No teen deserves to feel alone.
We connect every teenager with trusted adults and resources because no teen deserves to feel alone.
What makes a caring adult a trusted resource? When you complete our easy, online certification, you will leave with the skills and knowledge to connect with teens and help them walk through life’s challenges. You will be fully equipped to lead a Support Group!
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Students helped since 2008
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“One thing I learned from this group is that I always have someone to talk to.”
– Teen Life support group student
I can’t say enough about the benefit with partnering with Teen Life.
The past eight years, I have led or co-led at least one group every year, sometimes two. The curriculum is pertinent and helpful to get kids to talk and engage. Kids need a safe place to be encouraged and to gain skills in coping with school pressures and life stresses.
Heritage MS Counselor
Grapevine/Colleyville ISD
It has been a great blessing to walk beside these kids on their turf.
Equipping them with some tools to help break the generational cycles of self-esteem, relationship, and spiritual poverty, and to assist them in casting a vision on where they want to be and how they might get there.
Jacob
Decatur ISD, Support Groups Facilitator
You’ve got to check this out!
It’s Not the Teacher’s Fault
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this. Mainly from students but also from parents who see the teacher as the problem in a particular class. I have to admit, I have even said the same thing when I was in school. Even though this is an easy thing to fall back on, I have never felt comfortable (and the more I work with teachers and schools, I feel less and less comfortable) with this mentality. The problem has been that I didn’t know how to process this mentality in order to make it better, much less how to communicate to people how they too could shift their perspective, stop blaming and start making positive progress. That is until recently. I just finished a book called Extreme Leadership. It is a business book, but the last principle they talk about in the book helped me begin to clarify why the idea that the teacher is the problem doesn’t compute for me, and I hope it won’t for you either.
5 Ways to Keep Teens Safe This Summer
As a teenager, there are few things greater than Summer Break – no school, getting to sleep in, more time with friends, days by the pool or at the lake, family vacations, snow cones, and fewer rules. Wait, fewer rules? How does that make sense? Unfortunately, as teenagers gain more free time in the summer, many are also held to lower standards, fewer boundaries and later curfews. As someone who works with students in the school year, who hears about their wild weekends, and crazy summer stories, please don’t make it easier for your child to get into trouble. Summer is fun (and it should stay that way), but fun doesn’t mean that you stop parenting. Summer is the time when you need to be even more on guard! As the parent (or friend, coach, youth minister, mentor) of a teenager, it is your job to help them set their boundaries, manage freedom and make good decisions.
Helping Students Lament
This past week, I was on staff at a church camp and spent time teaching a Bible Class. Earlier in the Spring, they put out the class list for the teachers to choose a topic, and I guess I got there a little too late…One of the only topics left was on mourning. Yay! Or boo, I guess. As I started preparing for this lesson, I was led to the various “laments” in the Old Testament of the Bible. In these laments, the authors would express their pain and grief in such a way to leave no doubt how they were feeling about things. Typically, the authors would speak in metaphors to describe the pain they were going through, and often the finger was pointed directly at God. Being a former youth pastor, I thought I had taught it all. And having taught “church kids” most of that time, I assumed they have heard it all. But not this time.
Helping When It Hurts
I just got back from serving with LiveBeyond in Thomazeau, Haiti, where poverty, starvation, sickness and Satan can be seen at every corner. While I was still processing this level of hurt and pain, I came home to the injustice of the Orlando shooting. Hurt has so many different faces. Hurt can be overwhelming and sometimes it is easier to do nothing rather than wade into the unknown of pain. However, if there is anything that I have learned while in Haiti, it is that we cannot simply sit back and stay quiet. If not us, then who?
The Best/Worst Time of the Year
Summer is upon us! Depending on your perspective, this can be the best/worst time of year for an adult in the life of a student. Over the next few weeks, you might see more joyous posts on Instagram from teachers with more trepidatious thoughts from parents. But for the student, this can also be the best/worst time as well. You see, for many students this time of year means freedom. They can sleep until noon (or 3), not be bothered with homework and other expectations, and generally just be free to do what they want. This freedom comes with an unburdening of sorts and a place to just “breathe”.
Don’t Panic about Grief with Beverly Ross
Grief comes in many different forms, but there is a way to bring hope and encouragement to difficult circumstances. Don’t panic about grief, you’ve got this!