Enhancing Healthy Adolescent Development

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register@allceus.com Counselortoolbox you I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on enhancing healthy adolescent development. I am Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Today we're going to identify the developmental tasks of adolescents and what can be done to facilitate those. And basically we know that the main developmental task is for adolescents to grow, let their brains continue to mature, as well as facilitate independence and to a certain extent, success. We'll review unique points to remember when dealing with adolescents, identify some protective factors, antecedents to high risk behaviors, and brainstorm ways to address these antecedents with the individual, in the school, in communities and in families. So with adolescents, what they really are trying to do is achieve increased independence. And in order to do that, we need to help them have the skills to do it. Health literacy is really important. Having them understand where they can go to find credible information so they can take charge of their health care. And this isn't just with medical disorders. This is also with nutrition and exercise and sleep. They have an idea or they understand the functions of their body and also how to research more so they can be as healthy and happy as possible. Activities of daily living are other things that they need in order to achieve increased independence. Some of these things we take for granted, like doing the laundry. I just took for granted that my son had watched me do it enough times, he knew how to do it, but that wasn't really the case. So we need to make sure that youth have the skills. And there are actually, they call them adulting classes that you can find, you can find videos online, but you can also find face to face classes for adults or I'm sorry, for adolescents that teach them the basic skills they need, from doing laundry to cooking, to grocery shopping, to setting a budget, paying bills, all that stuff that way back in the day we used to use in, we used to learn in home economics. But activities of daily living are really important because it's hard for them to fledge if they don't have the tools they need financial literacy to understand, you know, what a credit card is, what a checking account is, what a debit card is, and how to, you know, make all those things work so they can stay financially above water as they become more independent and they need opportunities to practice all this stuff, it's kind of not fair. If we take kids and maybe we teach them this information as they're growing up, but they never get a chance to practice. Then as soon as they turn 18 or 22 or whatever it is, when you push them out the door, you're just like, well, you have the skills. Good luck. We want to let them practice these things. Things. So giving them opportunities in the home, giving them opportunities at school, and giving them opportunities in the community to practice all of these things. And there's a lot of different ways we can do this at home. We can encourage kids to help us make menus. We can. And when I say kids, I'm thinking, you know, even before adolescence, in those tween years, helping, having them get interested in learning about exercise and what's important about exercise, encouraging them to come up with a lot of different things that they can do, as opposed to just going to the gym or just eating, you know, broccoli or whatever it is, so they learn how to do the research. We want to give them these opportunities. And volunteer opportunities in the community are also helpful. I know a lot of animal shelters regularly need somebody to help with laundry, to, you know, wash the blankets and stuff that the animals sleep on. Is it the same as, you know, washing a silk blouse? No, of course you would dry clean that. But I digress. You can tell I don't have many silk blouses. But it gives them the opportunity to get used to using the washing machine and learning how to get stains out and things like that. So if there are opportunities, we can provide for them. Forming an identity with this core set of values and beliefs is another aspect of adolescence, and that comes straight from Erickson's stages. They're trying to figure out who they are. They're starting to individuate, which comes with independence. But then they need to figure out who they are and what they stand for. So they need education and exposure to different points of view, to different information, to well rounded, you know, arrays of information so they can learn and establish their own set of values. In order to do that, they need a safe place to explore these different values and beliefs where they're not going to be shut down, that this is not the party line we're not going to, where they're going to be allowed to, I don't want to say argue their beliefs, but assert their beliefs and why they believe what they believe and encourage to develop a rationale. You know, I don't have a problem if, you know, when. Not if, when my children disagree with my point of view on things. However, I want to know why, you know, you believe this okay, why is it that you believe what you believe? And it's not that I'm trying to change their minds and pick apart all their reasoning, but I want to know that they have made a thoughtful consideration of their point of view on things. And we need to encourage this from the very beginning. And it can be, you know, who do we have to take? Prepare me for the future, whatever it is. There are a lot of different ways we can help youth start making these decisions and educating themselves about the culture and about the stuff that will be important when they become adults. Physical and cognitive maturation happens whether they want it or not. However, you know, it can be enhanced by making sure that they have good medical care, they're not missing school because they're sick all the time, or they're not having difficulty concentrating because they're in pain or they're sleepy. We want to make sure they're getting good nutrition so they can actually focus and learn. Go figure. Adequate sleep. And you all know, this is one of my soapboxes that a lot of teenagers, the majority of teenagers don't get enough sleep because school starts so early. But they also have extracurriculars that may take them until later. And even if they don't have extracurriculars, I watch some of my kids friends and they will come home and they will be doing homework until 8, 9, 10 o' clock at night. And it's not that they are lollygagging or taking lots of breaks. They just have that much homework. So they're not getting enough sleep if they're actually