What To Do When Your Teen Asks: Do People Really Find Life Worth Living?
I was folding Mia’s soccer hoodies after dinner last month, the living room smelled like lavender detergent and the leftover garlic bread we left on the counter. The Great British Baking Show played low on the TV, Mia was curled up on the other end of the couch scrolling TikTok, half a bowl of fruit cereal gone soggy next to her elbow. She didn’t look up from her phone when she said it: “Do people really find life worth living?”
I fumbled a striped sock and it fell behind the couch. I’d been expecting a question about gas money or a last minute trip to the mall, not that. I wiped my hands on my jeans, sat down next to her instead of leaning over the laundry basket like I usually do when she talks. “What makes you ask that?” I said.
She turned the phone around to show me a clip of a guy in his late 20s sitting in his car after work, saying he works 40 hours a week just to pay rent and buy groceries, and the only thing he looks forward to is the two weeks of vacation he gets once a year. “All these people online are saying it’s just all a routine,” she said, putting her phone down. “No one’s actually happy. They’re just going through the motions.”
When I was teaching 10th grade English, I got this question all the time, usually scribbled in the margins of journal assignments. Back then, my first instinct as a new teacher was to send any kid who wrote that straight to the counselor. And don’t get me wrong, if your kid is talking about not wanting to be here, that’s a crisis and you need to get help. But 9 times out of 10, when I sat down and talked to those kids, this wasn’t a cry for help. It was developmental. They’re just old enough to see past the soft stories we tell little kids: that if you work hard you’ll get a perfect job and a perfect family and be happy forever. They see us stressing about bills, they see their older siblings working entry level jobs that drain them, they see adults online talking about burnout after years of chasing that perfect life. They’re just asking the question we’ve all asked at some point, out loud.
My first impulse that night was to blurt out “of course it is!” like my dad did when I asked the same question at 17. That shut me down fast, because I knew he had bad days too. I knew he’d come home from work complaining about his boss and drink too much beer on the porch and say it was all garbage. So instead of lying, I told her the truth about the previous week.
I told her I spent three straight nights doing our taxes, and when I finished I realized we owed $420 we didn’t have budgeted. I cried a little in the home office, then remembered I forgot to buy milk for the morning, then stepped in Garlic’s (our chonky tabby) vomit on the way to bed. That whole day felt like garbage, I told her. But the next morning, I stumbled into the kitchen, and you left that neon pink sticky note on my coffee mug that said “don’t forget your granola cookie” with a lopsided heart. I poured my coffee, ate the cookie, and stood at the sink watching a squirrel steal all the peanut butter out of the bird feeder. That three minutes? It felt worth it. That’s the thing, I told her. No one feels like life is worth it every single minute. Most days are just a mix of the bad stuff and the tiny good stuff.
She was quiet for a minute, then nodded. She said yesterday, after her friend Lila failed her driver’s test for the second time, they skipped study hall and walked to the gas station for blue raspberry slushies. Lila cried all the way there, but by the time they finished their slushies, their fingers were so blue they looked like smurfs, and they couldn’t stop laughing about it. That felt good, she said.
That’s the thing no one tells you when you’re a parent, when your kid asks this big dark question, you don’t need a big answer. I’ve picked up a few small things over the years that work, that don’t require any big planning or special training. First, pause three seconds before you answer. That stops you from reacting with panic or a fake happy answer that your kid will see right through. Second, admit if you’ve wondered the same thing. You don’t have to be the person who has it all together. Third, don’t pull out your big list of life achievements: the promotion, the fancy vacation, the perfect kid. Talk about the tiny thing. The cold lemonade on the porch after mowing the lawn. The way your kid laughs at a bad meme. The way the rain sounds on the roof when you get to sit inside. It’s those things that feel real, because kids know those things exist too. They don’t believe your story about how your dream job makes every day worth it, because they see you come home tired from that dream job.
Last week, we got the call that my mom’s knee surgery got pushed back three months. Mia was in the car with me when I got off the phone, and she looked out the window and said “See? It’s just one thing after another, right?” I didn’t argue with her. I said “Yeah, it is a lot of the time.” She nodded, and said “I still think about that blue slushie, though.” We stopped for ice cream on the way home, Garlic got a little scoop of vanilla when we got there, and we watched another baking episode.
She still asks the question every few weeks, usually when something bad happens or she’s been scrolling too much. I don’t have the perfect answer for her. I don’t think anyone does. But we get to sit on the couch together, and talk about the tiny good bits that don’t make it to Instagram or the school newsletters, and that’s enough for right now.
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