How Friendships With Elders Assist Teenagers Discover Function

Time on this highschool strikes with out hurry as soon as courses are carried out. Afternoon solar fills the halls, nearly empty of scholars now aside from the few nonetheless packing up. In a single classroom, teenagers and older adults start to reach—some ebulliently, others shyly, however all with an eagerness that feels palpable. Progressively, their voices and laughter fill the room, as they greet one another in welcoming tones. Then, voices settle as adolescents and their older grownup companions flip to one another. An expectant pause ensues, and the tenor of the room shifts as individuals dial in. Deep conversations start to emerge—slower, decrease tones resonating via the area like a gentle buzzing. It appears like life is within the making.

This scene comes from our examine on adolescents’ growth of transcendent pondering and objective in an intergenerational storytelling program. We partnered with Sages & Seekers, a corporation whose mission is to deliver collectively adolescents with elders from their communities in insight-generating friendship. Adolescents, the “seekers,” share goals in regards to the lives they wish to reside, and older adults, the “sages,” share tales and classes from the lives they’ve lived. This isn’t a mentoring program, the place one group holds extra information than the opposite. As a substitute, the teams study from and profit one another. For the seekers, this system is a chance to construct perspective on values and beliefs that can information their future lives. For the sages, it provides a possibility to view the world once more via the eyes of a teen—to look again on their life from a extra present perspective, and to distill learnings.

It’s clear from their pleasure and dedication that the kids discover worth and pleasure on this alternative. At USC’s Heart for Affective Neuroscience, Improvement, Studying and Schooling, we puzzled: How do they develop via this expertise? How would possibly they arrive to conceptualize their grownup potential, making an attempt on new identities and constructing narratives in regards to the grownup they want to change into? For us, this eight-week program supplied a window into how teenagers develop capacities for meaning-making, and a option to perceive how they construct objective even past such a program. We consider that the teachings we discovered can assist educators, dad and mom, and teenagers themselves to understand and unlock the advantages of relationships, reflections, and what we’re calling “transcendent pondering” for wellness, objective, and psychological progress. 

Transformative conversations

After every weekly session, we requested the kids to mirror on how they felt and on what they’d discovered that day, in a brief video message to us.

Analyzing their ideas, we gained insights which might be directly easy and profound. As seekers mirrored on the uncooked and deep complexities of the sages’ lived experiences, they started to extract broader classes from their very own lived experiences—grappling emotionally and cognitively with what they’d witnessed and felt, after which shifting past to generate the underlying convictions, aspirations, and identities that kind the stuff of a promising transition to maturity.

We name this means of shifting past “transcendent pondering” as a result of it builds from the specifics of conditions and happenings, and their related feelings, to broader issues and curiosities that information teenagers’ enduring goals, intentions, identities, and values. It’s pondering that builds which means past the concrete right here and now.

Think about Michael, a 17-year-old from Los Angeles. After the primary session along with his elder companion, Sal, he sought to determine particular, factual circumstances that would function a concrete foundation on which they might relate:

I discovered that we now have quite a lot of issues in frequent. Like, we each wish to sing music, quite a lot of the identical music that’s related tastes, and that in our lives we now have had loopy females. . . . For me, it was my mother and for him it was his sister.

The commonalities Michael discovered created an unguarded start line—a launchpad from which to construct a friendship with Sal. And his pondering progressed from there. By the following session, Michael’s and Sal’s shared curiosity within the historical past of basketball supplied simply the proper outlet for Michael to start to discover how issues can change over time, an early transfer towards transcendence:

Right now we had been speaking about our ideas on basketball and the way it’s modified all through the years.

Because the weeks unfolded, Michael’s pondering continued to shift in delicate but necessary methods. By week 5, he was reflecting on broad values:

The factor I took away from my dialog with my sage was that, you recognize, we each assume that the household is essential, and it influences our lives all through. . . . Like what his mother says [to him when he was young], what his dad says to him and the way he’s as an individual in the present day. And with me, like how my mother and pa affect me to change into a greater particular person day by day [and to] attempt to not be taken down simply.

Fairly remarkably, we see that as Michael constructed a friendship and shared tales with Sal, he moved from basketball hoops and music tastes to exploring the intergenerational roots of his character.

Transcendent pondering develops adolescents’ sense of objective

As Michael’s reflections reveal, over the weeks, individuals’ transcendent ideas moved them past the specifics of conditions and happenings, as their reflections turned extra forward-looking, integrative, and aspirational. Michael determined he wished to “change into a greater particular person day by day”—a values-based, growth-oriented purpose that extends indefinitely into the remainder of his life. This characteristic of intergenerational conversations—an orientation towards values and the long run— turned out to be key: The teenagers who confirmed such boundless however thought-about pondering tended to expertise a burgeoning sense of objective, outlined as an energized sense of dedication to life objectives which might be personally significant.