getting all their homework done. We want to make sure they have a sense of safety, and that's emotional and physical safety, coping skills to deal with life on life's terms. You know, sometimes they're going to disagree with people, sometimes they're not going to like the outcome of something. You know, sometimes life's going to hand them lemons. And we need to make sure that they have the distress tolerance skills to handle the immediate dysphoria, but also coping skills to figure out what to do with it. You know, okay. And in acceptance and commitment therapy, you know, there's that radical acceptance of this is what it is, it is what it is right now. What can I do to improve the next moment? And we want to make sure they have resiliency skills and we're going to talk more about all these things as we go through the presentation. Youth in adolescence need to establish meaningful relationships, not necessarily their forever partner, but they need to start developing the ability to Communicate, to develop certain levels of intimacy and trust with other people in order to do that. And this is another thing we take for granted a lot. We need to provide them education about healthy relationships. When as my children have grown up, they've had different relationships with people and we've talked about them periodically as problems happen or whatever about how do you feel about this relationship, what can you do to handle this problem? So they start understanding that, you know, people can't read their mind. They can't expect other people to, they can't expect to read other people's minds. And what do healthy boundaries look like, emotional and physical? And they need opportunities to forge relationships. So you know, if they're at school, great. If you know, where else can they forge relationships? Maybe they don't like the kids they go to school with for some reason or another and generally there's somebody there that they'll like. But you know, where else can they forge relationships and what are their role models? Who are they seeing that are their role models in the media, in at school, in their extracurricular activities? Now a lot of these I can, I am going to assume, I'm going to try to read your minds right now and think that a lot of these, you're saying well that's great if their parents can teach them these things. But their parents, most of their parents don't have these skills. And yes, we're going to get to that. A lot of enhancing adolescent development starts with enhancing the communities and the resources that is the parents that the adolescents have to turn to. And the final developmental task is preparing for a meaningful vocation. Help them explore possibilities for their career and provide educational support for those things. Not everybody wants to go on to college for four years for undergrad and then another two or three years for graduate school, school and yada yada. Not everybody wants to go to college at all. And that's okay. There are a lot of jobs out there that people are need to be filled by people who don't like traditional book learning. They are much more hands on people. So helping people figure out what makes them happy, where are they going to have a high demand, reasonable wage job and you know, what interests them. There are, you know, we wouldn't have houses if there weren't framers. We wouldn't have, you know, a lot of things if there weren't people who wanted to actually get out and do them. My brother in law is a perfect example. He didn't like, nor did he, you know, excel in traditional book learning type stuff. Until he started going to vocational school to become an electrician. Once he found that, he just blossomed and, you know, he's an electrician now and he does great and he makes great money and he's really happy and it's wonderful. But the traditional school system typically funnels kids assuming they're going to go to college, you know, not assuming they're going to leave. So we want to, you know, open our, broaden our horizons a little bit. Adolescents are competent individuals with strengths and potential. Yes. They don't have all the learning that we have being on the earth, you know, 15, 20, 30 years more than they have been. However, they are competent with the skills that they have. So we need to build off of those instead, instead of doing it for them. Figure out where they are in their competence level and say, okay, let's go from here. Adolescents are diverse in their developmental stages and their abilities to comprehend and respond to specific tasks and expectations. And this is becoming more and more true. Not all 16 year olds can comprehend the exact same thing. Not all 16 year olds are at the same cognitive or social developmental stage. They're unique, they're individuals. And so much happens during this period, physically, emotionally, cognitively. You know, there's just all kinds of stuff going on that we don't want to assume that just because somebody is 16 years old, they should be getting a driver's license and wanting to go get a job and this, that and the other. Some will, some may not be there yet. And we need to figure out where each individual adolescent is. Adolescent behavior is meaningful to the adolescent. Well, go figure. Our behaviors are meaningful to us, so we want to step back if the adolescent is doing something we don't like for some reason to try to figure out why it's meaningful. My son, I'll give you an example, was in his last year of high school. You know, when I was in high school, I had jobs and stuff like that, and I was like, don't you want to go get a job? Don't you want to get your driver's license so you can. He's like, no, I'm getting ready to start college in eight months and I want to enjoy being a kid as long as I can. Okay, well, you know, there you go. His behavior was meaningful to him. He wanted to do what he was doing and didn't have the desire, and he didn't have the need to go, you know, do what I wanted him to do. And, you know, that was fine. So we need to look at why is this behavior Meaningful to the adolescent, why are they doing what they're doing? If an adolescent is, you know, skipping school, being truant, whatever, we want to look at that and say, why is this happening? What is the adolescent trying to communicate to us? Are we not teaching them in a way that is meaningful? Are we not teaching stuff that is meaningful? Well, not all kids, a lot of children, when they go through an adolescents, when they go through certain classes, will come home at least, and I know mine did, would come home and be like, how am I ever going to use this again? This is just stupid that I'm having to learn this for the third year in a row. And they would get sort