How to relate to adolescents? In his latest essay entitled Call me an adult (Raffaello Cortina Editore, 2025, pp. 224, also e-book) the psychologist and psychotherapist Matteo Lancini approaches this complex question by offering us an unexpected reflection in the introduction.

The first pages of the book, in fact, are entitled “ Ogliastra ”. But what does this beautiful area of Sardinia have to do with an essay on the difficult relationships between adults and adolescents? Well, Matteo Lancini explains that he has been a guest of Ogliastra for holidays for more than forty years and that he has been intrigued, like many, by the extraordinary longevity of the inhabitants of the area. A longevity that has been explained in many ways: the particular climate, the diet, a lifestyle more tied to natural rhythms, therefore less stressful. For Lancini – and there are many who think like him – the real secret of the people of Ogliastra is constituted by the sociability and the strength of relationships . In Ogliastra, a community life is led that not only prolongs life, but pushes people to want to prolong their existence as long as possible.

In short, the relationship is everything . This is the central point for Lancini, whether we are talking about Ogliastra longevity, or whether we are addressing the issue of the relationship that we adults want to build with the youngest, with our children, with the boys and girls we meet as teachers or in any profession in contact with adolescents. The relationship is all that a child, a son, a student, a patient needs and it is all that an adult must be able to offer, today more than ever. This means, of course, a relationship based on authenticity, on the real ability to be interested in who the other is and empathize with him or her, starting from their way of being, from their way of interpreting what is happening to them. On the contrary, we must avoid that type of egocentric relationship in which we are too often entangled, a relationship incapable of listening to what our interlocutor has to say, which silences the words and emotions that are too painful and annoying to be welcomed and accepted in an authentic way.