‘Guiding Our Youth’ Conference
As many ofyou know, our mission at the Sanctuary is the Nourish Personal Growth for Greater Social Impact. While this mission takes many forms in our various offerings, on September 26th, it will take the form of a Conference featuring Dr Gordon Neufeld and Brother Richard Hendrick who will explore and unpack child and adolescent development.
Meeting teachers, youth workers, child psychologists on a regular basis at the Sanctuary – we are keenly aware of the challenges they are facing with this current generation of our young people. We are collectively becoming increasingly aware of the dangers of early and excessive exposure to social media and smartphones but we are receiving mixed or little information about the power of attachment in a young person’s development and how caring adults in their lives can best assist this development.
As a former youth worker, I had good days and bad days with the young people who I worked with but honestly, there were times when I simply didn’t understand their behaviour and because I didn’t understand their behaviour, I didn’t respond in a way that best served their emotional and relational development. In my frustration with this lack of understanding, I went searching for different perspectives. Thankfully, in the space of a few months, I found the Warrior Programme created by Brother Richard Hendrick and Niamh Bruce and Dr. Gordon Neufeld and his book with Gabor Maté, Hold Onto Your Kids. Both of these pieces of education transformed my engagement with young people for the better.
BothBrother Richard and Dr. Neufeld, from different angles, addressed the incredibly prevalent occurrence of young people looking to other young people(their peers) for the assurances, presence, care and love that only a caring adult can provide. Dr. Neufeld calls this peer-orientation, when the guiding force in a young person’s life is other young people (be that online or in person). This can have devastating consequences for their mental, physical and emotional health. Parents, grandparents, teachers, youth workers can feel powerless when the young person is totally directed by the words and actions of their peers. This is so common in our culture, we believe it to be normal and natural. But this over-dependence on peers is stunting the healthy development of our young people. However, there is a way out, and that is through connection.
Why do most young people reject guidance and advice from the adults in their life?
Dr. Neufeld argues that this is because in these moments, the young person doesn’t feel connected to the relevant adult. This will come as no surprise to readers when Dr. Neufeld says, “Young people are allergic to information coming from adults that they do not feel connected with in that moment”. We often believe that because we are this young person’s teacher/parent/grandparent/youth worker that they should/will listen to me but until there is connection, the peer-orientated young person will not meaningfully engage with us. Dr. Neufeld calls this collecting before directing and this insight helped my youth work profoundly.
Working with young people for over 20 years, Brother Richard is also aware of this necessity for a young person to feel connected with adults in their life. In fact, one of the key messages from the Warrior Teacher Training is that there is no long-standing human culture that hasn’t had trusted elders in the community to support and guide the adolescents through an agreed upon process with which to help adolescents make the transition from adolescent to adulthood. In our current society, there is no culturally agreed upon process in which a caring adult facilitates certain capacities within a young person to develop specifically with the intention of helping them navigate adulthood. A process in which the young person begins to engage with themselves, other people and the wider world in a different manner. When this is the case, because it is a deep yearning in all of us, young people will look to other young people for this process, which is referred to as ‘peer-initiation’. Much like the way that an adolescent cannot meet the emotional needs of another adolescent, a teenage peer cannot initiate or guide another peer in preparation for adulthood. A young person needs an adult that they trust, who has gone through their own healthy transition to adulthood to facilitate a meaningful inner and outer change.
These are just some of the insights from Dr. Neufeld and Brother Richard that have transformed my understanding of youth development, and I firmly believe that they can help many other adults in Ireland as they seek to support their young people during their adolescence and beyond. I am so excited that we will be bringing Dr. Neufeld and Brother Richard together for the first time, for a unique day of personal growth as we explore Attachment, natural psychological rites of passage for adolescents, the significance of a process of initiation into adulthood and more. I hope to see you there!