of resistant to doing certain activities. And it's important to understand that their resistance, remember, resistance is the refusal to do something that is less rewarding than the alternative. They didn't see the benefit to it. So we want to always look at behavior in terms of what is this person communicating to me? Adolescents want to belong. They wish to participate in decisions and have a voice about issues that affect their lives. They don't want to be, for the most part, told what to do all the time. The context of an adolescent's environment, family, school, peers, their culture, ethnic group, neighborhood and community should always be considered. We need to look at this big, broad biopsychosocial thing. You can have youth who individually have a lot of strengths, but they also may be in an environment that is impoverished and they don't have a lot of opportunities, so their growth may be slowed because of their environment. Likewise, you could have a youth that has all the opportunities in the world, but they don't have the same cognitive talents as other students. So they may also, you know, be lagging in certain areas. So what do we do with that adolescent? For the first adolescent, we enhance their environment as much as we can to give them every opportunity. For the second adolescent, we need to look and say, okay, if this person is struggling cognitively, what can we do to bolster their environment to make it more meaningful to them? We want to build on adolescents strengths instead of always going from a deficit perspective. You need to learn this, you need to have this, you need to. What do you enjoy? Let's build off of that. What are you good at? Let's build off of that. Much of the morbidity and mortality during adolescence is related to unhealthy or risky behaviors such as smoking, drinking and driving, unprotected sex, drug use and violence. Adolescents who engage in one risky behavior are, no surprise, more likely to engage in Others, if they're willing to engage in drinking and driving, for example, then they might be more willing to engage in other risky behaviors. One of the things the research has shown, and it makes sense, we want to focus on the antecedents of the high risk behavior more than the behavior itself. Instead of waiting till they're already smoking and go, okay, let's talk about smoking cessation. We want to look at why did you start smoking in the first place? And how could we have prepared, prevented it? Prevention is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say. Some of the main antecedents to high risk behaviors, adverse childhood experiences. And I know we talk about this a lot, but it kind of summarizes a lot. Abuse, neglect, or victimization, either experienced by the adolescent or witnessed the abuse or neglect could be intimate partner violence that they're witnessing between their caregivers, or it could be something they're experiencing themselves. And I put victimization up here just to kind of put the violence all in one area. If a youth, even if it's not intimate partner violence, if it's not dating violence, if a youth is victimized in some way, then they are robbed, they are raped, they are, you know, whatever, you know, that's clearly an adverse childhood experience. If there is divorce or separation in the household, this can be an adverse childhood experience. And separation can be marital separation, or it can be because a caregiver was arrested and goes to jail. Or it could be because a caregiver is in the military and goes, you know, is deployed for 18 months or two years. Does it mean that any child that comes from a family where there's divorce or separation is going to be traumatized? No. Again, you want to look at that biopsychosocial environment. Did they have supports to deal with it when it happened? Did they understand what was going on and did they feel safe and secure after it happened? And if there's mental health or substance abuse issues in the household, then there could be a lot of focus on the person with the mental health or substance abuse issues, and the adolescent may feel not noticed or, and, or if the caregiver has mental health or substance abuse issues, they may be unable to connect and form a secure attachment with the adolescent. Undiagnosed learning disabilities are really strongly correlated with high risk behaviors. If we have somebody who starts to fail in school because they have an undiagnosed learning disability, they may find, look at the meaning behind the behavior. Why are they failing in school? Why are they skipping school? Why are they resistant to turn in their homework. That behavior is telling us something. And youth with undiagnosed learning disabilities who start to fail in school because they either are having difficulty doing the homework or they're not understanding the homework, often take a hit to their self esteem and and react in other ways in order to feel like they're getting have control over something or in order to feel accepted because they're being rejected, if you will. You want to think about it that way. They're being rejected by the school. We want to make sure that we are carefully assessing dyslexia and other learning disabilities in children, not just add adhd, in order to ensure that they're all, all students are having the best shot. There are also a lot of people who don't learn and a lot of cultures where people typically don't learn as well from a written standpoint. They do better because it's an auditory culture and vice versa. There are people who do not function nearly as well by just hearing stuff. They need to have it written down so they can read it. And that just goes with learning style too, if you want to take culture out of it. Some of us are very strong visual learners. Others are auditory. My daughter, you say something, she will remember it for 20 years. But if she reads something, it doesn't sink in quite as well. I'm just the opposite. I can read something and I've got it, I'll remember it. But sitting in a lecture did nothing for me. So it was important for me to learn how to work within my own learning preferences. Academic failure, as I said, is a greater risk factor for later adolescent drinking and high risk behaviors than high risk behaviors or adolescent drinking are for later academic failure. So let's just kind of weave that out. Basically. If an adolescent starts drinking or engaging in high risk behaviors, could it potentially lead to academic failure? Yeah, sure. However, there's a much stronger correlation between the youth failing first and then starting to develop high risk behavior. So we want to make sure that we are engaging the student in the school and in the learning process. So let's