An Age-old Remedy for Many Troubled Teens: Get a Job

In my private practice as a counselor and psychotherapist, I had many calls from parents about their difficult and disruptive teenagers. Most wanted individual counseling for their child. "Maybe he / she will talk to you," was a common refrain.

To try to get as complete a picture as possible of the situation, I would, of course, try to meet with everyone involved in the family situation. The reasons for the wide variety of problems in such families were various-- from financial pressures to marital tensions to divorce. Some of these teens, as it turned out, had learning disabilities and had terrible academic challenges. A few needed to be referred to psychiatrists for more serious diagnoses. Some teens were angry for reasons specific to this family's circumstance and interaction. In some cases, parents had added to real dilemmas and difficulties for their children; but often, the parents were conscientious and loving and employed a healthy balance of discipline and good judgment in dealing with their children, only to find that one child still found a wayward track.

While the interventions I attempted and advised often addressed extremely difficult sets of family dynamics and circumstances, regardless of the true complexities of what was causing this teenager's distress, or the distress he or she caused to the family, there was one suggestion I frequently made that topped the list for positive results-- the teenager needed to begin some kind of paid work outside the home-- a job.

This is not to imply or to support a view that serious emotional problems are at all simple to solve or can be whipped into shape by some kind of old-fashioned principles of hard-work. But with that said, work has enormous therapeutic value, particularly for young people who are in that tenuous moment between immaturity and maturity. I make this recommendation not out of theory but out of experience. In numerous cases that came through my office, regardless of the severity or nature of the original problem, a healthier, more self-reliant young adult emerged as a result of having worked in the world for pay-- usually minimum wage.

Here are some reasons that a job outside the home is so therapeutically beneficial for many troubled teenagers:

1) It gets the teenager out of the limited world of their room and out of the house, providing perspective, and a sense of him or her self in the world.

2) It provides some time apart and breathing space for other family members -- a chance for parents and siblings to experience a release from tension and negative interactions.

3) At least for a while each day, the boss replaces the parents as an authority figure, defusing some of the tension between the teen and his or her parents

4) If social life at school has been difficult or unhappy, the job opens up a new social network; a chance to work with people of all ages and a new way for the teen to see him or her self in relation to other people.

5) Many teens who have problems at school, find that they can succeed at work. The experience of legitimate success has enormous benefits for their sense of self-regard.

6) The responsibilities entailed in a job: getting to work on time, doing the job well, etc. and also allow teenagers to focus on real-world considerations, rather than their own internal conflicts.

7) The experience of earning their own money is a huge booster of self-esteem, in that the teen, for the first time finds out that his or her own hard work can positively effect his or her present and future.

8) When the teenager has in fact needed counseling, medication, tutoring or rehabilitation, a job is still an enormously therapeutic activity. It shows the teenager that he or she is able to produce, not simply to "get better."

9) The teenager benefits greatly by being viewed as a productive member of society by his or her community

10) Early job experiences give the teenager a sense of what skills to accentuate, further er study and what goals to aim for.

Again. it was experience, not theory, that led me to begin to recommend jobs for most of my teen clients. It is by no means a cure-all for troubled teens, but for many, it provides a gentle nudge over the line into emotional adulthood.