Understanding 13-18 year olds

Anderson Selvasegaram of SHELTER, is in his 30’s and used to work among troubled youths in a small community centre for about four years after he finished his university studies. He recounts the stories of two youths he met while there.

Bee Seng*

Bee Seng is quite an interesting teenager. He has a disposition of a feminine boy but the behaviour of a regular street thug – soft spoken in speech but violent in action. He joined this Chinese school gang and managed to gain enough notoriety to attain some sort of ranking in his gang. It was quite clear that he enjoyed the feeling of respect and liked the fact that people knew enough of him to ensure that they did not “mess about” with him. As you listen to him, you get sucked into hearing about the details of his exploits. With little remorse, he would joke about the people he had sliced, the characters he extorts from and the ‘protection’ he provides.

Over the period of a year or so when he spent a bit of time in the community centre, there were numerous times he claimed that he was through with his gang related activities. He claimed that he planned to pay out his membership and hopefully, be a little more serious about his post SPM future. Every time he said that to me, I listened, hoping but not expecting. Then he would get right back into trouble and his parents would tell me about his recent ‘indiscipline’. He would meekly meet me again. There was little one could do but to accept the person while disagreeing with the actions.

Andrew*

I have never met anyone like Andrew before. For every 5 – 10 minutes this guy spent in studying, he would spend the next minute spaced out, the following two minutes being fidgety and the next three minutes pleading for a five-minute break. He would spend so much of his day struggling to sit still. As such, he could not even reach the stage of his studies where he would try to read and understand his school work. He was often compared unfavourably with his sisters and, in his opinion, was put down all the time by his dad and made to feel useless. He also felt that his mum, for some reason or another, avoided building any sort of relationship with him. He felt like an intruder in his own home. Somehow this sense of disownment was carried on into his own personal relationships with friends – from my observation he appeared to be treated like a door mat.

So what is the effect of all these circumstances to his behaviour, and more importantly, his character? For one he is horribly annoying. I am pretty sure he doesn’t really know how annoying he actually is. He seems so much deprived of any sense of significance that he is willing to sell his soul just to get it. He is in your face all the time, clinging on to you as if you are his only friend in the world. And because of that, he is easily taken advantage of, ever willing to compromise right or wrong for anyone who wants to be his ‘friend’. As expected, he was without much purpose and direction in life.

During one of his more sober times, as I was taking him home, he spoke in a depressed but yet angry tone, “You know, I considered many times to kill myself. What is the point of being around when my family believes I am useless and my fiends treat me like dirt?”

Adding it up

I guessed very few youths are in the mould of Bee Seng or Andrew. They may seem a little extreme, a little too wayward. But, are their hearts and minds very different from the regular youths? Are they very different even from adults like you and me? From their stories, you catch glimpses of them wanting to feel important and wanted – a need that regular youths have too. In Bee Seng’s world, he resorted to joining a gang, Bee Seng and others like him could get some recognition from their peers and therefore obtain the feeling of important they long for?

It is possible to say that teenagers’ actions often times are linked to their feelings of self-worth. Feeling important and wanted goes a long way in giving teenagers a healthy sense of this self-worth. Most of the time, such self-worth can be developed through simple acts of affirmation and acceptance of the persons they are, and not necessarily from their actions, from significant people within their lives. If they could get this from parents and good friends, would they still need to get it from their gangs?

Youth, just like most of us in the past, probably need the leeway to mess up and mess up again. They do not have the experience and maturity in thought to weigh through predicaments carefully and make the best of decisions. Many need the numerous “second chances” before they get it right once and for all. Teenagers are in this crucial formative period of their lives and our role is to relate with them and show them that they are worth listening to. At some point, in the right environment and context, they will listen and try – at least two youth mentioned above eventually did.

*not their real names