talk about addressing antecedents really quick. Abuse, neglect and victimization. We need to address intimate partner violence in the community, whether it's youth dating violence or household violence. Anything that qualifies as intimate partner violence. And that can be done through community advocacy. That can be done through education programs in the school, that can be done through programs in churches and community centers. That can be done through even education via news programs. I mean, it's limitless how this Information and how these resources can be disseminated. It's just based on what your community uses. Does your community still read a hard copy print paper? Okay, well, let's get a column in there on healthy relationships and resources for intimate partner violence prevention. If they are more YouTube oriented, well, then let's have a YouTube channel. If they watch the news, have the local news, do something on it. Being plugged into your particular community is really important. Health programs at schools are really important. We want to enhance parent support and education so parents know about the warning signs. They can see signs of intimate partner violence. They also are provided education and parent resources so they don't become abusive or neglectful parents. A lot of parents don't intend to become abusive or neglectful. When you look at the parent, they're struggling. They don't. They have a child and they are having difficulty dealing with their own stuff and they have no patience and they don't know how to parent. And partly because they were never taught how to parent. So we want to make sure that resources are available in a way that people are going to consume them. If you force people, if you say there's a class down at the community center that meets at 6pm every Wednesday, well, that's great. A lot of people are not going to go because they have other commitments, because they don't want to sit through a class, whatever. So how else can you get that information to them? And we go back to PDFs on the website, handouts at the doctor's office, YouTube videos, just brainstorming. And we want to enhance protective factors against mental health and substance abuse. Other antecedents include divorce and separation. So we want to provide support in family court for joint custody arrangements when appropriate. Obviously, sometimes that's not a good thing, but if it's appropriate. One of the big buffers against children experiencing trauma from a separation is the amount of contact they're able to have or whether they feel abandoned by the caregiver that leaves. So if there's support for joint custody, then that's great. And if there's information about blended families and parental emotional support after a divorce or separation. And again, we're also talking about deployment and other things. The parent with main custody can experience grief and depression and anxiety and frustration and all those dysphoric feelings which can negatively impact the parent child bond. Encouraging or ensuring that families have access to ongoing emotional support after a separation is important for mental health and substance abuse issues. Ensure adequate resources are available and accessible for mental health and substance abuse you know, we're going to talk more about that. Screen early and often for learning disabilities and autism spectrum disorders. And when I say early and often, I don't mean high school. I mean starting with the pediatric checkups at six weeks, you know, three months. However often they happen, it's been a long time since I had a little kid. Making sure you're screening for signs of any sort of developmental delay and engaging the early steps program as soon as possible to do an assessment if there's even a hint that there might be a problem. And every state has an early steps program to provide early intervention for developmental delays and in school failure. We want to help teachers teach in ways that are meaningful for students and respect students innate strengths tie things back to, how is this meaningful to you today? Or how could this be meaningful for you today? And that includes history, social studies, algebra, whatever. The brain matures from back to front. The back part, you know, think about your neck and the back part of your brain, that's where all of your breathing and everything is controlled and your higher order cognitions and impulse control, that's in your, you know, prefrontal cortex. Adolescent decision making behaviors are more influenced by the amygdala, which is back here, than the prefrontal cortex. Now remember, amygdala is our fear. You know, it's our primitive part of our brain that is protects us. And fear and anger and emotional stuff generally come from the amygdala. Decision making is influenced by emotional and gut responses. You know, that very primitive I feel, therefore I act versus higher order cognitions. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for planning, strategizing, judgment, impulse control and regulation of emotions. Interestingly, and I learned this during this presentation, the initial growth spurt of the prefrontal Cortex starts at 11 to 12 years old and continues through 25 years. I knew it didn't stop until 25, but from 12 to 25 years there's a pruning process of unused neural connections. So when this growth spurt happens, the prefrontal cortex like gets a dump of all these connections and stuff. And then over time, what's not used gets pared away in order to result in whatever the adult brain looks like. The time gap between the development of emotional and cognitive control systems of the brain, they suspect underlies some of the aspects of adolescents reckless behavior and risk taking. You want to go race cars? Well, emotional gut response would be, that sounds like fun, let's go do it. Higher order cognitions would say, probably not a good idea. But in an adolescent they're going more with that emotional gut response. What seems to be the most rewarding in the moment? Healthy young people learn better and achieve more when they're, when, when they're healthy. Schools can directly influence students health behaviors by what they teach and teaching it in a way that's meaningful, not just the same old rhetoric with those 1920s movies. I don't know if they still show those. The old black and white movies we used to see in health class. You're just like, oh please make it stop. Schools and communities can encourage healthy lifestyle choices and promote adolescent health and well being. A lot of this is by offering opportunities and by modeling healthy behavior, having a lot of sidewalks and places that youth can go to get exercise and recreate in pro social ways. Health