I decided to approach high schoolers differently because they seemed resentful toward adults for not “getting” what they were going through. After asking how they were and what they’d been up to, I started saying something like, “Whoa, people always talk about how you guys have it so easy, but you don’t.” The glazed look disappeared from their eyes; and for the first time these kids were engaged, not because someone took their load from them but because someone acknowledged they had a legitimate load.
Now, there is not one Club Talk that I give in Young Life when I don’t say in some way before concluding, “I get to spend a lot of time with you guys, and you’re lives aren’t as simple as people like to think.”
