There are many strange paradoxes about youth culture around the world and one of them is very confusing for adults and youth workers. I come across it all the time. It is the paradox where in one voice young people are shouting out loud, “Don’t tell me what to do,” but at the same time in just as loud a voice they are saying, “Please tell me what to do.”

Young people, like all of us, grow up in a world of many choices. They grow up feeling like they have the right to make their own choices about big and small issues in life. Their parents and other adult figures like pastors, teachers, and leaders may be there offering advice to them, but young people are not willing to hear them.

Adults, particularly parents, sit on the sidelines of young people lives watching what is happening to them and wanting to offer their comments, but young people have generally blocked their parents out because there is just too much emotional baggage and conflict in that relationship. Young people are fiercely independent about their ability to make good choices for themselves—but the reality is that this isn't true.

So often I meet young people who are striving to know what they should do and trying to work out the choices they should be making. They try to act as if they have it all in control, but when I dig a bit deeper and start to connect into their world I quickly see the struggles they are having. In many ways they start to make it clear that they are crying out for someone to give them guidance and, in many cases, to actually tell them what to do.

You see, having so many choices and options doesn’t actually give young people more freedom—it actually makes it harder to choose. Young people also know deep down that they don’t have the life skills and experience to make all the right and good decisions for themselves, and they are hoping that someone who cares will help them.

BUT this line between "don’t tell me and tell me" is very fine, and the problem is that most adults don't have the skills to know where this line is. It is about understanding youth culture and reading the signals and openings. It is no different than working with any other culture in the world where you have to know the culture really well to know when and how to speak into people’s lives, and in what context.

The major problem in this area for parents and the church is that they have lost this ability, or the right, to be able to speak into young people’s lives. We do it by sermons, lectures, and dropping hints, but young people see these attempts as frustrating and interfering. It is about earning the right to offer your advice, but it is also about knowing and understanding the youth culture you are working in.

There are so many voices—friends, media, internet—telling young people what to do, and as the church and youth workers, we need to find ways in which we can speak into the lives of young people we are connected to. And don’t be fooled by the bravado and walls that young people put up. Young people are just like us—we all put up walls and act like we don’t need support and advice form others, when inside we are desperately crying out for it.