because, “their brains rely more on the limbic system [the emotional seat of the brain] than the ational prefrontal cortex”.

While the teenage brain is under construction, Feinstein explains, some parts increase in efficiency by 100 per cent. But there’s a drawback.

“Disorganisation and poor decision-making are side effects of transition from a childhood brain to an adult one,” she says. So, being untidy and losing a string of possessions are signature behaviours for many teenagers. Getting a job and remembering to turn up for shifts are also low on the list of priorities, while looking cool in front of your friends is chemically much more important to your now-errant offspring.

Wanting to be up till all hours and then failing to get out of bed in the morning also has a biological basis. Frances Jensen, author of The Teenage Brain, says that teenagers’ circadian clock is actually programming them to go to bed around four hours later than adults. When they have to get up at a normal time, they are sleep deprived, grumpy and even more unreachable than usual.

All of this means parents will need to draw on all of their own maturity and experience to respond calmly to the maelstrom that young adults can become.

No matter how tempting it is to descend to their level, it’s essential to keep a cool head and recognise that this behaviour is not personal and is at least partly down to biology. Despite what parents may think, most teenagers still like hanging out with mum and dad and they need the structure and boundaries that parents can offer. It’s about finding the parental line between being a doormat and a tyrant, while keeping the lines of communication open. Jensen suggests that if you have trouble talking to your teens, you should try doing it during car drives as the lack of eye contact can make awkward conversations easier.

Teenagers are also still learning by observation. If you lose your cool at their behavior and resort to screaming, they’ll chalk that up to experience and behave in the same way. Controlling their emotions is difficult; relying on the amygdala to respond to situation, they regularly over-react, misinterpreting and misunderstanding information; they need adults to model more appropriate responses. Count to ten before you respond – twice, if necessary.

As for their career choices, if your teen is lost in a workless wilderness, try to encourage them to obtain some transferable skills that will help them no matter what direction they take. These can include using basic computer programmes like Windows and Excel, time management courses and even picking up communication skills. Even a Saturday job can become a useful source of experience in a job interview.

Ask friends and acquaintances if they can take on your child as an intern for a while in three or four different work environments so that they gain experience (perhaps the hospital, the office, a hotel and an outdoor job – your child will probably groan about it, but they could have a light bulb moment while there).

And, if they really can’t find work, encourage them to volunteer. Not only will they gain useful skills, they’ll also be contributing to society and getting out of the house during the day. You can make this a condition of receiving an allowance. Once they realise what they might be interested in, it’ll be easier to persuade them to take up a college course, or even to just start doing the job at the entry level, if study really isn’t for them.

And if you’re about to despair that your relationship with your child won’t recover, take heart from Mark Twain: “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years.”

Shakespeare agreed, having his shepherd in A Winter’s Tale complain: “I would there were no age between 16 and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out therest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry,stealing, fighting…”.

So, take a deep breath and look forward to those early 20s.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.