While I worked in youth ministry, I had a mantra I kept to myself and shared with only a trusted few: Treat teenagers like adults; treat adults like children. I’m not sure where I first heard it. Perhaps it’s even original, but I’m uncertain. I’m sure many adults hearing it might feel insulted, but let me explain.

The first part of the mantra is pretty straightforward. Every teenager I’ve ever met was more mature than people gave them credit for. Even the “immature” ones were still often more capable and compassionate than many adults in their lives seemed to realize. As such, I started to raise my expectations of teenagers and children. I didn’t think of myself as an adult talking down to them— more like a fellow traveler who had gone a little farther down the road and had slightly more experience and information as a result. Of course, it probably helped that I was in my late-20s, a time when I really wasn’t that much farther down the road! Still, with few exceptions, I found the teenagers I worked with were happy to step up and help in ways a lot of us adults hadn’t expected. So, yeah, treat teenagers like adults.

As for the second half of the saying, I think we overestimate what adults can handle. Adults often suppress our needs for gentleness and compassion from those around us due to pride and the pressure to conform. As such, these deep needs usually go unacknowledged and unfulfilled. So when I say to treat adults like children, what I mean is that adults require just as much (sometimes more) nurturing as children. Adults seldom get a free pass to express emotion or ask for comfort. Adults often need tenderness but don’t feel it’s socially acceptable to request it. So, yeah, treat adults like children. We all need it more than we will admit.

Church-based youth ministry was a strange petri dish for this lesson, as church is an acceptable environment for only some displays of emotion. Even in churches, there are unspoken rules about what can and cannot be shared, which is why a lot of sad or scared or overwhelmed people often opted for a more socially-acceptable emotion: “righteous anger.” When I was a youth minister, some of my students’ parents had what could only be called “temper tantrums” while high on righteous anger in my office. Back then, I didn’t have the empathy that I’ve learned through chaplaincy training, but I at least realized there was usually a deeper feeling under the anger— a need begging to be met. I knew if I could just wait out the tantrum, I might get a glimpse at the sadness or fear or exhaustion underneath— the feeling which needed attention but couldn’t be shown due to the rules of the social ecosystem.

Of course, we didn’t always get there. Sometimes —okay, I confess, often—, I would give in and appease the irate parent due to my own need for self-preservation. After all, I was a 20-something in my first decade of ministry who hadn’t yet acknowledged a lot of my own emotional baggage; I scared easily. Even if I glimpsed the deeper feelings in those encounters, they might not want to discuss those deeper hurts with the smart-ass youth minister, so we’d reach an uneasy ceasefire. Other times, when the tantrums escalated to threats, I would call in another staff member who was gracious enough to play bad cop to my good cop, and we would impose boundaries to protect the parent and myself. Weathering tantrums, developing emotional awareness, imposing boundaries— these are all childrearing concepts, but adults need them too! The adults who reached tantrum level were also in deep pain, but they didn’t know how to ask for compassion, so they came instead with anger. What if we approached them with the same grace and patience we might show a hurting child?

Treat teenagers like adults; treat adults like children.

Teenagers are more capable than we give them credit for.
And adults are carrying more pain and anxiety and sorrow than we acknowledge.

Trust teenagers with responsibilities.
Greet adults with empathy and compassion and patience.

Encourage teenagers to achieve.
Encourage adults to open up.

Treat teenagers like adults; treat adults like children.
We all need it.