Not a Minute Too Soon | The Volunteer's Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis

We're all back to school now, or will be in about a minute, and it's none too soon to introduce your volunteer team to The Volunteer's Guide 

to Helping Teenagers in Crisis.

Back in the day, Rich Van Pelt got the ball rolling with his seminal youth worker training book, Intensive 

Care: Helping Teenagers in Crisis — a few copies of which are available today at Amazon.com at prices ranging from a couple of bucks to a very impressive $588.98 (way to go, Rich!).

In the middle of the last decade, Rich and I threw in together to produce The Youth Worker's Guide to 

Helping Teenagers in Crisis, and then The Parent's Guide to 

Helping Teenagers in Crisis — which covers the same ground as the Youth Worker's Guide through the filter of what a parent needs to know (e.g. a mom doesn't need her own referral list, she needs to know that her friendly youth worker has one and she need to know how to ask for help when she needs it).

Now, we've completed The Volunteer's Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis because, much like parents, volunteers need to know how to spot trouble and get help quickly, effectively and with as little drama as possible.

The Volunteer's Guide works with four DVD sessions that blend crisis stories told by real people with short teaching segments by Rich and me (mostly five minutes or less). The other learning ingredients mix personal reflection and recollection with group conversation about the kids and families your team serves, wherever you're located — be that small town, suburb, or urban center.

Session 01: Understanding Crisis     Session 02: Spotting Crisis

Session 03: Responding to Crisis     Session 04: Preventing Crisis

If you lead a team of volunteer youth workers, nobody has to tell you they're often the first to see signs of trouble in adolescents. And nobody has to remind you most of them have no idea what to do about crisis when they see it. The Volunteer's Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis is your tool kit to build volunteers who know when what they're seeing is a crisis and know how to get kids the help they need in a timely and compassionate manner.

A Picture of School Gun Violence in the U.S. | Who's Shooting + Why

The picture of gun violence among American adolescents is  sobering the morning after a murderous event like the one in Ohio yesterday. The details of that story are yet to be unraveled, so there’s little to be said today about what led to that tragic incident.

Today, we can look at the bigger picture. In 2002, the U. S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education issued the final report of an exhaustive study of school shootings from 1974 - 2000. [1] Here's a summary of some of their findings: 

• Targeted school violence is rarely as sudden and impulsive as it appears.  

— About half of attackers develop the idea for at least a month.

— Most prepare their attack for at least two days.

• Few attackers are loners or losers. 

— Most appear to be mainstream kids. 

— Most live in two-parent homes. 

— Most are doing reasonably well in school. 

— Few have been in serious trouble at school. 

— Few have histories of violence toward others or cruelty to animals. 

— Many are involved in organized social groups in or out of school. 

— Nearly all act alone, but most have close friends.

free is good | $3.99 is almost free

Yesterday, nearly a thousand people in the U.S., Great Britain, Spain, Italy and France went to Amazon for a free download of Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids.

Thanks to my friends who spread the word to their friends. We'll do it again soon.

Meanwhile, Ten Things We Should Never Say to Kids is available at the almost free price of $3.99 U.S.

So, help yourself (and maybe gift a copy for a friend).

Unlinked | Will American Millennials Reboot Marriage and Parenting?

This week, the Pew Research Center reported on the attitudes of 18-29 year-old Americans toward parenting and marriage. In a nutshell, the study found that being good parents is more important to a majority of these Americans than having a successful marriage. You can read the report for yourself.

Not in the report is what I thought I caught … whispered between the lines … floating on the wind... 

I wrote it down as I heard it, but maybe it was only in my mind….

Expecting More from Our Leaders

As we were finishing our elections last week, a UK court was busy voiding the election last May of a Mr. Phil Woolas. 

Mr. Woolas' error was simple to comprehend: He knowingly made false statements about his opponent in the election in violation of election law which makes it an offense "to publish 'any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate's personal character or conduct' to prevent them being elected - unless they believed it was true and had "reasonable grounds" to do so."

The court found:

Having considered the evidence which was adduced in court we are sure that these statements were untrue. We are also sure that the respondent had no reasonable grounds for believing them to be true and did not believe them to be true.

Mr. Woolas was ordered to pay £5,000 and costs to his opponent. 

