Spend time with people you admire, in person and biographies, documentaries, novels and movies.
14-17, 21
Send them outside with an age-appropriate pair of scissors and have them “give the grass a haircut.” Fine motor skills!
2-4
Seek / Accept job offers that teach you something valuable. Now isn’t the time in your life to worry about the money or status. Get experience! Have fun, learn, grow, challenge yourself and try new things.
15-20
Show them a picture of a riptide and explain about swimming parallel to the shore instead of fighting it. Google Outer Banks NC green fluorescent dye in riptide.
9-15
The bull-sh*t never ends. Dealing with the bull-sh*t IS your job. If you think you’ll ever reach a “post-bullsh*t stage in your life, you’re wrong.
12, 15, 19, 21
No matter how late you are, don’t speed or drive unsafely. It’s not worth someone’s life or limbs.
18-18, 21
Watch YouTube video on how to administer an Epi-pen injection. You have friends with allergies you may need to know how to do this.
11-15
“In the middle of the pain you didn’t cause, the change you didn’t want, the reality you didn’t know was coming . . . your life can still be beautiful.” Lysa TerKeurst
20
Play up your strengths. What are your strengths? What are you really good at or love doing?
13, 17, 21
Practice real-life mental math: Calculate time / age: If someone was born in 1994 how old are they today? Make change in your head: Cost is 14.27, how much change do you have if you give the cashier 20 bucks? Calculate percentages: tips, tax brackets, sales!!
12, 14, 20
It’s hard to accept that the world can be so cruel and unfair, but sometimes accepting it and focusing on what part of it you CAN change is - I’ve learned - the key.
15
So many young adults (and older one too) suffer from a lack of direction, living life without a sense of purpose. ______Here’s my advice: **Do what you love**. ____If you don’t know what that is yet (totally okay) then *go where you’re needed.**___ Make yourself USEFUL doing some sort of work that makes the world (or your family or your community or your country) a better place. Please don’t sit around playing video games or goofing off. That will make you miserable! ___ AND it’s a waste of God’s work (you.) Get busy. _____Stay involved in anything you care about deeply, or that needs you desperately. It will feed your soul and open all kinds of doors.
12, 14, 17
Look for examples of people who have dealt with loss without giving in to bitterness. What do they have in common?
17
Be on the lookout for people who are not included and reach out. There was a girl in my 8th grade class who was pregnant. Nobody talked to her, including me. Looking back, I regret that deeply. How scared and alone she must have been. She could have used a friend. I wish I would have asked her to sit by me at lunch or talked to her about homework or something.
11-13
Read blog post from Parent's Corner: The Letter Your Teenager Can't Write You By Gretchen Schmelzer June 23, 2015
13-17
Be mindful of avoiding the “race to nowhere.” No sense in stressing over school and work. We get one life!! LIVE it! Work hard at what you love. There will be seasons of busting your butt, and that’s good. Just make sure it’s in pursuit of something you’re passionate about. And I hope you take seasons of rest, too. Time to recharge, reflect and decide what’s next for you.
14, 16, 18, 21