My teen says they wasted two years of their life: what actually helps, from a parent who’s been there
The dryer was rumbling through the laundry room last month, and I was folding my 17-year-old son’s stinky soccer socks when he leaned in the doorway, crumbs from a peanut butter granola bar sticking to the hole in his hoodie elbow, and said, “Mom, I feel like I’ve wasted two years of my life. I don’t know what to do.” I had the generic response ready—Oh honey, that’s not true, those years weren’t for nothing—but I stopped mid-fold when I saw his jaw tighten. I shut off the dryer, sat down on an empty laundry basket, and said, “Tell me what you mean.”
He’d been counting, he said. Two years since he broke his ankle at cross country tryouts freshman year, the summer he’d run 20 miles a week to make varsity. Six weeks in a cast, by the time he was cleared all the team spots were filled, his friends were at practice every afternoon, and he just… stopped trying. He skipped his best friend’s going away party the next fall. He stayed home during sophomore prom when everyone else went. He scraped by with C’s and D’s in his core classes, spent most nights playing Valorant until 1 a.m., and didn’t let anyone talk about it. When I’d tried to push him into rec basketball or youth group those first two years, he’d just shut his door and not talk for hours. I’d spent a lot of nights crying to my husband that I’d messed up, that my kid was throwing away his high school years for a screen.
He talked for almost 45 minutes that afternoon, standing in the laundry room, kicking a loose floorboard. He listed all the things he missed: the post-practice donut runs, baking sourdough with his grandma before she moved to Florida, weekend bike rides along the river with his old friend. I didn’t interrupt, I didn’t fix it. I just nodded, and every once in a while asked, “What else?” That’s the first thing I learned that I didn’t know before: when your kid says they wasted time, don’t argue with their feeling. It sounds obvious, but every instinct you have as a parent is to make the bad feeling go away immediately. But contradicting them just tells them they can’t be honest with you next time. Instead of jumping in with “That’s not true,” try “That sounds really heavy.” It’s a tiny shift, but it changes everything.
When he finished talking, I didn’t give him a pep talk about second chances or anything like that. I also didn’t launch into the list I’d been keeping in my head for two years: you could join winter track next semester, you could text your old friend, we can get a tutor for chemistry. I knew that would overwhelm him. All I asked was, “What’s one small thing you wish you could have back that you can do this week?” No big goals, no 180-degree turn, just one small thing that doesn’t take a ton of planning or commitment.
He thought for a minute, and said he wanted to start baking sourdough again. That was it. I talked to my cousin, who’s a high school counselor, a few weeks before that conversation, and she told me that when teens say they’ve wasted time, they’re not usually asking for a big life plan. They’re asking for permission to stop feeling guilty and start moving forward again, one tiny step at a time. Big plans feel impossible when you already feel like you’re behind. The second practical thing I picked up: don’t push for an immediate overhaul. If your kid says they wasted a semester, or two years, don’t respond by mapping out how they’ll catch up on everything this month. That just reinforces the idea that they’re failing, and they’ll shut down. Asking for one small, doable thing takes all the pressure off.
It’s been three weeks since that laundry room conversation. Jax bought his own flour and yeast with his allowance from bagging groceries at the local market. He baked two loaves last weekend, gave one to our next door neighbor and left the other on the counter for us, crusty and a little burnt on the bottom. He found a teen baking class that meets once a month at the community center, paid the registration fee himself, and is going next Saturday.
He still plays just as much video games as he did before. He still hasn’t texted his old friend, and his chemistry grade is still a C. I still remind him to turn in his homework every Sunday night, and there are still afternoons he comes home and goes straight to his room instead of hanging out. It’s not a miracle fix. He said the other night at dinner, “It still sucks that I didn’t do more those two years. I still wish I’d gone to prom and all that.” That feeling didn’t just vanish overnight, and I don’t expect it to.
I used to think that if my kid ended up saying he wasted years of his life, that meant I’d done a bad job as a parent. I thought I had to get him back on track immediately, prove that those years weren’t really wasted. Now I know that it doesn’t work that way. His feeling is real, and it doesn’t need me to fix it for him. It just needs me to help him take the next small step. We don’t know what will happen with the baking class, or if he’ll reach out to his old friend, or if his grades will jump up next semester. Right now, that’s okay. He’s talking about the future again, instead of just feeling stuck in the past. That’s enough for now.
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