literacy can be incorporated into all aspects of school as well as recreation, and I'll give you some examples of that in a few minutes. Schools, families and communities need to collaborate with youth to develop workable strategies. We don't want a bunch of adults sitting around going, oh, they'd love this. Let's just, let's put this program together. Because all the youth in the community will love. No, get the youth in the community involved and go, what would you like? Because a lot of times we plan stuff. We don't mean to, but we plan stuff based on what we might want to do or what we think they might want to do. We're trying to mind read. Let's just ask them, get them involved if they're involved, if they've got a dog in the race, so to speak, then they're going to be more likely to participate. That's where in a lot of communities, that's where skate parks and stuff kind of blossomed from was adolescents going, you know, we really need a safe place to do this, otherwise we're going to be doing it in places that are not where you want us to be. Strategies we want to enhance the wise mind processing during adolescence to retain those synapses. We don't want those pruned away. So we want to encourage youth to. That means teachers, parents, clergy, anybody who works with adolescents to regularly talk with them and encourage them to, you know, use wise mind strategies, practice distress tolerance skills and use problem solving skills, start learning those problem solving skills, developing psychological flexibility so those pathways don't get pruned away. We want to actively engage youth by providing opportunities for meaningful participation and sustained involvement and protective activities. What do you want to do and how can we encourage sustained involvement? For example, if youth are given, if they're part of a club, for example, that works with Habitat for Humanity, and they can leave school after lunch on Wednesdays as a group to. To go work on building a house, then that would be a meaningful participation, if that's what they wanted to be doing, and sustained involvement. It's something that happens every Wednesday. We know the transportation is going to be there, yada, yada. We want to help them develop resiliency skills and enhance protective factors. And you may be saying, well, what are those? We're getting there. Protective factors, Family support. We need to know, even if the family doesn't have all the resources and all the tools, we need to know that the family's on board and they're supportive of this process. We want to encourage positive family communication. And, you know, some of that comes from, you know, if you have families that don't have these skills, then the. Unfortunately, the adolescent may need to model those in the family relationship. But hopefully community centers and programs and wherever people gather. I always go back to religious institutions where people gather. We'll talk about positive family communication and help people learn how to do it. Clear and consistent boundaries and expectations are really important at school, at home, in the community. Youth need to know what they can and cannot do. We all are hemmed in to a certain extent by boundaries. Other adult relationships are really important. Adult relationships other than just with the caregivers, with family members, with other adults in the neighborhood, with teachers. And I'm not talking about teachers taking kids out for lunch or something. No, no, that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is adolescents feeling like they can go to the school counselor and talk to that person and be heard. They can go to their pastor, they can go to the neighbor two doors down and talk to them, or bounce something off of them to get different points of view. Because remember, they're forming their own value system at this point, so they may go, okay, well, I've heard what my caregivers have to say. Let me see what somebody else has to say. And somebody else pointed out earlier that youth can often go online and always go online and find someone on YouTube who will espouse their same value system, whether that's good or bad. They can find somebody who has a similar mindset. We want to encourage them to not only learn about that mindset, but learn about, you know, opposing points of view and then make their decision. And sometimes they'll land in the middle, sometimes they'll stay right where they were, and sometimes they'll, you Know completely change. We need to encourage them to expose themselves to those other points of view. We want to encourage them to develop relationships with other people, with children, other adolescents that are in the community. Connection to the family, school and community are also important. Youth need to be provided opportunities to be useful resources. Not just there, not just decoration. You know, we've got this program for kids. We want them involved, leading the program, doing something meaningful to them and you feel emotionally and physically safe. If they have education about planning and decision making, that's a protective factor. And resiliency. I told you we would get here. We want to develop these skills in youth. Problem solving, efficacy, social support, communication skills, mindfulness and self awareness and self esteem. If youth have these resiliency skills, they are going to be much better armed to deal with life on life's terms. Distress tolerance skills, resistance and refusal skills, a positive view of the future and cultural competence all go into protective factors. And you can look at these protective factors. You can take it to the school board, you can take it to the recreation center in the community, you can take it to the county commission and you can say, all right, how can we start developing these things in youth when we engage youth? And this is, I thought was an interesting graphic. Level one is manipulation. I will give you X if you participate. The youth doesn't want to do it, but they're doing it for a reward. Level two is decoration. We're saying we've got this youth program going and it's a bunch of adults, but there are some youth just sprinkled in. So we can say that we're doing a youth program. Tokenism is a little bit more involved than decoration, but still the youth are just there. They may be given a token position, but they don't really have a whole lot of say in anything. Level four, they're assigned but informed. They're being told that they need to participate in this committee, but they're informed about what's going on. They're starting to get a little bit more of a say. Level five is where we start getting meaningful participation. The youth are consulted about what might