Our High School Counsellor, Ms Michelle Koay, facilitated the final series of Conversations @ SJI International on “Preparing your teens for adulthood”. Five-time slots were offered for this topic, and more than 90 parents participated in the online sessions.

We started the session with parents sharing their thoughts about what it means for our teens to be ready for adulthood. We discussed the impact of culture, upbringing, and/or our partner’s upbringing and beliefs. Another significant influence is growing up and transitioning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The following are eight areas to address in preparing our teens for adulthood. Do note that our role as parents is to provide, support and encourage the opportunities for our teens as adulting is an experiential process. They are unlikely to learn the skills via classroom lessons.

1. Learning how to adapt and be resilient in the face of changing circumstances, disappointments and failures, developing a more straightforward and more differentiated set of goals.
2. What are the individual strengths, limits and interests? Identifying available options and ways to leverage them and be able to set goals that are a good and realistic match to their abilities.
3. A sense of purpose, having a spark, something that fuels passion and meaning and gives shape to your plans
4. Capacity for intimacy and close social relationships: trust, self-disclosures, closeness, commitment, concern
5. Learning to maintain relationships
6. Reflective capacity
7. Analyse one's motive and experiences to extract lessons to shape future goals, decisions and behaviours.
8. Self-regulation: the ability to control one's impulses and one's emotions

Other valuable points shared include:

• Addressing our parental anxiety "guilt" of not doing enough for our teens and recognising that it may affect their adulting process - learning to let go.
• How to balance - consider the analogy of flying a kite, sometimes pulling on the string and sometimes letting go a little. Being aware of the different personalities and temperaments of our teens.

Facilitate the process of gaining self-awareness and finding out who they are, what they want, and what makes them happy and instilling the values that will guide them throughout their lives, learning executive functioning skills to plan, make decisions, and stay organised.

• Learning how to take care of themselves, e.g. cooking, household chores, budgeting (to be more independent).
• Opportunities for new experiences, taking on responsibilities (including caring for elderly grandparents, younger siblings or cousins, pets), a sense of ownership, accountability, independence, and holding back from providing a "safety net".
• Opportunities to experience implications and consequences of decisions, whether right or wrong, positive or negative.
• Importance of staying connected as a family, accepting and supporting "failure", and celebrating successes. If Plan A does not work, there's always Plan B or even Plan C.
• Learning to step out of their comfort zone, think out-of-the-box, flexibility, adaptability.
• Developing empathy for others through volunteering, part-time work, dinner conversations with extended family or family friends or guests - build community
• Self-regulation: self-awareness, parent to co-regulate, modelling behaviours, understanding triggers, developing coping strategies