The Power of Validating Adolescents When They’re at Their Worst
Your student is being blatantly disrespectful to you in full view of other students and staff.
Your teenager has been caught stealing money from your wallet and then lies about it.
Your adolescent client sits across from you and tells you that she’s been catfishing someone online.
Your teen employee has been caught shoplifting from one of your stores.
Think about all the “worsts” kids do—drug use, manipulating, illegal activities, unkind or harmful acts to others, disrespecting authority, oppositional defiance, lying, stealing, and physical violence. And then think about validating the adolescent. You may have questions, such as:
Why do we want to validate them when they are at their worst?
How do we even begin to validate the adolescent engaged in these behaviors?
Won’t validating them in their worst moments imply that we are giving them permission to continue the offense?
How are they going to learn if we’re going to engage in something as soft and affirming as validation?
When faced with such behavior, our first instinct and reaction is to lecture, correct, punish, give dire warnings, or withdraw our support and/or presence. Paradoxically, if we want our kids to learn accountability, to act responsibly, and to be people with integrity, these are the least effective first actions we can take. Not only are they the least effective, but validating our kids when they are at their worst is one of the most powerful strategies in our toolbox for creating the internal shifts that we know they need to make healthier choices.
Why validate when they’re being bad
We know from research that one of the most (and I believe it is the most) powerful relational tools we have is the process and practice of validation. (You can find a brief manual here and the webinar here.) Conversely, one of the most detrimental ways of being with someone is to invalidate them. When we validate only the moments when they are being ‘good,’ then that troubled child, who has been labeled ‘at risk,’ learns that the only time they matter is when they are doing what they’re supposed to do, what’s expected of them. We are not validating the child but the behavior.
What the child needs is to feel that they matter. That their being-ness and presence matter. Not just their productive and conformative value. When we validate them only when they’re well-behaved, our validating presence is conditional. This is an invalidation of their very experience of being human, which must include the dark shadowy bad stuff.
When we validate the child and their experience—not the behavior—they know they are not too much for us. They know they’re not alone and have not been abandoned as they fumble, fail, make mistakes, and hurt people. That there is a way through the mire and mud. That there is a chance for redemption. That they are not entirely lost to themselves or to the society that they are now firmly and integrally a part of. Validating adolescents at their worst gives them a different experience of themselves besides just “bad” or “delinquent.”
Validation is relationship-building. Our adolescents desperately need positive adult role models in their lives. They need to see and relate to adults who know how to emotionally regulate themselves, shift and enlarge perspectives, sit in discomfort and anger, and stay in a healthy and effective relationship.
To address the remaining questions
We validate the adolescent, their feelings, and their experiences. We do not validate behaviors unless they are valid. If a teenager is disrespecting a teacher in class, we do not validate the disrespect. We get curious and find out what happened to cause the disrespect. Usually, once we’ve come to understand the why, we have no problem validating the teen and then redirecting them so the disrespect is less likely to happen in the future.
We begin the validation process by taking a breath, slowing it down, and checking in with what’s coming up for us. We calmly and quickly address the fear, anger, parts of us that are outraged or feel disrespected. We take care of ourselves first. Then we turn towards the teenager with compassionate curiosity.
We imagine validating them by determining in those moments what we want our relationship to be with the young person, what we want them to understand about themselves, and what we want to understand about them.
Validating an adolescent in their worst moment is not about giving them permission to continue the offense, nor is it a ‘soft’ way to discipline. In fact, it gives us more relational leverage to move into redirection, collaborative problem-solving, their ability to take accountability and responsibility for their actions, and to mitigate future occurences.
In conclusion
Dr. Ross W. Greene says that kids will do well if they can. In the process of validation, we begin to understand what’s getting in the way of our teenagers not doing well and what’s compelling them to act out. From an Internal Family Systems perspective, we know that all parts have positive intention,s and yet their impact can be quite negative.
From a depth psychological perspective, we understand delinquent behaviors as symptoms and symptoms as the voice of soul wounds. Getting curious, an essential piece of the validation process, helps us get to the underlying troubles of the child.
Validating teenagers at their worst gives them permission to fuck up and figure it out, helps them practice self-reflection and self-compassion. When we show up to them emotionally regulated—a necessary feeling state for the validation process—then we help them co-regulate as well. When we validate them only when they’re doing well, they’re already regulated and feeling pretty good about themselves. The power of validating them when they’re in the mess of things—that’s when we can really change their lives.
photo by Piotr Krzeslak