When Your Teen Asks “Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?”: What I’ve Learned As A High School Counselor And Mom
3:47 on a rainy Tuesday last October, I was stacking college view flyers on my desk when Lila, a quiet 11th grader who’d been skipping first period algebra, pushed the door open without knocking. She kept her gray hood pulled up over half her face, dropped into the chair across from me, and picked at the frayed strap of her canvas backpack until a loose thread snapped. For ten minutes we talked about retake deadlines and how her mom kept texting her during class to ask about quiz scores, and then she went quiet, stared at the scuff on her white sneaker, and said, “Do people really find life worth living? Like, actually?”
After 12 years in this job, the question still catches me off guard. My training kicks in first, quiet and direct, no dramatic fanfare. “Have you thought about hurting yourself, or making a plan to do that?” I ask. A lot of parents worry asking this will put the idea in a kid’s head, but it never does. Most of the time, they look relieved someone finally said the quiet part out loud. Lila shook her head fast. No, she said. She just couldn’t stop turning the thought over between classes.
Early in my career, I would have jumped straight to pep talks after that. I’d have listed prom and graduation and her dream art school, told her it gets better, listed all the things she had to be grateful for. I don’t do that anymore. That kind of reassurance dismisses the way she feels right now, when she has three worksheets due that night and has to watch her 8-year-old brother until 10 p.m. while her mom works a double shift. She doesn’t care about a payoff two or four years from now if every single day feels like checking boxes just to get to the next set of boxes. I pushed the extra pack of cheddar goldfish I keep in my desk drawer across the table to her instead. “That’s such a fair question,” I said. “A lot of days I wonder the same thing. What made it pop up for you today?”
It turned out nothing terrible had happened. No one had bullied her, she hadn’t had a big fight with her mom or a breakup. It was just the rhythm of every day: wake up at 6:15, seven hours of class, three hours of homework, childcare, 20 minutes of scrolling TikTok before bed, repeat. Even hanging out with friends felt like another scheduled task she had to show up for, she said. She used to draw after school, just dumb doodles in a beat-up sketchbook, no grade, no one telling her it was good or bad or asking if she was going to turn it into a career. She’d stopped a year earlier because she didn’t have time.
Two days later, I heard the same question mumbled across my own coffee table. My 15-year-old son Javi and I were eating frozen pepperoni pizza off paper plates, my husband out of town for work, and he was slouched into the couch next to me, hood up same as Lila. “Do people actually ever think life is fun, or worth all the work?” he said, so quiet I almost missed it over the hum of the dishwasher. “Is it just homework and bills forever?”
My chest went tight, the way it always does when work stuff leaks into my own kitchen. My first instinct was to rattle off all the good things coming up: his birthday, our summer camping trip, the new skate park that just opened across town. I bit my tongue. I asked him the same direct question I ask every student. He made a face and threw a pizza crust crumb at me. “Gross, no,” he said. “I just don’t want to finish my chemistry essay.”
I told him to fold the essay up and stick it back in his backpack for an hour. We pulled our shoes on, drove 10 minutes to the corner gas station, got blue raspberry slushies that turned our tongues bright blue, and cruised around the neighborhood making fun of people’s over-the-top Halloween decorations. We spent 10 minutes cackling at a 12-foot inflatable skeleton that had tipped over into a bush. We didn’t talk about the chemistry quiz he’d failed the week before, or getting cut from JV soccer tryouts, or his best friend moving to a different lunch table. There was no point to the 45 minutes, no lesson, no goal. That was the whole point.
I talk to hundreds of teens a year, and this quiet, unnameable tiredness comes up more than almost anything else. When I was 15, I walked home from school with friends, stopped at the park to sit on the swings and talk about nothing for an hour, no one checking to make sure we were being productive. Today’s teens have their days packed from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.: AP classes, sports practice, volunteer hours that look good on college apps, test prep, homework on weekends. Even their hobbies get turned into resume material. If a kid likes to draw, adults ask if they’re entering contests. If they like to run, someone asks when they’re joining a travel team. Nothing gets to just be theirs. When every minute exists to move you toward some future milestone, of course you start wondering what the milestone is even for.
With Lila, we worked out a tiny, low-fuss arrangement, no big official meetings or therapy referrals right off the bat. Every Wednesday, she leaves her last period study hall 10 minutes early, comes to my office, and draws for 20 minutes. No grade checks, no mood check-ins, no questions about what she’s making. I just do paperwork at my desk while she draws. I talked to her algebra teacher, who agreed to let her turn in half her missing assignments for full credit instead of all of them to take the edge off. With Lila in the room, I called her mom and we agreed she doesn’t have to watch her brother one Wednesday a month, so she can go to the drop-in art studio at the community center. No massive life overhaul. Just small gaps cut into the schedule.
A month after that first conversation, she showed up 10 minutes early and slid a crumpled piece of paper across my desk before she even sat down. It was the squirrel that hangs out in the oak tree outside my window, drawn wearing a tiny backpack with an algebra textbook sticking out the top. I still have it taped to my desk. She still has bad weeks. Some Wednesdays she doesn’t draw at all, just puts her head down and rests for 20 minutes. Algebra is still hard, her mom still works a lot of double shifts. I don’t pretend any of that is fixed.
At parent coffee mornings, this is the question people pull me aside to ask more than any other. What do I actually do if my kid says this? Do I panic? Do I call a therapist right away? First, always ask the direct question about self-harm, and take it seriously if they say they have a plan or can’t promise they’ll stay safe. But most of the time, that’s not what’s happening. Most of the time, they’re just asking an honest question no adult has ever let them say out loud. You don’t need a big, perfect answer. You don’t have to convince them life is always great, because it isn’t. You just have to not shut the question down. The line I use, with students and my own kid, is simple: “That’s such a fair question. A lot of days I wonder that too. What made it pop up today?”
The other small change I suggest is to cut one thing from your kid’s schedule this month, if you can. Not all their hard classes, not every activity. Just one: the extra tutoring they don’t actually need, the weekend college workshop for 9th graders, the volunteer shift they complain about every single week. Give that 90 minutes back to them, and don’t fill it with something else “productive.” Let them waste it however they want.
Last week I saw Lila sitting at a picnic table after school, sketchbook open, passing gummy bears back and forth with another girl from art class. She waved when she saw me. That night, Javi banged through the front door grinning, mud on his hoodie, a new hole in the knee of his jeans, and yelled that he’d finally landed his first kickflip. Ten minutes later he was slouched at the kitchen table complaining about his history research paper. Some weeks he still drops his backpack and says all of it feels like too much. Some weeks I do too, back-to-back meetings and a sink full of dishes and no end to the to-do list.
I still don’t have a big, neat answer to that question. I don’t think most people do. Most days, you don’t need a big answer. You just need one small, pointless thing that’s just yours, that one week. Most of the time, that’s enough to get you to the next one. That’s all I’ve got so far.
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