Youth mentoring
The name youth mentoring is a misnomer, a more accurate but lengthy name would be ‘unpaid work attempting to address significant mental health / systemic concerns which are having a considerable negative impact on a young person.’
Young people who are referred to me may come directly from parents, via a social worker following interactions with CAMHS or perhaps police, or from schools following recurring and increasingly troubling behaviour. The young people are usually years behind their peers at school and invariably have significant behavioural issues.
The usual recurring problem as I see it, is the young person referred on doesn’t have a properly developed framework to operate by – they are often consumed by their devices and have little if any regard or interest in the world about them. Building the framework and developing an interest in the wider world is my typical approach, usually accomplished through low tech ‘walk and talks’.
I have no formal qualifications in this area, but I don’t see this as a disadvantage, given many of the young people I have worked with have had numerous interactions with various highly qualified child psychologists and therapists, and the concerns in the young person continue to manifest and exacerbate.
What I instead rely on is my expertise around developing the framework for robotic and automation systems to operate by. It is reasonable to this, ‘what is the possible relevance between this and struggling young people’? Well, for robotic systems, the framework is (or should be) “don’t do anything that hurts myself or anyone else”. For many young people I have mentored, that basic framework wasn’t there, and until it is built, they will continue to struggle.
The following are some examples of mentoring work I’ve done with young people:
NOTABLE RESULTS – CASE 1
I worked with a boy with severe foetal alcohol syndrome and a host of other diagnoses. He hadn’t been able to stay in class for a full day ever since starting school, with interruptions when he would violently lash out or leave. He would tell me he was “brain damaged” and constantly seek attention from adults. After a few months working with him, he was staying in class for the whole day and helping out at home. In addition to lots of talk, and behaviour modelling, I set him up with a sticker chart and for a while phoned him and his caregiver each evening, to review how the day went and to award a sticker when he achieved certain objectives such as ‘help out at home’. This gave him an opportunity to recall how he perhaps helped with the dishes, which of course was my cue to praise that effort ‘I’m proud of you for X’. If he didn’t meet the objective for the day, we would talk about what went wrong, and reset the expectation for tomorrow – knowing full well I would be phoning again to check in on how he was going. A host of CAMHS psychologists and other experts couldn’t understand how the kid had suddenly turned around, after being under their care since a very young age.
NOTABLE RESULTS – CASE 2
Another boy was referring onto me after bringing a knife to school and stealing school computer equipment. After some work he completely changed his ways and in fact became the school nark, telling teachers when other children were planning mischief! I put this down to my discussions with him, when I would praise good behaviours – particularly making a comparative song and dance when he first made the initial steps to reform his ways. This was a crucial moment to acknowledge that he was changing his approach, which then helped accelerate his progress.
NOTABLE RESULTS – CASE 3
This 10 year old lad had what other students referred to as ‘rages’. He would hurl furniture about the class, attack other students, and the other students would be told to leave the class by the teacher, in order to remove them from harm’s way.
This kid liked to think he was super macho – he spent the entire Christmas holidays playing fortnite. I realised to get traction with him I needed to counteract the brainless macho attitude he was being indoctrinated into with the game.
So next time I arranged with the school to do some baking in the school staffroom. I had him read and weigh the ingredients, and mix it, the only bit I did was pop it in the oven. We were talking the whole time – this was the first time he had ever cooked food and he was eager to do everything – even through to learning how to wash up after (first time washing and drying dishes too). At the conclusion, I had arranged with the teacher he would take the baked delights to share with the class. The change was instant. The class were very happy with the sweet treats, and the boy realised he could be rewarded with gratitude by doing pleasant things – he didn’t have to get negative attention by throwing a fit. The following week I checked in with him, and there had been no visits to the principal’s office, and no outbursts. I asked why and he said ‘because I have you to help me’.
Since my ongoing involvement, the boy is largely turned around. Now when I see him, he proudly shows me his workbooks, and there is a huge change with his positive engagement in class.