And this sample turned up throughout lots of the seekers’ evolving narratives as soon as we started to look. For instance, one other seeker, Laura, mirrored in a late session of this system that her sage “has tried quite a lot of new issues, after which she form of simply inspired me extra to attempt new issues since you don’t wish to undergo life with out making an attempt issues and regretting issues sooner or later.” Or Joline, who mirrored to her sage, “You talked about going again to highschool whenever you had been 41 years of age. To me, that exhibits persistence. It provides me the message to by no means quit whatever the circumstances. It actually helps me construct my motivation particularly in relation to college. . . . [it] motivates me to maintain pushing and dealing laborious.”

Relationships are key

Adolescents can derive which means from all kinds of mundane experiences on their very own, however doing so requires lively and affected person reflection that may really feel safer and be extra productive within the context of a supportive intergenerational friendship.

In our program, the older adults introduced hard-earned knowledge and life expertise, and thoughtfully and vulnerably unpacking these with their teenage companions could have modeled for the adolescents how one can have interaction with, relive, and mirror on their very own experiences—each these already had and people but to come back. The brand new buddies’ shared tales that challenged the kids’ assumptions and validated their private experiences, hanging a harmonic chord that resonated for the kids, and helped the kids develop a deeper understanding of themselves and their aspirations.

Judging from the tenor of the room, the eagerness of the individuals, and the seriousness with which the kids defined their ideas, this type of reflection is deeply participating and compelling for teenagers. Additionally it is probably crucial for his or her growth, as we discover subsequent.

Transcendent pondering helps adolescents’ mind progress

Our present work extends these findings to indicate one thing fairly extraordinary. Not solely does adolescents’ transcendent pondering develop the thoughts—we discovered that it grows the mind. In a further set of research, one other group of ethnically and socioeconomically numerous adolescents mirrored on advanced social tales and private experiences first in an interview, after which whereas present process mind scans.

The tales they engaged with had been highly effective and true, such because the story of Malala Yousafzai and tales of the violence and crimes youth had themselves witnessed. Individuals reported experiencing advanced emotions, and as they talked in interviews and later mirrored within the scanner, they grappled not solely with the concrete details of the tales, however with their broader which means—for themselves and for the world.  Whereas they weren’t participating in intergenerational conversations, the sorts of pondering and reflections they did had been related.

The mind scanning information revealed that when teenagers mirrored on this manner, they confirmed dynamic, coordinated patterns of exercise and deactivity in key networks of the mind concerned in emotion, government functioning, self-processing, and reflection (in impact, a kind of neural “dialog” between mind networks for motion and reflection, all of the whereas with sturdy activations in areas concerned in emotional emotions, self-awareness, and company).

This was fascinating, however probably the most hanging findings revealed themselves years later. As we adopted our individuals over 5 years into younger maturity, scanning their brains a second time within the interim, we found that mid-adolescents with better tendencies for transcendent pondering tended to indicate extra mind growth throughout the 2 years following the preliminary interview. That’s, evaluating teenagers’ brains from the primary to the second scan—evaluating them to themselves two years prior, not to one another—we discovered that youths who engaged in additional transcendent pondering within the interview later grew their brains extra over the following two years. This mind progress, in flip, predicted their identification growth, which then predicted their life satisfaction as younger adults. Ultimately, what this examine confirmed is that it’s not merely what teenagers assume, however how they assume, that grows their objective and their brains over time.

Along with these advantages, different research of ours recommend that transcendent pondering can promote the event of adolescents’ religious and civic concepts, and even assist defend mind growth in opposition to the results of witnessing neighborhood violence.

Implications for apply

Taken collectively, these research reveal the highly effective function of adolescents’ personal tendencies of thoughts, and patterns of thought, of their wholesome progress. Adolescents are naturally inclined towards, and deeply motivated by, reflecting on the values, beliefs, and identities that can help them in changing into fulfilled younger adults.

When the scenario is conducive, youth usually have interaction spontaneously within the sorts of transcendent pondering that develop them each neurologically and personally. However different individuals can present necessary helps and modeling for these significant reflections. For that, adolescents want secure areas by which to construct trusted and applicable friendships with adults and elders. By these friendships, adults can mannequin emotionally significant reflections on lived experiences, and teenagers will be supported in establishing a values-based sense of self and a life objective oriented towards a productive and completely happy future.

One of many seekers in our examine stated it properly, within the tribute she learn to her sage on the final day of this system. “Nancy gave me a purpose…,” she shared, “by no means to restrict myself to at least one choice . . . by no means to cease at what’s required, however to transcend.”