Hi Abby,

Some teens bounce back like rubber bands.  Others collapse like poorly made patio furniture.

And if you’ve got one of the latter — the kind who spirals into existential despair because they got a B, or because a friend liked someone else’s story first — you’ve probably asked yourself some version of:

“How do I help them toughen up… without accidentally turning into my dad?”

It’s a fair question.

What most parents notice first isn’t the absence of resilience.

It’s a kid melting down, overreacting, or collapsing whenever something goes wrong. The kind of moment where a bit of constructive feedback turns into a full-blown character assassination.  Or one bad grade becomes a three-hour spiral about how they’re obviously going to fail at life and live in a bin.

It’s easy to focus on the wobble.
It’s loud. It’s dramatic.  And it tends to overshadow everything else in the room.

But underneath all that, if they know what they’ve got, they’re more likely to hold steady when things wobble.

When a teen knows their strengths — really knows them, not just recites them off a CV their school made them write in Year 9 — they’re more likely to do something quite useful:

They cope.

They recover faster.
They problem-solve with slightly fewer door slams.
They don’t crumble every time life gets mildly disappointing.

And no, this isn’t just “positive thinking” with a new label.

Knowing their strengths gives teens something to hold onto when everything else turns pear-shaped. Or just slightly misaligned in that deeply inconvenient teenage way.  It gives them a place to start.

Even if that place is “At least I’m good with people” while they bomb a maths test.  That’s still a foothold. That’s still resilience.

Self-awareness is not fluff.

It’s a survival tool. Especially when hormones, homework, and peer judgment are all peaking simultaneously.

The problem is, teens are often terrible at seeing their own strengths.

What they are good at is running a 24/7 internal diagnostics system that only flags what’s broken.

They’re:
    •    Hyper-aware of their flaws
    •    Obsessed with comparison
    •    Fluent in self-criticism
    •    Blind to almost everything that’s working

Unless your teen’s strength is “overthinking,” in which case — congratulations, they’ve found it.

Part of this is developmental. Their brains are literally wired for self-consciousness.

But it’s also cultural.

By the time most teens hit high school, they’ve internalised a relentless message: You are behind. Everyone else is better. Catch up. 

And in that kind of environment, even obvious strengths get downplayed. Unless it’s academic or athletic or has a trophy attached, teens will often dismiss it entirely.

“She’s good with people.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t count.”

“He’s creative.”
“Yeah, but not in a real way.”

This is where parents come in.

Not with the “You’re amazing” speeches — that’s mostly background noise by now — but with precision.

You don’t need to hype them up.
What they need is your help to see what’s already there.

Try this:

• Talk about strengths as patterns, not just outcomes. “You did well on that” is fine. But “You’ve got a knack for figuring out what other people need — that shows up everywhere” is useful.
• Name the invisible stuff. Like their sense of humour. Their loyalty. Their patience with their younger siblings (even if it only shows up during snack handovers). These are strengths. Just not the Instagrammable kind.
• Reflect it back when it happens. “You didn’t give up on that. I noticed.” No fanfare. No confetti. Just an honest cue that says, “Hey, that’s part of who you are.”
• Model it. Talk about your own strengths — and how you discovered them. Not the polished version. The messy one. “I realised I’m good in a crisis because I used to be the only one who could find the dog when it escaped.”

None of this turns your teen into a walking resilience poster. But it can change the story in their head.

When things go wrong, and they will, your teen doesn’t just have to rely on whatever adult is shouting the loudest about grit or growth mindset.

They’ve got their own reference points. They develop the capacity to say “This sucks. But I’ve handled stuff before. I know something about how I operate.”

And that’s the start of resilience.

When things go wrong — and they will — your teen doesn’t have to rely on pep talks or borrowed confidence.

• They’ve got their own reference points.
• They’ve seen themselves handle hard things before.
• Its a kind of self-knowledge that may not look impressive, but it works.

If this kind of change — from critique to strengths, from “fixing” to seeing — is something you’d like to do more of at home, that’s the kind of work I do with parents.

Until next time…. Be kind and courageous.   Chris Hudson Youth Specialist & Parent Coach