The circumstances that youth today face are considerable. In the urban setting, youth are confronted by threats of gang membership, limited job opportunity, discordant school settings with lower graduation rates, and a prevailing social ethos that is focused on social status in a fast and furious pursuit of present interests. These factors are compacted by systemic and social forces that exacerbate matters and disproportionately up the ante for youth caught up in the struggle. The city of Milwaukee is second to none when it comes to the incarceration of African-American men. Still, we are faced with endemic levels of crime and violence in our city by youth who perpetrate these actions regardless of the strict penalties that continue to be exacted by the legal system. In fact, not even the ever-present threat of death itself seems to quell the rates of violent conduct, as Milwaukee continues to bury adolescents in the hundreds each summer while students in other communities make plans for college and busy themselves in summer work and sports.Those of us hoping to lend our professional and personal support and guidance to youth facing these circumstances often find ourselves falling into one or two well-intended but not entirely effective response patterns. At one extreme, there are the professionals who rightly size up the circumstances facing youth and realize the hardships that exist which unfairly serve as impediments to the opportunities and chances that other youth take for granted, and who make it their mission to help the youth make up for these inequities, through advocacy, empathic support, and understanding. Seeing today's youth as victims of fate, these professionals will work with intention to off-set the imbalance in the system, to offer the youth a second chance, or in the interest of buying time.
At the other extreme are professionals who understand that the youth cannot expect to improve their lot in life without pursuing a change in the youth's behavior. These professionals will work in close tandem with others, making every effort to direct the youth's behavior towards different ends. Typically, efforts include incentive-based systems of reward and punishment, the use of reasoning, or by taking the youth under the the jurisdiction of someone capable of ensuring the youth strays no further in their course for a duration of time.
Although both of these responses offer some temporary benefit to the youth facing dire circumstances, neither response accomplishes the goal of substantive change in the youth, or with regards to the realties they inhabit. This is because in both circumstances, professionals take action in a manner that is logical and sensible from the standpoint of the adult professional, but fundamentally disinvested in the unique and private perspective of the youth. As if any effort to impact favorably upon the life outcome of the youth can occur without involving the youth centrally in the cause.
This is where child guidance comes in.
At the heart of effective child guidance, is the principle of respect. Respect for the capacities and resources that the youth has at their disposal, even if they haven't made good use of them or may have over looked them. Respect for the youth's creative and distinct self, capable of acting and doing so with purpose and intention. Respect for the real word adversities that face the youth and that lie beyond our full comprehension. Respect for our own limits, and the role that our personal biases and private motives that operate without our awareness on our own conduct. Respect for the inherent rights of the other, and the significance that youth be able to gain jurisdiction over the circumstances of their existence as they progress into adulthood.
Individual Psychology has long held a model for child guidance that bases it's approach on a philosophy of respect, in embracing the realty that we cannot anticipate positive life outcomes for youth without enlisting their willful cooperation. Whereas other approaches might operate to mold or direct behavior of the youth, Positive Discipline exacts its outcomes through increasing the youth''s responsibility for themselves and involvement in resolving the challenges that confront through regard regard for social good and right of others.
This approach was first set into motion by Alfred Adler, who held open forums where community members would be provided support and perspective for addressing behavioral or emotional disturbances in youth. Adler and those who adopted his approach, worked respectfully with the identified youth, enlisting their involvement in understanding their underlying motives and helping to gain clarity on improved means for all to respond to mistaken behavior. Solutions would then be pursued through joint collaboration of the care provider and youth, in hopes of exacting better outcomes going forward. Adler's approach became widely popular through Vienna amongst a diverse cross section of the community, as formal child guidance clinics sprung up across the city of Vienna where parents, educators, and community members in general could get free support for youth in need.
Over years, Adler would take his approach to child guidance and related views on psychopathology and psychotherapy to growing audiences across Europe, prior to bringing his views to the Americas. He spent time traveling and teaching in the United States, and had plans to take his perspective to South America prior to his sudden death in 1937.
Following his death, Adler's perspectives would experience renewed life through child guidance perspectives of Rudolf Dreikurs, the work of Don Dinkmeyer and Gary McKay in their series of works on Systemic Training for Effective Patenting (STEP), and most recently the work of Jane Nelsen through her work on Positive Discipline. Each reiteration of Adler's core principles and collaborative approach to child guidance have brought renewed interest in Adler's compelling perspective.
As Milwaukee Affiliate for Social Living continues it's work in the Milwaukee area, we are hopeful that we will be able to share perspectives that highlight a respectful and collaborative approach towards working with the city's youth, as they inherit a disproportionate amount of social adversities. Although we remain eager to disseminate these unique and time-tested perspectives on child guidance, the best tutorial that can be offered on the successful overcoming of adversity is offered in the life outcomes of our city's often overlooked youth, so many of whom discover their own unique means of shining in spite of the odds.
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| Deb Psyno Certified Positive Discipline Trainer Licensed Family Educator |
We hope to see you there!
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| blogger, Ben Rader of Milwaukee Affilate for Social Living w/ son |
I love your incisive reflections, Ben. Thank you for sharing your writing and your perspectives. I am looking forward to my work in Milwaukee.
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