For years, I had a front-row seat to one of the great philosophical battles in education. In one corner was Peter, a beloved, cantankerous science teacher who believed the best way to prepare kids for adulthood was to throw them to the wolves and see who made it out alive. In the other corner was Jen, our overly compassionate head of student life, who believed that with enough individual attention, accommodations, and adult intervention, we could prevent students from experiencing anything unpleasant, ever.
As the grade-level dean, I was, regularly in the room as the unofficial referee, helping find the actual middle ground that was in that particular kid’s best interest, not what competing adults thought was the “right way to do it.”
I have been thinking back on these conversations a lot recently, especially as I read through UCLA’s Center for the Developing Adolescent’s new research review entitled “Connecting, Collaborating, and Contributing: Supporting the Development of Relational Skills for the Transition to Adulthood.”
The central argument is, essentially, that adolescence is a critical developmental opportunity to build relational skills required to be successful at pretty much everything: work, relationships, civic participation, etc. And the study argues that the most important thing we can do for our kids in this season is, much to Peter’s delight, let them work out more of the challenges than we fix.
Which has kept bringing me back to how schools, and parents, need to transition support as kids get older. One of the tremendous gifts of a well-resourced school is the attention paid to each individual student. Teachers know their strengths and weaknesses, advisors notice when something is off and get proactive, counselors help navigate difficult relationships. There are caring, capable adults everywhere, working very hard to make sure kids have what they need to succeed.
And sure, that’s wonderful. It’s also a pretty unusual arrangement in the grand scheme of human existence.
Because eventually, these kids are going to leave environments where so many people are paying such close attention to their individual experience. And they are going to encounter roommates, professors, colleagues, bosses, and neighbors who have wildly different priorities, communication styles, abilities, and definitions of what constitutes an acceptable response time to an email.
And I think the connection between relational skills and future wellbeing is especially important to remember as AI becomes a bigger part of how our kids learn and work.
My husband is the head of agentic foundations at a wire fraud prevention startup, which means I know significantly more about AI than your average bear. One of the things he’s currently navigating, as I am sure many of you are, is a phenomenon I find both hilarious and deeply concerning: Grown adults using AI to generate absolute slop, confidently sending it to their colleagues, and then getting offended when someone points out that the work isn’t very good.
We've apparently invented a way to produce mediocre work at unprecedented speed and then become personally attached to it. But there’s something important underneath the absurdity, which is that AI can be an extraordinary tool for thinking and creating, but it also makes it increasingly easy to avoid the messier parts of working with other people.
There’s a seductive idea that the most efficient way to get something done is to do it yourself, with a robot who never disagrees with you unless you ask it to. And for some tasks, that might be true. But so much of the work that matters, from building organizations, to solving complicated problems, to being a decent member of a community, depends on our ability to think and work alongside people who don’t see the world exactly as we do.
It’s about learning how to communicate with someone who doesn’t share your standards. How to make a request without being a jerk. How to listen to a perspective you hadn’t considered. How to advocate for yourself when the outcome matters deeply to you, even when the conversation makes you want to crawl out of your skin.
The UCLA report emphasizes that these skills develop through repeated opportunities to collaborate, navigate relationships, and learn from mistakes. Not through being abandoned to figure everything out, but through practice with supportive adults available to help.Which, as it turns out, is the middle ground Peter and Jen spent years arguing about.
So how do we give teenagers more practice without simply making their lives harder?
We can start by working with something adolescents already want: autonomy.
Teenagers want more ownership over their lives. They want to be taken seriously, make decisions, and have adults stop managing every little thing.
Great! Let’s invite them to take on more of the responsibility that comes with that independence.
The next time your kid comes home furious about a classmate, teacher, coach, or group project, resist the urge to immediately become their personal crisis management team.
Instead, get curious.
“What exactly isn’t working?”
“What do you think might be going on from their perspective?”
“Have you told them what you need?”
And my personal favorite: “What part of this do you want to handle yourself, and where would some backup from me be helpful?”
That last question matters because it gives them ownership without leaving them alone. You’re not refusing to help. You’re asking them to take the lead, with you available to help them think, rehearse, troubleshoot, and decide what comes next.
The goal isn’t to make teenagers agreeable, and it certainly isn’t to teach them to tolerate being treated poorly. It’s to help them become people who can navigate disagreement without losing sight of their own needs or someone else’s humanity.
That’s what we’re preparing them for. Not just admission to the next institution but the ability to make their way through a world that isn’t always organized around them.
If something here landed and you want to think it through for your own house, I’d love to talk. You can book a call with me here.
Until next month,
Megan Saxelby
Founder of Wild Feelings
