Why kids ask if life is worth it — and what parents and teachers can do
I was on hall duty when a ninth grader I’ll call Marcus leaned against the wall by the water fountain and said, “Everything’s pointless anyway.”
He wasn’t being dramatic. His voice was flat. He’d just failed a math quiz he hadn’t studied for, and the teacher had emailed home, and his phone was full of notifications he was ignoring. He didn’t look sad so much as worn out, which felt worse.
I said something ordinary — “Rough morning?” — and he shrugged. I didn’t push. We stood there for a while, watching students walk past with their backpacks swinging, and then he said it again. “Do people actually think life is worth living? Like, really?” He wasn’t asking for a speech. He was asking if I’d ever wondered the same thing.
I thought about it honestly. I told him yes, I wondered sometimes, especially during long winters and hard semesters. He nodded, not in a relieved way, more like he just wanted confirmation that he wasn’t broken for thinking about it. The bell rang. He went to Spanish because that’s what you do — you go to Spanish even when you doubt the meaning of everything.
That conversation stayed with me, and not because it was dramatic. It stayed because it made me realize how often adults either rush past these questions or panic when a kid asks them. We hear “is life worth living” and our alarm bells go off. But the truth is, for most kids, it’s not a crisis — it’s a developmental stage. Around eleven or twelve, children begin to grasp abstract thinking in a more adult way. They start to genuinely ask, for the first time, why things matter. The question isn’t necessarily a warning sign. It’s often just part of growing an adult brain.
The tricky part is that as parents and teachers, we tend to answer the question instead of hearing it. We jump to “Of course it is” — or worse, we offer a list of reasons life is great: your friends, your hobbies, your future. That sounds supportive, but it can signal that we’re too worried to sit with the question. And kids notice. They’re really good at noticing when an adult is anxious.
What I’ve learned is that the most useful thing isn’t having an answer. It’s being willing to stand next to the question.
Later that week, Marcus stayed after school to make up the quiz. I was there grading papers while he sat, chewing a pencil, staring at a worksheet. I didn’t say anything for a while. Then I asked him, not about the big question, but about something concrete: what he liked doing with his time when nobody was asking for anything. He said he liked building stuff in some video game — recreating an old lighthouse he’d seen on a family trip. He got animated for thirty seconds describing the stone texture. Then he stopped, like he’d been caught enjoying himself, and went back to the worksheet.
I thought that was the right moment to say what I actually believe: that meaning is something you detect, not something you create on demand. That no one feels life is worth living every day. That the kids who worry about whether life has meaning are often the ones who care most deeply about other things too. But I didn’t say all that out loud. I just said, “I like when you talk about the lighthouse thing. You look different when you’re doing things you actually choose.”
He didn’t respond. But he finished the quiz.
For parents at home, the low-friction version of this looks like accepting that some of these big questions come up in conversational moments, not sit-down talks. Maybe you’re making dinner, maybe you’re driving, maybe you’re folding towels, and a kid says, “What’s the point of school anyway?” The urge is to answer immediately. I’ve come to think the better move is to slow it down and ask them what they think the point is. Kids will often surprise you with the argument they’ve been building inside their own head.
And it’s okay to not have a clear answer. It’s okay to say, “I don’t know. I go back and forth on it. But I’m pretty sure eating dinner with you tonight is worth something.” That’s an honest answer. It’s not a lecture about gratitude. It names a small, real thing.
One thing I want to say clearly: I’m not talking about kids who are clinically depressed, or who show warning signs like prolonged withdrawal, major sleep changes, or explicitly talking about harming themselves. That’s a different category entirely, and it needs professionals — a pediatrician, therapist, or school counselor. Please reach out to one if you’re worried. But for the everyday, quieter version of the question — the philosophical shrug, the heavy sigh during homework — we can respond with calm presence rather than a list of reasons to be happy.
A few specific phrases that have worked for me in classrooms:
“That sounds like a real question.” It acknowledges without dismissing.
“You’re at a good age to think about that.” It normalizes the developmental stage.
“I’ve asked that myself before.” It removes their isolation.
“If school didn’t exist and you could learn anything, what would you want to know?” It redirects from the abstract to the concrete.
Something happened near the end of the term with Marcus. His teacher asked everyone to write about a local landmark as part of the history unit. He wrote about that lighthouse. Nothing dramatic, just a decent paragraph about when it was built and what it looked like. But he passed the unit, and more importantly, he looked a little less worn out in the hallway. I didn’t take credit for that. There were about a hundred other things contributing.
But the question he asked changed how I handle these moments. When a kid asks if life is really worth living, I don’t rush to convince them. I’ve learned to let the question hang in the air. Most of them don’t need to be talked out of their doubt. They need to know that doubt can be tolerated. And that it can survive sitting next to a quiet adult for a few minutes in a hallway.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why kids ask if life is worth it — and what parents and teachers can do