#positiveyouthdevelopment

Tips for Positive Youth Development

Positive youth development focuses on promoting the well-being, resilience, and positive growth of young people.

Try this activity:

For the next 90 seconds wander around the room you’re in and observe everything that’s red. Any shade or hue of red.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Did you do it? Good.

Close your eyes and tell me everything in the room you saw that’s blue.

Which list is longer - your red list or blue?

Mine was red. Nothing blue came to mind until I opened my eyes and reoriented myself in the room. (Oh yeah, there is a blue pen on that table and - oh! There’s blue on those granola bar wrappers.)

We see what we look for.

Last week I was at a workshop on engaging youth and igniting their spark; the facilitator asked us to participate in this activity. If you think about it, this has pretty significant implications for our interactions with youth.

Without intending to or even realizing it, we can set up youth for the behavior we expect from them, essentially boxing them in and possibly hindering growth. Theirs and ours.

I’ve seen this again and again with kids. There’s one adult in their life (and several others, to varying degrees) that get frustrated beyond being able (or willing) to recognize when a child does something positive.

Someone can point out three positive things to that adult just to have them say, “Oh, well, it won’t last.” Or something to that effect.

We see what we look for.

We can extrapolate this idea to parents, friends, coworkers, partners, political leaders, nations, groups... Our view is heavily colored by our expectations.

Until this activity, I didn’t realize that I’ve been seeing exactly what I’ve been looking for to the exclusion of all else. I also didn’t see the toll it’s been taking on me -- as well as on some of those closest to me.

A monochromatic color scheme does not make a pretty worldview.