How Mentoring Teenagers Benefits Both the Teens and Their Mentors by Rachel G. Baldino, MSW, LCSW for www.SixWise.com

An important dimension of teenagers' emotional, intellectual and spiritual development is the critical role that a positive mentoring relationship can play in their life.

And one of the most interesting conclusions of mentoring researchers is that mentoring is highly beneficial not only for the teenagers involved, but also for the adults who do the mentoring.

Mentoring benefits mentors as well as mentees.

How Mentoring Benefits The "Mentees"

All children are born with the potential to lead full, successful, meaningful lives, and to make significant contributions to the world around them.

Unfortunately, not all children have access to adults who can help them to achieve all of their goals. Even the most talented and motivated of preteens and teenagers need to have helpful, encouraging adults in their lives, adults they can trust and can learn from.

If you think back to your own childhood, you may be able to recall an adult who played the role of a valuable mentor in your life. Perhaps it was one of your parents, or a grandparent, aunt or uncle, or perhaps it was a teacher or a coach who took the time to talk to you-and also listen to you-about life's joys and challenges, and what you hoped to achieve in your life.

To put it in the simplest possible terms, mentors make the youths they mentor feel good about themselves and deeply valued as human beings. Ideally, a mentor works in tandem with other nurturing adults in a child's life, but sadly, this is not always the case. Some children do not have other caring adults they can turn to, and in these cases, mentors may assume a more central role in their mentees' lives.

Think of mentors as nurturing adults who volunteer to give their time and energy to young people, offering them encouragement, support, guidance, suggestions, kindness and positive role modeling. A mentor's role is to enable mentees to stay focused and motivated in school and other activities by providing them with a sense of structure, helping them to overcome obstacles, and encouraging them to work toward achieving their educational and (eventual) career goals.

Many mentees find that when they have caring adult mentors in their lives, their grades go up; their life and career goals become more crystallized; and their sense of self-esteem increases substantially.

When we help others, we help ourselves in the process.

How Mentoring Benefits Mentors

At the beginning of this excellent Mentoring.org article
about what adults stand to gain from mentoring, Dr. Jean Rhodes opens with the following lovely quote fromCharlotte's Web, which so beautifully captures what mentoring can mean to the individuals who are doing the actual mentoring:
"Why did you do all this for me?" [Wilbur] asked. "I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you."

"You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. …"By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift my life a trifle. Heaven knows, anyone's life can stand a little of that."
To summarize several of the key points in Rhodes' article, some of the specific benefits for mentors that researchers have discovered include the following:

1. An improved sense of health and well-being
2. An enhanced self-image and sense of self-worth
3. A sense of feeling valued and appreciated
4. A sense of feeling competent and accomplished
5. A sense of spiritual fulfillment
6. A feeling of having gained deeper insights into one's own childhood experiences
7. A deeper understanding of and appreciation for one's own children
8. A sense of satisfaction from "giving back to the community"
9. A sense of feeling needed
10. A sense of helping oneself through the act of helping others (as highlighted in the above quote from Charlottes Web)
11. A feeling of being respected by others for contributing to society in a very important way

The research also indicates that adults who mentor youths often learn how to make sense of and come to grips with their own experiences as teenagers. That is, the mentoring relationship helps them to revisit how they felt as teenagers, and how they coped with their own youthful challenges.