Insights from The Disengaged Teen

Helping Teens Reignite Their Love for Learning  

Insights from The Disengaged Teen by Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson

As parents, we all want our children to thrive in school and beyond. But what happens when they disengage? In their compelling book “The Disengaged Teen,” Rebecca Winthrop and Jenny Anderson explore the growing problem of student disengagement and offer strategies to help kids reconnect with learning. Whether your child is coasting through school, achieving at all costs, resisting, or thriving as an explorer, there are ways we can support them.

The Four Modes of Learning

Understanding how our kids engage with learning can help us guide them. Winthrop and Anderson identify four distinct modes. Kids may be in different modes at different times, or they can be in one mode in a favorite class and another in a class they do not enjoy.

1. Passenger Mode – These students coast along. They do the bare minimum, lack motivation, and often say school is boring. They aren’t failing, but they aren’t invested either. Some of these kids don’t know how to study.

2. Achiever Mode – These are the go-getters, the high-performing students, but not all achievers are thriving. While some find joy in their accomplishments, others struggle under pressure, defining their self-worth by their grades.

Happy achievers are developing some wonderful skills, setting goals, being organized, developing resilience & time management. The challenges can tip happy achievers into unhappy achievers; perfectionists, very much defining their worth from the system and what the system demands but the reality is the system is insatiable.

3. Resistor Mode– These kids push back against school in overt ways. They might act out or withdraw, often signaling that they have deeper struggles that need attention. These kids, when you can kind of get to the root of what's going on, and change the context or environment, you can help unlock that agency and get them to explorer mode

4. Explorer Mode – The ideal state! Explorers are authentically engaged, proactive, curious, and take ownership of their learning. They ask questions, take risks, want to insert their interests into what is happening, and are intrinsically motivated.

The Achiever Conundrum: When Success Comes at a Cost

This represents a struggle for parents. Parents want their kids to excel, but there is a point where the drive to succeed breaks our kids. The standards are already high and they get higher as kids go through high school. One of the most striking findings in the book is that unhappy achievers—those who feel immense pressure to be perfect and whose achievement is tied to their identity—often have worse mental health outcomes than students who actively resist school. What is that balance between wanting kids to excel and pushing them too hard? 

Many high-achieving students, unhappy achievers, are stuck in a system that rewards compliance over curiosity. They fear making mistakes, avoid risks, and feel their worth is tied to their grades. While they might excel on paper, they struggle with self-awareness and resilience. They have internalized this idea that if they aren't perfect, there's something wrong with them. They are not finding meaning in what they are doing. The intense competition kids face in school can lead to isolation.

“Life is not a dress rehearsal” is a common expression, but it is especially relevant for teenagers. They should be able to go out and totally mess up, fix things, and do better the next day, because that's what learning and discovery are about. They are not just preparing for college. They are preparing for life, and failure is an inevitable part of life. Kids who learn how to deal with failure early on are far more prepared for their future.

So how can we, as parents, help them break free from this cycle?

How Parents Can Help

Winthrop and Anderson offer concrete strategies for parents to help their kids develop a love for learning while maintaining emotional well-being. “Success” at what cost? Mental health problems in teens are soaring. Here are a few key takeaways:

Encourage Reflection Time – Give kids downtime and space to think without constant inputs from school, extracurriculars, or screens. Daydreaming fuels creativity and problem-solving. Parents play a unique role because they know what their kids are interested in. Instead of "Did you do your homework?" try "What was the most interesting thing you learned today?" Lean in to their interests. Ask big, open questions, not what did you get on your test. For example, the student is learning about enzymes. So ask: what exactly are enzymes and how do they work? If parents don’t know what to ask, go to AI. Ask Chat GPT: what are three questions to ask a high school student who is learning about enzymes? 

Normalize Struggle and Failure – Frame mistakes as learning opportunities. Create a culture where mistakes are normalized—refrain from judgment. If your student forgets to turn something in, instead of registering your disappointment, ask them what they can do to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Let your kids know about some of your mistakes. Parents are not perfect either!

Model a Healthy Relationship with Work – If we’re always busy and stressed, our kids will internalize that as the norm. Take breaks, talk about your own learning experiences, and show them that growth takes time.

Shift the Conversation Around College – Instead of pushing for highly competitive schools, focus on fit. Where will your child thrive? Where will they have the space to explore and grow? Tune out the noise students hear about where they should go to college and focus on them discovering the colleges that they’ll be happy at. 

Identify Strengths and Interests, Not Just "Passions" – “passion” is a loaded word–strengths and interests are a better way to express it. Help kids identify what sparks their curiosity and where their strengths lie, without the pressure to have everything figured out. The message you want for your kid is: I see you for who you are and what you're interested in, and what you love. And I'm behind you in those things. I'm not trying to redirect you.

Rethinking Success – Ultimately, The Disengaged Teen challenges us to rethink what success looks like. These are adolescents with developing brains. So many kids are burned out by the time they start college—it is really hard to thrive when you're burned out. The goal isn’t to get into an Ivy League school at all costs—it’s to develop lifelong learners who are resilient, curious, and engaged with the world around them. 

As parents, we have the power to create environments where our kids can take risks, discover their interests, and build confidence in their abilities. The question isn’t just what our kids are learning, but how they are learning—and whether they have the agency to shape their own paths. 

Let’s start the conversation. What mode is your child in, and how can you support them in becoming an explorer? Contact us to learn more.