Written By Josh Doyle
When teenagers and young adults feel disconnected, even simple interactions can become difficult. Parents and mentors often want to help but aren't sure how to reach someone who has withdrawn. Sometimes connection doesn't begin with a serious conversation or a plan to fix everything. It begins with an ordinary invitation, a shared activity, and the reassurance that someone continues to care and make room for them.
The Power of Simply Showing Up
What Noah Kahan and Robert Frost Can Teach Us About Connection
There is something particularly revealing about the time of year Noah Kahan describes in his song Stick Season. The trees have shed their leaves, the landscape is exposed, and everything feels a little more barren. What was once full of life and movement has become quiet and still.
For many young people, that landscape reflects something happening internally. They may be surrounded by people and yet feel profoundly alone. Friends are moving forward, making plans, going to college, starting careers, and building lives. Meanwhile, they feel stuck, uncertain of where they belong or what comes next.
For boys and young men in particular, feelings of isolation can be difficult to articulate. Some withdraw into their rooms, spend increasing amounts of time online, or disengage from activities and relationships that once gave their lives structure and meaning. From the outside, it can look like a lack of motivation. But sometimes what appears to be indifference is something much more complicated: a young person who has lost their sense of connection, confidence, or purpose and doesn't know how to find it again.
The Loneliness of Stick Season
Kahan's Stick Season captures the emotional experience of feeling left behind while life continues moving around you. That feeling can be especially difficult during the transition from adolescence into adulthood. The expectations are enormous. Young people are supposed to become independent, make decisions about their futures, develop meaningful relationships, and begin establishing identities separate from their families. For some, those transitions happen relatively smoothly. For others, the path is far less clear.
When anxiety, depression, learning differences, social difficulties, or other challenges interfere, young people can begin to feel increasingly disconnected from their peers. And the longer that disconnection continues, the harder reengagement may feel. An invitation to see friends becomes uncomfortable. Returning to an activity feels intimidating. Even an ordinary conversation about school or work can become a reminder of everything they believe they haven't accomplished.
The natural response may be to retreat further. But isolation rarely provides the connection or sense of purpose that is missing. So how do we help someone begin moving again when even the smallest step feels overwhelming?
Robert Frost's Quiet Invitation
More than a century ago, Robert Frost offered a remarkably simple answer in his poem The Pasture. The poem describes ordinary tasks: clearing leaves from a pasture spring and checking on a newborn calf. There is nothing particularly dramatic about either activity. But Frost repeatedly extends a simple invitation:
"You come too."
That's it. No lecture about responsibility. No elaborate plan for personal improvement. No demand that someone explain what is wrong or commit to changing their life. Just an invitation to participate in something ordinary.
There is something powerful in that simplicity. When a young person is struggling, adults often feel compelled to initiate serious conversations. We want to know what they're thinking, why they aren't moving forward, and what they intend to do about their future. Those conversations may be necessary. But they can also feel overwhelming to someone who already feels inadequate, uncertain, or disconnected. Sometimes a better place to begin is simply doing something together.
Connection Doesn't Always Begin With Conversation
Think about the difference between sitting a young person down and asking, "What are you going to do with your life?" and inviting them to help change the oil in a car, prepare dinner, walk the dog, or run an errand. One places the young person under a spotlight. The other creates an opportunity to participate without having to explain or defend themselves.
There is less pressure to make eye contact, provide answers, or demonstrate progress. Conversation can happen naturally, if it happens at all. And even when very little is said, something important may still be taking place. The young person is participating. They are sharing an experience. They are engaging with someone who values their company without requiring them to accomplish something first.
For someone who has become isolated, those seemingly insignificant moments can matter. They can begin to restore a sense of belonging.
Lending Someone Your Momentum
When a young person has lost motivation or confidence, asking them to generate momentum entirely on their own can be a tall order. Sometimes they need to borrow a little of ours. An invitation to participate in a simple task provides structure without requiring them to create it. They don't have to plan the activity, organize the details, or figure out how to get started. Someone else has already taken that first step. Their only decision is whether to come along. And if they do, even briefly, they have participated in something outside their own thoughts and routines.
That doesn't mean one afternoon working on a car or preparing a meal will resolve depression, anxiety, or years of withdrawal. It won't. But small experiences of participation can create opportunities for connection, confidence, and a renewed sense of capability. Sometimes the first step toward greater independence begins with someone inviting you to do something together.
The Importance of Showing Up
As parents, mentors, and adults who care about young people, we sometimes underestimate the importance of our continued presence. We tend to think that once a young person reaches eighteen or twenty-one, our role should diminish dramatically. They are adults now. They should be figuring things out for themselves.
And certainly, developing independence is an essential part of growing up. But independence doesn't mean the absence of guidance, encouragement, or meaningful relationships with older adults. In fact, young adulthood can be a period when those relationships are particularly valuable.
A young person may no longer need someone managing every aspect of their life, but they may still benefit enormously from someone who checks in, offers perspective, includes them in ordinary activities, and remains interested in who they are becoming. That kind of support doesn't require a psychology degree or a carefully constructed mentoring program. It requires genuine interest, patience, and a willingness to remain involved without making every interaction about achievement or progress.
True support is about showing up without rescuing.
It is offering guidance without taking over, maintaining expectations without constant criticism, and recognizing that someone can need encouragement while still being responsible for their own choices.
Persistent Presence Over Slogans
One of the challenges of supporting someone who has become withdrawn is that invitations are not always accepted. You ask them to join you for something, and they decline. You suggest an activity, and they aren't interested. You try again the following week, and the answer is still no. It can be discouraging. Parents may begin to wonder whether their efforts matter or whether they should simply stop trying.
But connection isn't always rebuilt on the first invitation. Sometimes the value lies in the consistency of the invitation itself.
Persistent presence means continuing to show someone they matter without holding a grudge when they aren't ready to participate.
That doesn't mean ignoring boundaries or repeatedly pressuring someone who has clearly asked for space. It means finding appropriate ways to remain available, interested, and connected. It also means recognizing that support may need to change depending on what a young person is experiencing.
Someone dealing with significant depression, anxiety, or other mental-health challenges may need professional assessment and treatment in addition to the support of family and mentors. Ordinary activities and meaningful relationships are not substitutes for appropriate care. But they can remain important parts of a young person's life while that care is taking place.
From Isolation to Connection
The landscape of Stick Season is bare and exposed, but it isn't lifeless. The trees haven't stopped growing simply because their branches are empty. And a young person who feels disconnected or uncertain hasn't necessarily lost the capacity to find purpose, develop relationships, or move forward.
Sometimes they need time. Sometimes they need professional help. Sometimes they need opportunities to experience success, responsibility, and connection in manageable ways. And sometimes they simply need someone who continues to make room for them.
That is what I find so meaningful about the contrast between Noah Kahan's Stick Season and Robert Frost's The Pasture. One gives voice to the painful experience of feeling disconnected. The other offers a quiet reminder that connection doesn't always begin with a grand gesture. It may begin with a simple task, a shared experience, or an invitation that carries no demand for immediate change.
For parents and mentors, the challenge is to remain present without taking over, to encourage without constantly pushing, and to recognize that meaningful relationships are built through ordinary moments as much as extraordinary ones.
We cannot make every difficult season disappear for the young people in our lives. But we can continue to offer connection, encouragement, and opportunities to participate.
Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can say is also the simplest:
"You come too."