It's bad timing, but a lot of kids become teenagers just as their parents are hitting their mid-life crisis. So everybody's miserable and confused and seeking that new sense of identity.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old.
I feel, as an adult, I'm very similar to how I was as a pre-teen. Maybe it's a case of arrested development, but I feel like it's easy to slip back into those shoes, and I feel like if we were all magically transported back to our middle school years, we'd all act like we did in middle school.
There is a point in every young person's life when you realize that the youth that you've progressed through and graduate to some sort of adulthood is equally as messed up as where you're going.
All generations of teens have it hard, I think. Each society and century has its struggles that the others can't compare to.
People forget what it was like to be young, the stuff I'm expressing now is for the first time.
It's only when the kids are in their late twenties that families really face up to what they are.
Parents are in denial a lot of the time - everybody knows what they did as a teenager, but somehow, when they grow up, it all disappears.
Kids who enter 'adulthood' without any strong attachments to people who know and care about them have a rough road ahead, to say the least.
So many young people are coming out of a generation that has experienced deep woundedness and brokenness, and they are full of life. They are eager to engage. They care about community, and they care about one another.
I didn't have a teen age at all. I didn't even look at boys, never mind... then suddenly it was like, 'Oh my god!' So I made up for a lot of lost time very quickly. It was kind of bonkers. Working hard, partying hard - but also experiencing life, you know.