Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Welcome to KidsChange by J.Scott Beaty Executive Director of MN Youth Intervention Programs Association

I’m often asked, “What is KidsChange?” KidsChange is a central hub of information and resources of over 70 early youth intervention programs throughout the State of Minnesota. We offer families in crisis, law enforcement, youth service professionals and kids a simple way to find information and services that are most appropriate for their situation through the resources at our website, www.kidschange.org. With this blog, we intend to bring the experience and expertise of youth service professionals right to your door, as they share their insight, research, best practices and thoughts about working with and parenting youth.

A goal of the KidsChange initiative is to provide clarity about what youth intervention is and what intervention programs are all about. In addition to our nationally and internationally known experts in the youth field, guest bloggers will include youth service providers, parents, law enforcement, and youth.

What is Youth Intervention? The field of early intervention represents a variety of programs that give youth better decision making skills and help keep them from going down the wrong path in life. Services such as: mentoring, counseling, conflict resolution, anger management, diversion, and education are all forms of early intervention. Although the strategies may be diverse, they all share the ultimate goal of reaching kids when they are just showing signs of troublesome behaviors, keep them in school, living with a supportive family and out of the costly juvenile justice system.

Currently, over 85 YIPA member organizations from across the state of Minnesota serve over 50,000 at-risk youth per year. These KidsChange agencies work with youth ages 6-18 precisely when they are beginning to engage in problematic behaviors (e.g. truancy, petty crimes, alcohol/drug use, etc.). Instead of simply being punished for their actions, youth benefit from early intervention programs by receiving the help and resources they need to make positive life choices leading to a brighter future.


Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The Hostile Society by Dr. Michael Obsatz


Dr. Obsatz will be presenting "The Boy Crisis in America: Possible Solutions" at the 2009 Youth Intervention Conference on October 27th-28th in Saint Paul.

Children learn how to become nasty, dependent adults when they are very young. They see hundreds of unhealthy, immature adults all around them.

We live in a culture that focuses on gaining one’s sense of well-being from externals – caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar, marijuana, cocaine, shopping, gambling, money, possessions, winning teams. Anne Wilson Shaef’s book, “When Society Becomes an Addict,” discussed this four decades ago. Drugs are rampant among middle and high school kids – where sex with benefits has replaced sex with commitment, sex with love, or sex with marriage. Internally, people feel empty.

Americans are taught to seek approval, pleasure, recognition and fame. We idolize and honor those who are famous, and then we watch them fall down as they can’t meet our incredibly high expectations. We live vicariously through the Hollywood and musical stars. Some song lyrics are sexist, demeaning, and death-focused. Videogames provide young children with destructive tools at their command.

We have become superficial, narcissistic addicts. We are encouraged to conform by wearing the latest fashions, and driving the newest Sports Utility Vehicles. Three-car garages are common, as the garage now equals the size of the 1950’s rambler in square feet. As self-absorbed, impulsive beings, we want immediate gratification; feeling entitled to receive whatever we want. This entitlement comes out in whining and lawsuits.

Children are taught from an early age to live up to gender role stereotypes – thinness and attractiveness for girls, and macho, stoic toughness for boys. The result of this is that many males see females as objects to be had and used. The abuse rate for women is 25% in America.

Eating disorders and steroid use are rampant. The average model is 5 foot 11 inches tall, and weighs 115 pounds. The average woman in America is 5 foot 3 inches tall, and weighs 144 pounds. The discrepancy between the real and the ideal results in shame, self-loathing and resentment. Fifth grade girls go on diets to lose weight. And yet, as a culture, we have a severe obesity problem. Supersize the fries, please.

Fathers leave their children because they lack nurturing and emotional communication skills. In custody issues, courts still favor mothers, because they assume fathers are incapable of caring for their children. Men don’t learn skills as boys, and are later punished for their ignorance. They take “anger management” classes 40 years too late.

Americans are angry because they have lost their center and their integrity. Political and religious leaders lie. Priests abuse children. Telemarketers act as if you are their personal friend. Advertising fills the airwaves, newspapers, and internet.

People are rushed, hurried, and angry about it. They have too much to accomplish in too little time. Many adults do not have time for their children who are raised by strangers.

As a result, some children experience feelings of abandonment, loneliness, and isolation. Many children are on medication for hyperactivity or depression. We try to medicate pain rather than face the real causes of it.

David Walsh calls America a “culture of disrespect.” Kids do not respect teachers, parents and other authority figures. Some police abuse their power. We see regular doses of fighting, cursing, whining, and screaming in the media Television and video games are about destroying others physically and emotionally.

Cell phones are everywhere. They interrupt lectures, sermons, conversations. People double and triple task, and try to focus in more than one direction at a time. So, many are distracted and not really present. So people continue to not get their needs met from others. They leave one relationship for another.

The social problems relate to trust, commitment, integrity, honesty, and compassion. A culture that is driven such as ours, has little empathy for the weak, the ill, the elderly, the powerless. Road rage is ten times what it was twenty years ago.

We still segregate and marginalize people. We suffer from sexism, heterosexism, racism, and social class domination We laugh at nerds unless they turn out to be Bill Gates.

