A teen with all the opportunity in the world is the one that seems to get in more trouble with teachers. Seems to hang out with the odd crowd and is constantly making really bad decisions. What could be wrong? Your poor Mom is working so hard to give you opportunities that your peers have. Don’t you appreciate it?

What pressure! What pressure to live up to such high expectations? It is possible that everything is fine and you just happen to have a teen that makes bad decisions, but if you look further you might ask yourself and then this teen more questions.

1. Anxious or Nervous

It’s a lot of pressure to be the first in the family to enter college, to make the grades for the scholarship, and socialize with a higher economic class wile making friends that make disparities between you more pronounced. This can set off a cycle of self doubt and questioning: What if I disappoint them all? Maybe I’m not as good as I think? Why don’t they save their money or give it to someone else?

2. Depression

There can be sadness seeing everyone especially a single-parent working so hard to the point of depriving themselves. The desire to do well can be overwhelming and serve to cripple instead of galvanize the teen.

3. Normal Development

Those teens who have worked so hard and realized they are no longer having fun will feel the looming senior graduation more severely in junior year. This may make them want to start behaving badly in an effort to experience all of high schools temptations before they graduate.

4. Resentment

Purposefully messing up with so much riding on the perfection of decisions does make one consider that the teen has made a discovery of self that they no longer want to pursue the agreed upon career track.  After so much investment it can be very hard to tell everyone that I want to change my life’s passion. I have essentially changed my life’s passion. They may be fearful that someone will try and talk them out of it or shoot down their dreams. So when this is difficult to say, it may be easier to create opportunities for others to just kick you out.

An opportunity is in the eye of the beholder. One person’s opportunity can be another person’s jail. Who could have done what Joaquin Phoenix did when he said he was leaving acting?  People thought and still think he’s crazy, but if there is a change in what you are passionate about then the decision to leave is actually life saving. The opportunity to change your mind based on what makes you happy is all the opportunity any one teen really needs.

Related posts:

1. Failure an Opportunity for Teens
2. Toughening Your Teen Up For The Real World?
3. Maybe They’re Born That Way