When Your Teen Says ‘I’ve Wasted Two Years Of My Life’: Practical Steps For Parents
I’m scraping congealed cheddar off a ceramic plate, dishwasher humming behind me, mid Sunday taco night cleanup. Jax, my 16-year-old, is leaning against the opposite counter, twisting the frayed cuff of his hoodie (hole at the elbow, he’s refused to throw it away for two years). He just left a meeting with his guidance counselor, where we worked out a plan for him to return to full-time in-person school after two years of full-time online. That’s when he says it, quiet, like he’s been holding it in the whole drive home: “I feel like I’ve wasted two years of my life. I don’t know what to do.”
Two years ago, at the start of 9th grade, Jax froze up mid-presentation for a history group project. A kid in the back yelled “get on with it” and the whole class laughed. He had his first panic attack in the bathroom after, couldn’t breathe, called me to pick him up. After that, he wouldn’t go back. We tried modified schedules, a school counselor, weekly therapy, nothing stuck. The district offered full-time online school, so we took it. The first six months were great: no panic attacks, he slept until 8 instead of waking up throwing up from anxiety. I thought we’d done exactly the right thing for him.
Then, slowly, things shifted. He stopped showing up to the optional live sessions. He stopped checking in with his online teachers. He stayed up till 4 a.m. playing Valorant, slept till 2 p.m. on weekends, only left his room to grab soda and chips. I yelled, I barged in, I took his gaming console for a month, nothing changed. I spent a year lying awake at night thinking I’d ruined his future, that I’d let him throw away two years for nothing. So when he said that line at the kitchen counter, I got it. I’d been thinking the same thing for months.
My first instinct was to jump in and fix it. I almost said, “No you didn’t, you were dealing with anxiety, that time wasn’t wasted, it was for your health” – all the things you’re supposed to say, right? But I noticed his jaw was tight, his knuckles white where he gripped the counter, and I stopped. I put my sponge down, wiped my hands on my jeans, pulled the leftover churro we’d gotten from the taco truck out of the fridge, split it in half, and handed him one. I sat down on the floor next to the trash can – the only extra seat in our small kitchen – and said, “What parts of it feel wasted?”
He talked for 20 minutes straight, and it wasn’t about the two credits he’s behind. It was about missing getting his permit with all his friends, how they all carpooled to the DMV after school and he was home alone. It was missing homecoming, missing the stupid pep rallies he would’ve complained about anyway, missing passing someone a note in class and getting sent to the office. He said everyone else knows how to do the whole high school thing – how to talk to teachers, how to hang out in a group after school – and he feels like he forgot how. All he has to show for two years, he said, is a bunch of game wins and a room full of empty chip bags.
I remembered the tip our family therapist gave me the week before, when I’d called her panicking about how we’d fix this. She said don’t jump to fix the feeling first. So I asked if he wanted to sit down and list out what he does have to show for those two years, no rules, no judgment. We moved to the living room, grabbed an old spiral notebook he’d gotten for Christmas and never used, a broken pencil off the coffee table, and he started writing.
Five minutes later, he pushed the notebook over to me. First: learned how to rebuild the engine on that old dirt bike Uncle Mike gave him. He spent three months on that, in the garage on weekends, I’d just seen the finished product a week earlier. Second: got really good at drawing fantasy characters from his games. I didn’t even know he’d been drawing that much – he had a whole stack of sketches tucked under his bed he’d never shown anyone. Third: figured out what social interactions feel like when they’re not overwhelming, because he could step away any time he wanted. I added one that he didn’t argue with: he hasn’t had a full panic attack in 18 months. That counts for something, right?
Then we did the second small thing the therapist suggested: instead of mapping out a two-year plan to get back on track, pick one small thing he could do in the next week that would make that week not feel wasted. He thought for a minute, then wrote: text Cam (his old middle school friend) to get ice cream after school next week. That was it. No big resolutions, no catching up on three credits in a month, just ice cream.
I’ve thought a lot about this since that night, and the biggest thing I’ve learned is that we all measure time in milestones. You’re supposed to finish 9th grade on time, get your permit at 15, start 11th grade with your class, graduate at 18. If you step off that path for any reason, we all start calling that time wasted – parents do it even more than the kids do. I did it. I spent 18 months calling those two years a mistake in my head.
But the fix for that heavy wasted feeling isn’t telling them it’s not true, or shoving a million activities at them to make up for lost time. It’s small, concrete stuff anyone can do. First, when they say they wasted time, don’t contradict them. Ask them what feels wasted, and let them talk without jumping in to fix it. Dismissing their feeling just makes them dig in harder. Second, help them name the things they gained that don’t show up on a transcript. Third, end with one small next step, not a 10-page plan.
We worked with the counselor to let Jax take only one extra credit a semester, which means he’ll graduate a semester late. That’s fine. I don’t bug him about joining clubs or making a million friends. Every Sunday, over oatmeal for breakfast, I just ask him: what’s one thing that didn’t feel wasted this week? Sometimes it’s big, like getting a drawing accepted to the school literary magazine, like last month. Sometimes it’s small, like he got a pizza with Cam after the football game, or he beat a hard level in his game.
It’s not fixed. Some nights, Jax still says he feels behind. I still have moments where I wonder if we’d have done it differently if we could go back. But the big, heavy wasted feeling that was sitting in our house for a year? It’s smaller now. It doesn’t take up the whole room anymore. We’re taking it one week at a time, one non-wasted thing at a time. That’s all we can do right now.
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