He faces a three-year parliamentary ban.

He was suspended by his party, a deputy leader saying: "It is not part of Labour politics to try to win elections by saying things that are not true."

A party deputy from the opposition said: "Mr Woolas has come severely unstuck and I am very pleased for politics and the rule of law that the judges have said so clearly that this was unacceptable."

What do you call it when we tell our children not to lie but teach them the opposite by tolerating — even celebrating — people in politics and business who gain an advantage by lying?

What could possibly prevent us from embracing in practice the standards we declare with our words?

Raising Adults for Nook

Raising Adults is now available for the Nook eBook reader at Barnes & Noble at a price that will make you wonder how you can afford not to own it today.

My favorite parenting book is also available for iPad/iPhone users, Kindle readers and as a good old fashioned PDF from Youth Specialties.

If your idea of "good old fashioned" runs to books made of paper and printed with ink, I have a few dozen copies of the first edition — contact me directly and I'll make you a deal.

Raising Adults for the 21st Century

OK, that title is a play on words celebrating the news that, as of today, Raising Adults is available for:

Kindle at Amazon 

iPad at Apple*

PDF readers of any sort at Youth Specialties

Beyond the word play, I am convinced that people who practice and refine the relational patterns in Raising Adults really do produce women and men who are well suited for life in the world as we know it today.

Priced to Take You Back to the Future

I've put this book in digital form and priced it super-low (just $2.99/$2.99/$4.99 US) because — to cop a line from the writer Cory Doctorow (I'm pretty sure he snatched it from Tim O'Reilly) —

This book doesn't suffer from piracy; it suffers from obscurity.

I decided to remove the risk of buying Raising Adults so more people — I'm thinking anyone on any continent who reads English and cares about kids — can make it their own.

At those prices (we're talking numbers we haven't seen since the 1950s) , reading Raising Adults carries more risk than scraping together the change to buy it.

And in fairness I have to admit it is a somewhat risky read if we can judge such things by how mad this book makes some people of the high control, patronize-the-children-and-keep-them-silent-fat-and-happy school of parenting. Oops! Did I say that out loud?

So. Buy the book to read on your computer, Kindle or iPad — by the way, it's totally searchable when you read it that way so if you need to locate a quick topical quote or a short passage to spark conversation at a parents' meeting, it could hardly be easier.

If you truly hate this book (not so much that you want me dead but enough that you want me to suffer like you did reading it), tell me that and we'll try to work something out — maybe I'll come trim your lawn or something...if you buy the plane ticket.

And if you like Raising Adults, tell your friends.



* If you own an iPad/iPhone, you probably already know there's no online bookstore that you can navigate to from your computer — you get to books through the iBookstore app on your hand held device. You probably also know that Kindle books look great on your Apple device.

Happy Father's Day from Louis C.K.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

The Besties | Chew on That

Generation OMG

And this, from the New York Times writer Kate Zernike

A Wrench in the Works | The Ethics of U.S. High School Kids

There's work to be done in our households...

Great Expectations

As a kid I was taught to believe that any boy could grow up to be president and, I supposed, any girl could grow up to be that president’s ...uh...First Lady?

Don’t hit me; that’s the America where I grew up. In fact, quite a few baby women grew up to prove that a woman’s place is not only looking after the House but the Senate as well. They grew up to be Members of Congress and governors and judges and attorneys general. Pretty soon I expect there will be a woman in the Oval Office. Not bad for people who were denied voting rights less than a century ago.

My daughter grew up in a different America — version 2.0 or something like it, I suppose. She grew up knowing, I think, that she enjoys some of the privilege and bears some of the responsibility that goes with that.

Most earthlings never expect to own the roof under which they sleep nor travel on anything but public transportation or on foot. But things are different on the continent where I live. Compared with most people who ever drew a breath on this planet, I and my offspring are lucky — or fortunate if you prefer . . . or blessed.

But that's not how it feels right now. Right now, even suburban children are being taught to believe they’ll be lucky if they have a half decent job that pays enough to afford a house and a car — without which, of course, how can they ever hope to be happy?

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living the life

those kids and their electric toys

Daniel King is having fun with Adobe Creative Suite.

You can find the real thing here.