Have you ever been in a situation where your mind finds it hard to adapt, even hard to grasp what to do in a certain environment?

A human mind has a way it codes in a message, breaks it down in a mental process to eventually settle on a given answer.

 I am not a medic in any way, I am just using a simple language to explain something without using the medical jargons which mostly are hard to understand.

We sometimes go through what I call a mental lock from time to time where our minds feel clogged like nothing is being processed or there are a lot to be processed and are encountering a jam of some kind.

 In simple terms, it is our minds trying to figure out something the best way it knows how. Sometimes it processes in less than a millisecond, other times it might take months trying to figure out the best way to cope, to survive or the best way to adapt.

Most of the youths happen to go through this stage in their lives when they are learning not to be babies anymore, they know they are young adults and have to respond and act as one.

 This transformation takes time. During this period, a youth becomes irritable, defiant and can even engage in physical fights.

 They are in conflict with themselves, in them, a young man or woman is about to be birthed and the body can feel these changes, and their minds are being configured to act as adults, the body at this hour is in conflict, it is yet to register who the new man or woman is, or going to be.

It is at this stage that parents of these youths have a hard time for they don’t understand why a young boy who was so polite and kind has all of a sudden turned violent, aggressive and rebellious.

Yet when they ask their sons or daughters why they are behaving so, they have no answers too, they answer that they don’t know, or just bang their doors on their way out.

 Remember, they are also struggling trying to figure it out, they are at war with their entire body system that is also telling them in its own coded language to grow up literally.

This stage is also a period where they experiment a lot! In their quest to become adults.The first intuition is to act like their mothers or fathers.

Girls change their mode of dressing to look like their mothers or their female role models from fancy Magazines.Boys try to smoke like they saw their dads smoke or their male role models in their favourite movies do.

 In other words, they are parting ways with their adolescent stage and entering into adulthood but my friend there is no manual that tells one how to become an adult and so they experiment till they settle on that which feels like it is an older version of themselves.

Sadly, some parents who have these young adults going through this stage of life, conclude that their youths are thieves, smokers, rebellious, rude and angry.They end up giving up on them.

I do not blame them, there is no manual on this case that teaches a parent on how to raise their young ones and we mostly raise them on our maternal or paternal instincts.

Others learn from the elders who have raised their children and their grandchildren and therefore have got experience.

Personally what I have learned from youths and would want to share here is that they need a lot of love, lots of understanding, mentorship and above all space!

The way you want some quiet time to figure out how to go about that business venture you have with your friend, or that deal that is going to give you a couple of millions, the same way you want to be given space to figure out things as a parent.it is the same way these youths want some space. Allow them to be.

Mentorship at this stage is key. As a parent, you have been there, where you hoped someone would help you figure things out without them judging you, a time when you made a mistake and wanted the person close to you to give you a trial and error period without them being so harsh on you.

A youth is also discovering who the new man or woman is and making mistakes is one way of finding out because even when they fail, they will learn from the experience and will not want to go the same way again. Some lessons are learned best when one fails or makes mistakes.

Let us support our youths as they define themselves and in return, they will stand by us during our old age. Let us shape the Leaders of tomorrow now and in return, we shall enjoy the fruits of their leadership in our older days.
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