At Lifespan Education, our work centres on working with young people, including teens. An important aspect of this work is having knowledge about adult behaviours that teens respond to, and those they resist.
We summarise below what we believe to be sources of good information, and what those sources tell us.
Source 1: Practitioners in Developmental Psychology
This is the most substantial body of knowledge, coming from professional practitioners who work with adolescents. Major practitioner-educator-authors include Lisa Damour, Laurence Steinberg and Dan Siegel.
What practitioners regularly emphasise:
Agenda-less presence is the foundation.
The number one thing teenagers respond to is when adults offer their presence without trying to make something happen. Most adolescents are turned off by adults starting communication by prescribing or directing behaviour, or trying to extract information, instead of valuing being together.
Steady, not reactive.
Teens read adult emotional regulation closely. An adult who stays calm when the teen is dysregulated can provide a safe experience for the teen. Although most adults know that being receptive, empathic and steady is a good thing, they find it hard to practise it, especially at the end of the day when adults are worn down and the teenager’s patience finally comes unglued after a long day. Adults have to prepare and have capacity to model steadiness during times when teens need it.
Autonomy before closeness.
Teenage is a period where the young person establishes their identity and sees themselves as a freestanding actor. They need to be able to do so before they can be close again as they were as children. Often they seek experiences away from their childhood caregivers, towards their peers and outside activities like sports. The push away is a developmental task that is not a signal of rejection. Adults who can hold this without taking it personally are experienced as trustworthy.
Validation before advice.
The consistent message from experienced practitioners is: listen first, empathise, don’t jump to solutions unless asked. Adults who skip to advice — no matter how good that advice may be — are signalling that they are more interested in resolving their own discomfort than in being with the teen in the teen’s experience.
Source 2: Adolescent trust research
This body of work comes primarily from developmental and social psychology, that examine how adolescents form and revise their judgements on who to trust. It is more technical than practitioner writing but speaks directly to the mechanisms behind what is happening with teens.
The research tells us that early to mid-adolescents gradually rely less on beliefs they held during childhood and more on new gathered evidence when deciding whether to trust. They are actively watching and updating their assessment of adults in real time. This means consistency matters enormously. An adult who is warm sometimes and distant other times confuses teens, and present as less trustworthy than someone who is predictably present.
When adolescents decide who to trust online, they prefer people who present themselves authentically and originally, with accurate self-description, rather than conforming to inconsistent expectations. Teens are responding to their growing human need for genuine engagement, and not seeking polish.
Source 3: Authenticity research
This literature draws on self-determination theory and identity development research, examining authenticity as both an internal experience and in relationships. It tells us not just how teens relate to their own sense of self, but how acutely they read authenticity in others.
Authenticity is seen as the sense of being one’s true self. It is a general indicator of psychosocial health in adolescents navigating identity and relational connectedness. Critically, this cuts two ways: teens are highly attuned to inauthenticity in others, not just in themselves. They experience an adult performing warmth differently to an adult who is actually warm.
Authenticity enhances wellbeing in teens, and covaries with satisfaction of psychological needs for relatedness and competence. Adults who respect teen autonomy create conditions where teens can be authentic, which in turn produces wellbeing. The adult’s behaviour is crucial in this causal link.
Source 4: Connectedness and belonging research
This is primarily longitudinal population research, tracking outcomes across adolescence and into adulthood. We see the cumulative effects of individual decisions.
Adolescents who felt connected to home or school at ages 12–17 were up to 66% less likely to experience health risk behaviours and had better mental health in adulthood than less connected peers. Connection is protective in measurable ways.
Only 58.5% of US teens report always or usually receiving the social and emotional support they need. Most adolescents struggle to be assertive in asking for what they need, whether that’s feeling understood, a sense of belonging, or guidance. Teens often can’t name what’s missing or ask for it.
Summary
Pulling all sources together, the adult behaviours that make teens feel seen and safe cluster around five things:
- Consistency — showing up the same way repeatedly, so the teen doesn’t have to recalibrate each time.
- Agenda-lessness — not needing something from the interaction, which frees the teen to bring what they actually have rather than what they think the adult wants.
- Staying inside the experience — not rushing to the exit of resolution or advice, which signals the adult can tolerate the teen’s discomfort without needing to fix it.
- Authentic self-presentation — being genuinely themselves, including acknowledging confusion or not-knowing, which gives teens permission to do the same.
- Respecting autonomy — not interpreting independence as rejection, which allows the teen to move toward and away without the relationship becoming a source of additional pressure.
None of this is complicated in practice. As a matter of fact, it can look deceptively simple action-wise. But it does ask something of the adult first, sometimes without the relationship rewards or any sign of reciprocity at all. That asymmetry in the what is being asked and the lack of feedback is a challenge.
The research is telling us that teenagers are not indifferent to the adults around them. They are, in fact, paying close attention. They are just waiting to see if the adult can be what they need – consistently, genuinely, without an agenda. When this happens, the value of adults walking alongside teens starts to happen.
Sources and further reading
Practitioner resources
- Lisa Damour — drlisadamour.com
- Laurence Steinberg — laurencesteinberg.com
- Dan Siegel — drdansiegel.com
Academic research
- Trust in adolescence: Development, mechanisms and future directions — on how adolescents form and update trust assessments over time. Read here
- Authenticity and Inauthenticity in Adolescents: A Scoping Review — on how authenticity functions as both an internal experience and a signal teens read in others. Read here
- Adolescents and Trust in Online Social Interactions: A Qualitative Exploratory Study — on how teens evaluate trustworthiness in online contexts. Read here
- Trust and emotional difficulties in adolescence: findings from a Swedish cohort study — on the relationship between emotional wellbeing and trust formation. Read here
- Self-reported childhood family adversity is linked to an attenuated gain of trust during adolescence — on how early environment shapes the capacity to trust. Read here
- Adolescent connectedness: cornerstone for health and wellbeing — on the longitudinal protective effects of connection during adolescence. Read here
- U.S. teens need far more emotional and social support (APA Monitor) — on the gap between what teens need and what they report receiving. Read here