To sum up, there is not enough – time, maturity, generosity, love, commitment, decency, politeness, honesty and patience. And there is too much money to be made off people who try to “fix” their lives by consuming something outside of themselves.

What can we do about this? First, we must take a real look at where we are, and how we got here. Second, we must commit to doing something about it. And third, we need to reclaim our individual wholeness and our sense of community. We need to stop waging war on ourselves and each other, and start healing the tremendous wounds we have suffered both individually and collectively.

Wake up, America. It is not going to get better until everyone feels safe, cared about, and has an opportunity for growth.

For more information, call Mike Obsatz at 651-696-6963.

Visit www.mirrormanfilms.org to learn about the film “Journeyman”, the producers, the directors, the Boys to Men mentoring program. Visit www.angeresources.com for more about Dr. Obsatz.

The Movie Making Process©: An Educational Prevention Program For 21st Century Learning by Linda Flanders, Taproot, Inc.

Linda Flanders will be presenting "The Movie Making Process: An Education Prevention Program for 21st Century Learning" at the at the 2009 Youth Intervention Conference on Oct. 27-28 in St. Paul.

The demands of living in a fast-paced and rapidly evolving 21st Century are staggering. Communities are dealing with global issues at the local level. Technological skills, creative thinking and innovation are areas that the United States used to excel in; now we are falling dangerously behind. The national high school drop out rate is 35% and the 50 largest cities in the U.S. show a staggering 48% high school dropout rate. (Cities in Crisis, 2008) We are the most addicted country in the world and hold the record for the most incarcerations per capita of any other country. (2008 Pew Center Report)

What happened and what are we going to do about it?

The entertainment industry and the gaming designers are increasingly aware of games’ power to influence neural pathway formation. (Scientific American, February 2009) Now, communities can compete for their kids’ attention through the process of making a community movie; fusing together human development, education, activism and future job skills. We plan to show you how during a presentation at this year’s YIPA conference. First by showing the kids the excitement, creativity and positive attention they can get from being part of the process and then we’ll show the adults how a community can put an entire production together quickly and inexpensively; then use the finished product as a continuous learning tool.

Our most complete replicable community movie project that’s designed as a complete education and prevention program is The Northern Lights; Shining The Light on the Meth-edemic. While it educates about Meth specifically, it also covers addiction in general. It offers skill building and alternative activities; both are needed for any prevention program to work. And, it teaches creative and technological skills needed for the future. We’ll show clips of this production as part of the presentation.

Why It Works:

We’re all born with some level of natural intelligence, yet we may or not come into a safe and nurturing environment, or we might suffer from an early childhood trauma, but we ALL must navigate through the core processes of “human” development to emotionally mature. (Greenspan, S. 1997)

  • We must attach to another human being
  • We must learn to communicate our wants and needs
  • We need to experience a range of emotions and “express” those emotions
  • We must learn limits and boundaries

The window for learning these things is birth to five. What happens when we miss these developmental levels? We can end up apathetic or rage filled, treating others as things. We don’t communicate our wants and needs to others; not even knowing them ourselves. We can feel feelings of anger and fear, but they don’t get balanced out with feelings of love, peace and happiness. We don’t learn boundaries of basic common decency; we don’t learn self-control and the brain wires us up in a way that prevents learning from cause and effect. That is human development, and it has global implications. We can also end up with learning disabilities that create havoc for us in traditional public education. This has national implications on all the above statistics.

We designed “The Movie Making Process” to help fill this gap. Come visit our presentation and we’ll show you how. We use Multiple Intelligence Theory, experiential learning and the latest in neuroscience: The Power of Paying Attention.

The Movie Making Process Youtube Clip

More information on the website at www.taprootinc.com

Or, Linda Flanders at taproot@redwing.net

The Ability to Reason by Linda Flanders/Taproot, Inc.

Linda Flanders will be presenting " The Ability to Reason: From the Abstract to the Concrete" at the 2009 2009 Youth Intervention Conference on Oct. 27-28 in St. Paul.

For young people to be independent, mature emotionally and live freely outside of the Criminal Justice System, the ability to reason is essential. The Ability to Reason is literally, “the use of the cognitive mental powers needed to think, reflect, make decisions, work and apply choice”. It’s now an art-based cognitive skills class currently taught for Court Services in Goodhue County, MN as an innovative approach for early offenders. After three years, we have a 91% non-recidivism rate. This class has been adapted for use by school Social Workers and Special Ed teachers, plus another adaptation for 12 Steppers in recovery. It is also excellent for parents with pre-teen children in “Surviving Middle School”. The process is based on developmental and experiential learning.

Many of the young people we teach are smart, some gifted and yet some learning disabled. No assessment is needed because we all do the same art-based lessons together.

In class we use clay (or Play-doh) and colored pencils (or crayons) as the learning tools. The class is divided into two segments during which these 5 abstract concepts are learned.

To THINK means use our body and brain together. The brain thinks, but doesn’t feel or move. The body can move and feel, but it doesn’t think. Thinking is literally “to use one’s mind rationally in evaluating any given situation; recognizing that situations are always changing”. To think requires self-control and allowing a few seconds from idea to action.

