Why Has My Teenager Lost All Motivation?

I was at the beach the other day watching a surf school wrap up. A boy, maybe 10 years old, was buzzing. He'd done so well that the instructor told him next term he could help teach the other kids.

He immediately went to the far-off dream, the way 10-year-olds do.

"Maybe I could get really good and set a world record! Do you think I could get a world record, mum?"

"No, I don't think so, son," she said.

She seemed like a very caring mum. I found it incredibly sad to watch.

The stage everyone misunderstands

Most parents I talk to describe the same thing. There was a version of their kid who was lit up about something. Then at some point, they just weren't.

There's a natural stage in human development where a young person is meant to throw out everything they learned in childhood and formulate their own worldview. Not as rebellion against you, but as growth. The two look identical from the outside.

Think about it: a baby doesn't give up breastmilk as an act of defiance. A toddler doesn't rebel against crawling because they're angry at their parents. They move on because the next stage requires it.

The same happens in adolescence.

Your teenager developed a way of being in the world that helped them get what they needed from you in childhood. Those traits worked well in the family environment. They won't necessarily work in the wider world, and some part of your teenager already knows this. So they start testing. Throwing out what no longer fits. Trying on different ways of being. Making mistakes. Finding edges. And they bring all of this home with them.

When we take it personally and try to hold them to childhood patterns, we get in the way of that natural movement. And when the natural movement gets blocked, disengagement begins.

When dreams get killed

A 16-year-old girl I know spent 10 minutes telling her mum about the farm she wanted to create: animals, families, school groups, a working space people could visit. She was lit up. At the end she asked: "Do you think I could do that, mum?"

"No, I don't think so. It wouldn't make any money. You're better off becoming a vet."

The look on her face said everything. Even if she becomes a vet, she'll always know it wasn't what she wanted. Successful, maybe. Fulfilled, probably not.

I spoke with a 17-year-old who told me he didn't know what he wanted to do. I said: "I think you do, you just don't think you can do it."

He admitted he was into music and sound, fascinated by how different frequencies made him feel differently. His father was an engineer. His mother a teacher. He'd never told them, never even asked. He'd already decided they wouldn't approve, so he was searching for "acceptable" alternatives where nothing appealed.

The tension that creates is exhausting. And when nothing appeals, checking out entirely starts to look like the only reasonable option.

Why they turn to screens

Disengagement leads to screens, not because teenagers are lazy, but because screens are how they numb the tension.

I knew a young teenager who started playing online games obsessively, locked in a dark room, rarely coming out. He'd always been a "good kid." He was just entering his teens, hormones all over the place, experiencing feelings that didn't feel like him. He didn't know what to do with them, so he hid.

I said to him: "It's okay for you to hate your parents right now. It's normal. They're grown up, they can handle it."

I spoke to the parents, suggested they give him room to lash out if he needed to and not make it a thing. Within two weeks his gaming dropped to almost nothing. He was spending time with his family again. Still a sour look at some meals, but the parents understood what that meant, left it alone, and it passed.

See them as powerful

A mum came to me worried about her 13-year-old: distant, room-locked, not interested in anything.

I said: "What if you see him as powerful?"

What if you assume he knows exactly what he's doing, that he's finding his way, and that he doesn't need you to fix it?

Within a few weeks she told me everything had changed. She realised how much she'd been holding onto him as a child, not seeing him as an emerging adult. Once she stopped the unconscious pushing and the expectations of how things should be, he felt the shift in her energy and started talking with her more than he had in years.

The other thing she changed: she stopped giving answers and started asking questions.

You cannot protect them from disappointment, no matter what you do. It is a necessary part of life. By shutting down the dream, you're not protecting them from pain, you're telling them they're not powerful, that you don't believe in them, that they're not free to find out what they're capable of.

Some things won't pan out. They'll figure that out themselves. Let them.

Growth is meant to look like this

Growth always looks messy before it looks like anything at all.

The foundational capacities they're developing right now, they can build at any age. By the time they're teenagers, if they understand what's going on underneath, they'll take care of it themselves.

Your job is simpler than it looks: see them as powerful, give them room to find their way, and ask questions instead of overlaying your experience onto their future.