What to do when your teen asks ‘Do people really find life worth living?’
I’m scraping congealed spaghetti sauce off plates into a tupperware, the sink is full of lavender-scented suds that have already turned gray, and the oldies station my husband left on in the morning is still humming through the speaker above the stove. My 16-year-old Javi is slouched in the dining nook, half a garlic bread on a paper plate in front of him, hoodie with a hole at the elbow pulled up around his shoulders. He’s been scrolling TikTok for 20 minutes without saying a word, so when he asks it, it comes out of nowhere.
“Mom, do people actually find life worth living?”
The sponge slips out of my hand and clatters into the suds. I wipe my hands on my jeans and turn around, already running through the list of red flags I memorize for work: has he been sleeping more? Skipping practice? Pulling away from his friends? Last week he got a B on a chemistry test and didn’t even mope about it, that seemed normal.
I sit down across from him, pick off the end of his garlic bread (he never eats the crust) and say the first concrete thing I tell every kid I work with: “First off, are you having thoughts of hurting yourself right now?”
He rolls his eyes so far back I can see the whites, and locks his phone. “No. God. I was just reading a thread on Reddit. Most people in the comments said they just get through the week for the weekend, or for their kids, or whatever. No one said they actually think life’s worth it for them. Is that just how it is when you grow up?”
That’s when I relax a little. I work part-time as a high school counselor, and I get this question at least once a week from kids his age. It’s almost never the crisis we panic about, at least not at first. It’s just the first big unspoken question of adulthood: all the stuff we’ve been telling them about working hard, going to college, building a happy life, it doesn’t line up with what they actually see. They see us working 40 hours a week complaining about our bosses, they see influencers faking their perfect lives online, they scroll past bad news 10 times a day. Of course they’re asking.
I almost gave him the cheesy script I used to reach for when I first started counseling: Of course life is worth it! Think about sunsets, and vacations, and hanging out with your friends! But I stopped. I remembered when I was 26, a year after my mom died, I got up every day just because I had to go to work and pay my rent. I didn’t think life was worth it then. I just thought it was what you did. So I didn’t lie to him.
I said “No, not every day. Some days I drag myself through work, I forget to eat lunch, I yell at you for leaving your cleats in the middle of the hallway, and I go to bed thinking that was a whole day of nothing good. Some days I don’t feel like it’s worth it at all.”
He blinked, like he wasn’t expecting that. I went on: “But that doesn’t mean it never is. It’s just not this big constant feeling everyone talks about. It’s little bits, mostly. Like last Saturday, when we got glazed donuts and you laughed so hard you got glaze on your new soccer cleats? That 30 seconds was worth it. Last week, a kid I work with brought me a lemon drop from the vending machine just because I said I liked lemon drops once. That 10 seconds was worth it.”
After that, we didn’t have a big dramatic heart-to-heart. He went back to scrolling, I finished the dishes, and we watched a terrible episode of The Great British Baking Show after dinner like we always do. But the question stuck around, for both of us.
What I’ve learned from working with kids and from my own is that when your kid asks this, the worst thing you can do is brush it off or give them a fake happy answer. Here’s what works, small stuff that doesn’t take hours of therapy or big awkward conversations: First, always lead with that safety question I asked Javi. It’s not going to put the idea in their head, it just clears the air. If they say yes, you reach out for help right away, that’s clear. If they say no, you can talk about the actual question without panic hanging over you.
Second, don’t lie. You don’t have to dump all your own struggles on them, but you can admit that adulthood isn’t the nonstop joy people make it out to be. It’s okay to say most days are just okay. That takes the pressure off them, so they don’t think they’re doing something wrong because they don’t feel ecstatic all the time.
Third, we started this tiny habit after that first conversation: every night at dinner, we each say one 10-second good thing that happened that day. It can’t be a big thing like “we went on vacation” – it has to be something small. The chocolate chip cookie at the cafeteria was warm. My dog met me at the door when I got home. The song I like came on the radio right when I got in the car. It takes 30 seconds out of the whole day, and it helps us all notice those little bits that add up, without forcing anyone to feel grateful all the time.
It’s not a fix. Last week, we were driving to soccer practice, and Javi brought it up again out of nowhere. “I still don’t know the answer, by the way,” he said. I told him that’s okay. I’m still figuring it out some days too. He nodded, put his headphones in, and that was that.
Some nights I lie awake thinking I should have a better answer for him. But what I do know is, he can ask me the question, and I don’t freak out and I don’t lie to him. That’s more than I got when I was his age, asking the same thing to adults who changed the subject or told me to cheer up. Last night, his 10-second good thing was “the rain sounded really good on the roof while I was reading tonight.” That’s enough for right now. It has to be.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What to do when your teen asks ‘Do people really find life worth living