happen, what would you like, what would help? And they're informed about what other people's positions are. Level six is adult initiated and shared decisions with youth. Level seven is youth initiated and directed. And level eight is youth initiated and shared decisions with adults. So each level, the youth are getting more and more responsibility. Most youth are going to start out at an assigned but informed place because they're not ready to take on leadership roles. But we want to help them move up this ladder to where they're taking leadership roles and making decisions and coming to the adults and going, okay, this is what we're going to do, or this is what we propose to do. To motivate youth, it needs to be something that they want to do. Most youth are going to drag their feet kicking and screaming if it's not something they want to do. With regard to time, we want to encourage teachers to teach smarter, have students read and watch the material at home and use class time to practice and ensure comprehension. Many of you probably were in similar places as I was when I took math in high school. I would go home and I would do my homework and I would make the same mistake 15 times. So I had ingrained that mistake. What Jonathan Schein says is basically, let's flip it. Let them read the book and try to figure it out themselves. And then in the classroom is when they can do their practice work and they can get immediate feedback so they don't make that same mistake over and over again. This theoretically would free up time so you don't have students struggling for three hours over 15 problems that they're just not going to get right. It would free up time outside of school for youth to be able to do something else. Youth need energy to participate in things, so they need to have adequate sleep, which goes back to that whole teach smarter. They're not staying up till 11 o' clock trying to knock out tons of homework. Then they're going to be better off. And we want to make sure that they have access to essential nutrition. A lot of school programs exist now for breakfast in the morning to make sure students get started off on the right foot. They need to have resources such as transportation to activities and the ability to earn money to afford activities. So there needs to be, you know, not all parents can just hand over 20 bucks and say, go to the movies. Youth may need the ability to get a job, whether that's mowing lawns or working at an actual business or whatever the case may be. They need rewards. Financial rewards are handy, but not always. The be all end all. Getting time off from school for community service activities can be another reward. Or having alternate study halls where everybody who's involved in a project has this alternate study hall. Instead of having to do something inherently boring, Involve youth in the development of health promotional strategies. Ask them what would encourage you to exercise? You know, what types of activities do you want? Skate parks, basketball courts, walking trails, indoor recreation. What sorts of incentives might get you to get off the computer and exercise. And even some of the computer games now are movement oriented, like the Xbox 360. So if we set that up as an indoor recreation sort of thing, what types of things would you use? What sorts of incentives would you want and what obstacles do you see preventing you from participating in these activities? Transportation. Okay, how might we work that out? Cost, safety. Brainstorm these things in order to make sure that you're presenting a valid and useful intervention. Same thing when it comes to alcohol and drugs. Ask the youth, what are the benefits to use. You know, we need to understand that there are benefits or they wouldn't be doing it. Why are you drinking? What are the drawbacks to use as you see them and what are the alternatives to use as you see them? This can provide us information about education they need, but it can also provide us information about reasons they may be engaging in alcohol or drug use. So we can start brainstorming interventions and it's going to be different for different places. I know one community that I worked in was a very rural community. And the youth, youth that I worked with told me one time, yeah, we all meet in this particular store's parking lot every Friday, and we smoke marijuana and drink because there's nothing else to do in this town. And that's the only fun thing we've got. Like, okay, well, that gives me some information. Now I know why you do it. You know, it's not that you're escaping this, you know, oppressive pain or something. You're bored and you know, that continued use causes other problems. We know, but that helped me. And at that point, you know, the next step would have been to try to figure out, what would you like to do instead? Use the media. Actors, athletes and persons who are important to the youth are good at communicating messages to them. They'll listen to them. You know, as parents or caregivers. A lot of times we are way down there on the pecking order. Provide incentives for submitting pro social memes to a moderated account at the school or the church. Not pictures. I don't want this to be a picture gallery, but pro social memes that have positive sayings in them. Encourage students to write letters to producers of network shows indicating their preferences. You know, what is it that we would like to see more of that's pro social? Encourage parents and community members to write letters to producers regarding pro social messages we want communicated. And work with local news media, tv, print and radio to offer education on health literacy, parenting and mental health promotion. Youth engagement programs can facilitate positive youth development by providing opportunities for skill development and capacity building, providing opportunities for leadership, encouraging reflection on identity and developing social awareness. In order to transform our youth into leaders though, remember that ladder I showed you? It's a stepping process. We need to permit youth to self select for participation. They need to actually want to do it, not just be told you're going to respect and consider youth's power and experiences. Don't give them too much and go, all right, you want to do this here, make it happen. That may be too much for youth to do initially. They may need some scaffolding. They may need some assistance figuring out, okay, here's a problem. How do we problem solve? How do we come up with a proposal? Provide frequent and diverse leadership opportunities within the organization and community so that can be at school, at religious institutions, in the rec center. Ensure opportunities are available