Teens Need to Hear ‘I Love You’; Volunteering Says It Clearly

“Do you tell your daughter that you love her, Mrs. Reynolds?”

A pained smile stole across his face.

“Every day!” I cheerfully responded.

“Well, I just heard that for the first time, yesterday.”

Our eyes met for a moment, and it was hard for me to believe that this athletic, bright and hard-working young man had never heard his parents speak those words before.

Maybe it only seemed as though it was the first time. The first time to hear the words “I love you,” spoken not to the toddler or baby-toothed first-grader or fifth-grade Little Leaguer. Maybe it was the first time he had heard those words spoken to the person he finds himself becoming.

Teenagers, so swept away in the intensity of physiological, psychological and societal changes, often suffer a kind of memory loss. Unless something is happening now, it’s as if it never happened.

In the early childhood years, the bonds between parent and child are experienced in tangible ways every day. Breakfast is served, lunch bags are packed, dinner is a sit-down affair. In addition, parent participation in the classroom is a much more common experience.

As the years progress, a different picture emerges.

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In preparation for our reading of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” that prophetic American tragedy that examines the dynamics of modern family life, I asked my students how many of them participate in family time on a daily basis. A dismal few raised their hands; most responded: “We live separate lives. Nobody’s home; everybody’s working.”

One of my students said that everyone in her house has their own TV and that even when they’re watching the same show, they each watch it separately, in their own room, in their own little world.

“It’s better that way--’cause then we don’t bother each other,” she explained.

“Yeah, parents bug,” the other students chimed in.

And yet, when I asked how many of them wanted to relate to their future children in that manner, they unanimously shouted, “No way!”

Although teens may sport an “I’m too cool to need you” attitude, inside most of them are as needy of parental support as when they were toddlers taking their first steps in a strange and wondrous world. As teenagers, they are again venturing out into that world just beyond the grasp of your hand. Now as then, they are relying on parents’ attentive supervision to catch them if they fall.

And fall they do, stumbling about as awkward strangers in a once-familiar world. Most of them don’t like this stranger they see in the mirror. And they believe that no one else really likes them either--especially their parents, who seem to have stopped saying “I love you” because they believe their nearly grown teen is too old for that baby stuff, stopped trying to plan family meals because everyone is too busy, and stopped participating in school activities because their teenager doesn’t need Mom or Dad at school anymore.

Teenagers, by their nature, live as divided selves, constantly playing a game of push-me-pull-me, a game parents and teachers need to gently and lovingly resist.

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Parents need to know that their consistent participation on our high school campuses is vital. Behind every athletic team, band, club, field trip, assembly, newsletter, telephone hotline and after-school program is a team of hard-working parents who dedicate their time and resources to ensuring that good things happen for kids.

The best way to promote accountability in our schools is to volunteer.

Parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts: Our schools need you.

And employers: Give those you employ who want to volunteer in our schools the means to do so.

“Do you tell your daughter that you love her, Mrs. Reynolds?”

Yes, I do--both at home and at school.