Can Troubled Teens Be Taught Responsibility?

Adolescents present a special set of challenges. Professionals can become quite overwhelmed by the demands these troubled young people place on them. Sometimes teens are noncommunicative and sometimes they are explosive. Their hardened and non-trusting manner often hides a hurt and lost child who becomes more and more difficult to reach with age.

Adolescence is about autonomy, about discovering how one fits into the peer world and the world beyond home. Yet, adolescents have, like every one, a strong need to belong, to be rooted. For many teens, their roots in the family are weak, and the family soil is not strong enough to "hold" them in place. In a world that offers instant happiness in the form of material goods, and instant "family" in the form of disconnected peers, too many hurt teens are drawn to self-destructive paths. Punishment based approaches, used alone, only further alienate these troubled young people.

Adolescents need help to heal from the wounds of the past and become invested in their own future. Counselors, judges, DFCS workers are often the parental stand-in during this critical time in young people's lives, when they must chose between repeating the family cycle of chaos and trauma or creating a healthy world for themselves.

In this workshop, participants will learn:

• About adolescent development in four major domains: physical; cognitive; relationships with others; self-regulation and identity
• The effect of traumatic experiences and family instability on each of these crucial aspects of development
• Worksheets will help participants apply information to teens in their care and generate ideas for helping them.
• How to communicate effectively with teens and motivate healthy self-interest
• The importance of caseworkers taking care of themselves as they balance the realities of the world of the teen with the world of work and their own personal worlds.

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