for all youth including high risk youth. We don't want to have high risk youth forgotten about because they can't get transportation to the local community center or whatever. We want to make sure that we're including the high risk youth. Develop an understanding of differences in cultural expression of leadership behaviors. Allow youth to take on responsibilities and leadership roles without expectations of perfection. We aren't perfect when we take on leadership roles. We certainly shouldn't expect it of adolescents. Offer opportunities that encompass non traditional leadership activities such as volunteering or being a student assistant. So they're working with people. Evaluate and explore youth's perspectives and beliefs about leaders and leadership. In order to do all this, we need to create a welcoming, safe environment and encourage meaningful participation and engagement. I know, I've said that like five times now. We want to make sure there's equitable power sharing between youth and adults. We don't want to just throw out there and say good luck but likewise, we don't want to just have them sit there as a token and tell them what's going to happen. We want to have a power sharing and as they develop the skills to take on a more of a leadership role, the adults back out a little bit more. We want to engage them in critical reflection on interpersonal and socio political processes. So how is this going to affect them things? And what's going to happen if we create this skate park? Or what's going to happen if we create this policy where people can leave campus for half a day to go volunteer? We want to encourage them to participate in socio political processes to affect change and integrate individual and community level empowerment. We want to encourage them to become empowered as an Individual to try things, but also to step out into the community and go, something needs to change here. So as an individual, how can I mobilize change in my community? Proactive approaches Proactively develop emotional, cognitive, interpersonal and physical assets of youth. Identify things that make them happy. You know, that's one of the things. So in math you can teach them, you know, instead of just teaching the rote curriculum, you can, whatever you're teaching, link it back to helping them learn how to budget for things they want or financial management for the future. Or if they like cooking, you know, you can help them relate it to fractions or what have you to cooking, research, learning about something they're interested in. In English class, they can write a paper about something that they love and they can do it from a persuasive point of view, entertaining point of view, or an educational, informative point of view. In science, they can explore the fun side of science. Encourage youth to identify ways to make learning a topic enjoyable. So if you're going to learn, I loved teaching Newton's laws to my son. That was one of the most fun units that I ever did. But encourage youth to look at the unit and say, okay, how can we teach this? How can we relate this to real life and make it enjoyable? At home, students can be encouraged to do one thing daily for 30 to 60 minutes that makes them happy. And in the community, you can form a youth engagement committee at recreation centers or churches to identify what youth want to do and what would make them happy and then help them move it to the next step, such as involving the county commission to make those things happen. We want to teach them the ability to use psychological flexibility to deal with distress in social studies. They can explore the current news and help students use psychological flexibility and problem solving to address current socio political issues before exams. And I remember working with students before exams. Some of them would start literally pulling out their eyebrow hairs because they would get so stressed before the state exams every year. So before these exams, practice vulnerability prevention. Talk to students about getting enough sleep and taking a break. You can only study so much for these exams. Just let it go, enjoy your weekend and then show up here refreshed on Monday. Talk about different distress tolerance techniques and then be mindful of the present moment and choose thoughts and behaviors that will best help them achieve their goals. Encourage them during that week before and during the test to just be mindful and choose thoughts of success. You know, they can sit there and go, oh, I'm going to fail this test. Or they can learn to push that thought aside and have a positive attitude if it's a different, you know, if it's just a unit test, you know, choosing behaviors like studying that will help them achieve their goal, which may just be getting out of a class they hate. But encourage them to figure out how to use psychological flexibility at home. Encourage parents to use a psychological flexibility worksheet or bored with them on a daily basis, reflecting on, okay, here I am now, how do I feel? You know, practicing mindfulness and then what can I do in order to keep me headed towards my goals? And what thoughts can I have today that can keep me moving towards my goals? The psychological flexibility worksheet can look something like this. Thoughts and feelings. Thoughts, feelings and behaviors that do not solve the problem is on the left side. And it can be things like complaining, sleeping, drinking, smoking, eating, blah, blah. And then on the right side, thoughts, feelings and behaviors that could help solve the problem. Just encourage, it's like a pro and con list. Encourage youth to start making these lists so they can see their options and then they can make conscious choices. They may not make the choices that you want them to make, but they can make conscious choices about what to do once they have it, you know, right in front of their eyes. To teach effective problem solving skills in math. Encourage them, how can you figure out how to solve this problem? Remember the whole two trains leave the station, both heading in opposite directions at 65 miles an hour. When are they gonna pass? Or whatever. I used to hate those. Encourage them to. Or teachers can start using more present focused problems. And, you know, how could you solve this mathematical problem? Or encourage them, encouraging them to think instead of just spoon feeding them and saying, well, this is what you do and this is the next step, and this is the next step and, and feeding it to them without making them think. There's a lot of times they think they understand what's going on, but then they get home and they're like, I have no clue what I'm doing in science. Use a lot of experimentation and it can