What Teens Need But Can’t Quite Say by Saurabh Saklani; Rupa & Co; Price: Rs. 95; 183 pp
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After reading Saurabh Saklani’s What Teens Need But Can’t Quite Say, I experienced an overwhelming urge to immediately write a review of this valuable book. I attribute this urge to the resonance of the content with my challenges as a theatre director working with young adults, and as a parent and educationist. There are several other reasons why I endorse this book, subtitled ‘Simple suggestions for parents and teachers to guide teenagers through the turbulence of adolescence’, but the main ones need some elaboration.
First, it offers an important message to parents and educators to shed old practices and conventional wisdom in managing teenage angst in incrementally globalising India. For the overwhelming majority of middle class Indian teens, Western influence is an everyday reality. “Now, the world is within their grasp with the flick of the remote or the click of a mouse. Information is flowing at a tremendous rate across the world and teens in India, as in many other nations, are growing up within this globalisation of cultures. Thus, it has become imperative to help guide the multitude of influences that teens are subject to and make their impact more natural, smooth, and positive. Judging and pegging parenting and teaching behaviour on old sets of rules, precedents, and mindsets will quite likely increase the ubiquitous generation gap. Now more than ever, parents and teachers in India need to upgrade their personal software to stay abreast of the changing needs, choices, and pressures faced by teens today,” says the author explaining the rationale of this interesting manual.
This is a ‘practical’ approach to connecting with teens, a sentiment confirmed when on a recent visit to a school, I witnessed the principal take this book out of a drawer saying, “I find this so useful, I always keep it close at hand.” That’s impact.
Indeed right from the foreword (written by Arun Kapur, director of the Vasant Valley School, Delhi) to the last page, the book is a vivid portrayal of volatile teens, and a good guide on how to handle them and the accelerating generation gap. Conversations with youngsters and the bottom-up approach highlighting the “teenager’s point of view” makes it quite unique. Moreover its straightforward language and practical approach make the book an easy read.
The intent of the author is substantially attained because after reading it I realised the great importance of “alignment” with a teenager’s perceived needs, “the width and depth of understanding needed” by parents and teachers, and “holding back the urge to push one’s own aspirations and dreams” onto teenagers. In a way, I felt chastised for not being as open in my thinking as I could have been.
Saklani’s lucid and effective writing seems to have been inspired by his experiences as a student of the Doon School, an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, a business management student at INSEAD, France, and also by virtue of being the founder of a behavioural training company in India. His ‘6 Tunes’ model for connecting with teenagers built on a bedrock of ‘tunes’ or nostrums (spend time wisely; create happy memories; be mentors; provide love, praise and support; help gain external and internal awareness) is a powerful and practical tool for empowering teens to cope with their internal coming-of-age problems and their not- always-sympathetic environments. The author has also put together a comprehensive assessment methodology acronymed SCALE (setting the stage, communication, awareness, love and emotional strength) to help teachers and parents contribute more fruitfully towards teen development.
The ‘6 tunes’ and ‘scale’ communication and assessment models are well supported by seven essays included in the book by educationists Ashish Rajpal, Brig. Trigunesh Mukherjee and Dr. Kailash Joshi among others who share a common interest — each one of them has interacted with a cross-section of teenagers, as part of their field work. These essays cover themes such as awareness building; exploring potential; learning by doing; developing key success skills; the boarding school experience; managing the East-West values dilemma; and becoming effective teachers.
Finally, if there is one useful lesson to be learned from What Teens Need But Can’t Quite Say, it’s that “what teens really need is support (not ‘help’) to help build self-concept”. As such, the book should be mandatory reading for school teachers, parents, students, school heads and counsellors.
Jayant Kripalani