To REFLECT means to look back upon something that already happened. This allows us to learn from our mistakes or from our successes, and gives us the ability to think backwards and learn from experience.

To MAKE DECISIONS means the act of making up one’s mind. This is an action word: Think-Evaluate-Do. To make decisions we have to have options to choose from, or be able to imagine different possibilities and their potential outcomes. When we act only on our emotions; we are not making decisions, we’re re-acting. Imagining different possibilities, and their possible outcomes is the gateway to expand our horizons through creative thinking.

To WORK is literally the amount of energy one has to put out to do something. It’s important to understand the amount of work, or energy, we need to pursue a dream or a goal. We all must determine how much work we’re willing to put into a goal, and whether we have the skills necessary to achieve it. This requires an honest self-assessment. The bigger the dream or the goal, the more work it will be.

CHOICE is the act of making a selection. We have to have a minimum of three options before we truly have choice. When we can see only “one way” to do, experience or think, we are acting on habit. Habits become in-grained, can turn compulsive, possibly addictive. When it’s “this” or “that”, we’re thinking concretely, going back and forth. True choice must involve a third possibility. The importance of three options is that they can evolve us up and out of that box. Three options can be mixed and matched; we’ll show you how. This is the overview of the class that we will present at the conference.

This class teaches the concepts in a way that all kids can understand. But they are “skills” and must now be actively practiced in real life.

Youtube Clip

We’ll also have an exhibit table at the conference where the lesson plans can be purchased for use with your own kids or classes. Linda Flanders: www.taprootinc.com

Friday, September 4, 2009

Can you Feel Me? by Jerry Tello, National Compadres Network & National Latino Fatherhood & Family Institute


Mr. Tello will be giving a keynote address "Forging New Frontiers: Working with Children and Adolescents in Changing Times" at the 2009 Youth Intervention Conference in St. Paul. The presentation will explore the importance of approaching our work with children and their families with a sense of flexibility and hope based on a four-step process of growth and creativity.

Whenever I get the opportunity to speak to young people, I always take time to apologize to them and especially to the youth that I find in incarcerated settings, hooked on drugs, failing in school or according to societies standards... failing. I feel I need to do this because ... who taught them? Who guided them? Who healed them? OR NOT.

It brings to mind a situation where I was asked to go into a pre-school to assess a 4-year-old little boy who was "angry and out of control". It's amazing to me sometimes when I see these little children at 4 or 5 years of age and they're so angry. I can't help from wondering, "how do you get so much anger in just a few years?"

As I walked in this pre-school the teacher came up to me and said. “You must be Mr. Tello, the therapist. There's the angry little boy there in the corner, by himself. "

I asked, “What is his name?"

As I thought, can you tell me his name before you begin labeling or categorizing him? And I understand that it may be necessary to separate him from other children for their safety but children don't heal by themselves. In fact, isolation is the number-one factor that contributes to issues of addiction and dysfunctional behavior, yet we in this society promote " time out " and separation of children as a wholesale way of dealing with these problems. Unfortunately, wounded young people don't heal by themselves and, in fact, it is this type of disconnection to significant people in their lives that many times is the root of their confusion and distress.

So on that day after I tried to work with young Tommy and as I walking towards the door, an elderly woman in the room who worked as a volunteer called me over to her and said, “Son, you see that little boy over there? Well, he's very angry.”

I said, “Ma’m I know he's very angry, everybody knows Tommy's angry.”

Then she said, "No, but you don't understand, that's not his anger. That's his daddy’s anger, that's his grandpa's anger, that's his great-grand daddy's anger. That boy's got four generations of anger on his back, that's why he can't sit still."

This elder, in that preschool who they had cutting up shapes was probably the wisest person in the room as she clearly laid out that this little boy was carrying the pain, confusion and, undoubtedly, the blame for many people's inability to deal with life's issues ...and he was getting blamed for it all. Looking forward it doesn't taking a genius to guess what this little boy will look like as an adolescent when the baggage gets too heavy, when the pain gets to be too much and when the confusion becomes overwhelming.

So this is why I make a point of apologizing to the youth – having to carry our baggage. But that is the beginning. Because, if our young people can finally realize that it is not their baggage, but just passed through pain, then might be able to more easily get to the business of releasing it. Obviously, easier said than done especially when, energetically, these survival patterns have become attached to them.

This is where community, school, family and organizational helpers come into play and why the role we play is so significant. It's significant and it begins with a simple commitment to walk with, listen to, and move with compassion and support.

Many times after a youth has spoken something profound they ask each other, "Do you feel me?" Meaning can you feel, can you understand, can you put yourself in their shoes with out judgment and blame and without expectation? This first step of unconditional love and acceptance is the beginning to healing, guiding and supporting the journey of a wounded young person whereby they can re-root themselves in a soil of healthy development and begin once again the fulfillment of their sacred purpose in life. Do you feel me? I hope so because the youth are waiting.

Jerry Tello

jerrytello.com

sacredcirclesonline.com

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