be fun things for little kids or younger middle school type students. How can you make bath bombs? You know, those are the little fuzzy things, fizzy things you put in the bath. How can you get kool Aid off of a shirt? How can you get a balloon to stick to your head? And when you get into, you know, upper grades, there are other things, but there are a lot of things that you can do and a lot of fun ways to teach concepts in English. Have them write a paper or Have a panel discussion on how social media bullying can be prevented or the best way to deal with manipulative people. These are all problem solving skills you're encouraging them to think about how could we solve this problem? And this link, I'm going to see if I can get it to open while we're waiting. Takes you to a bunch of really awesome prompts. Relationship topics. How is texting affected? Face to face relationships, Yada yada. Social problems, I mean, tons and tons of discussion topics for a paper or a panel discussion at home. Encourage the use of negotiating and scaffolding. Children and youth are not necessarily going to have all the answers, but they may be able to get it halfway. And then you start saying, okay, now how can you finish this task, whatever you're doing in, you know, in my house, we just had a plumbing leak. So my, my husband brought my son down and said, okay, this is our leak. Now what are we going to do? And you know, my son was pretty oblivious. So they talked about what their options were and then they figured out what they were going to do and how to fix it. And so the next time when we have a leak, because it'll happen theoretically, Sean will have that knowledge and he can start building off of that and go, well, last time this is what happened. So I think we need to do this and he can make a plan and then eventually he'll get to the point where he can actually start cutting pipes, but not anytime soon. And in the community. Involve youth in addressing social problems. Encourage them to identify what's meaningful to them. If we want to increase high levels of health literacy in math, use math problems that surround measuring food, calculating calorie needs, understanding base metabolic rate, and calorie consumption. I'm sure there are a lot of other things you can do with math, but for research skills, encourage them to find credible resources to answer questions and talk about how they knew resource was credible or not in English, encourage them to write papers on topics related to health literacy. And in science, you can learn about the impact of nutrition on the body. You can learn about the effect of sleep and exercise on the body, or even review the Krebs cycle, which is a chemical reaction in the body. So there's a lot of stuff that we can take or that teachers can take if they are willing to use a more practical, proactive curriculum. And I know that that's a huge thing. And regular engagement with peers in social activities. In English, you can have them identify a social problem in the community and work in groups to develop and implement a solution in science. You can encourage group work or even make like a science club that's actually fun, not just one that nobody wants to belong to. And the youth can go to daycares or retirement homes to do science magic and entertain. At home, you can encourage youth to spend at least 20 minutes a day with the family and plan monthly outings. That's usually not too much to ask of youth. And in the community, Churches, recreation centers and libraries can engage youth to identify what they want to do and develop after school and weekend programming, such as board game clubs, video game console, or areas where there's like 15 computers with video games or art clubs or recreation. And businesses can do things like offer affordable movies or affordable drinks and a place to study, so at least we know that they're, you know, safe. Enhancing adolescent involvement means preventing adverse childhood exposure experiences, ensuring adequate growth and development, and enhancing protective factors in the person, home, school, and community. Strategies include involving community groups, recreation centers and businesses and providing opportunities for youth recreation and leadership. Working with schools to adjust curriculum to teach skills necessary for success, including resiliency skills, health literacy and mental health promotion Ensuring families have access to the resources they need to create a safe and nurturing environment and involving youth in identifying problems, challenges, and gaps in resources and incentives for participation. I know that was a lot of stuff and I know a lot of us that is not in our typical 40 hour duties as assigned. However, you know, if we want to think from a prevention standpoint, what would help the next step? You know, brainstorming here, the next step would be to start looking for grants. And if you go to grants.gov or if you go to SAMHSA's website, a lot of times there are prevention grants. But you can also encourage the leadership at your agency, for example, to approach the county commission and request a grant. Because county commissions do have a fund where they can make grants and encourage the county commission to make a grant for however much money to start a particular program and help them see how it could be useful to the adolescents. And sometimes county commissions will actually fund for a limited period, maybe one or two years, an actual prevention director that will spearhead some of these programs and start helping them get started. Other times it takes a grassroots committee of, you know, different people in the community getting together, going, okay, how are we going to address this? But I know when I was a supervisor, those committees used to be other duties as assigned. I would be on three or four committees at any one time. And it's just, it's part of your job, but it was something I could do because I wasn't hamstrung by having to have 30 billable hours a week. So anyhow, I thank you all for being here today and I hope you have a great rest of the day. Please do not melt away in all of the heat. I saw a lot of you at the beginning of class were talking about how incredibly hot it is and it is. Oh my gosh. But embracing those dialectics. You know, some of my my tomatoes are just ripening like crazy right now, which is good because I've been able to make multiple batches of bruschetta. But that's one of my little guilty pleasures. Have a great day and I will see you next time. Between writing notes, filing insurance claims, and scheduling with clients, it can be hard to stay organized. That's why I recommend Therapy Notes. 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