Programme

Personal development

Teens and Toddlers brings a unique perspective regarding the developmental issues that young people are struggling with. The combination of intensive adult and peer group interaction alongside the responsibility of bonding with, and being responsible for, their toddlers, provides a multi-layered set of relationships that are all designed to give the teenagers a new experience of themselves and the world around them.

Young people are at a stage in their lives when they are forming their identities, developing their capacity to think, searching for core values around which to orientate their behaviour and seeking future goals towards which they can aspire.

Many of the young people on the project are at risk of failing to meet these developmental needs in a positive way, instead forming identities around a negative sense of themselves. As a result their aspirations in life are often limited to making as much money with as little effort as possible, or to make money in ways that exploit them and continue to compound a sense of failure. At best they will tend towards a rather depressed and passive attitude to life in which they expect to be looked after by a parental state. From this attitude it is 'no big deal' to become pregnant, as they are often hoping a boyfriend or the benefit system will subsequently look after them.

Teens and Toddlers provides the intensive adult attention needed to increase and firm up their sense of individuality, hopes and fears, opinions, and dreams. This is provided in the group work, and in the one-one support sessions that facilitators provide. From the start the adolescents are required to think about the values which create safety, support and a positive environment for all participants and it is our repeated experience that below the 'I don't give a shit' attitude that they often come with, that the teenagers are longing to express their values and opinions, to test them out in the world and see what the consequences are. Facilitators provide strong guidance and boundaries whilst expressing interest in their opinions, and conflicts/problems are processed in a way that makes meaning of the outcomes that their behaviour creates. In this respect the young people are less dictated to, more encouraged to develop the capacity to think through their goals and the best ways to create outcomes that work for them. This establishes personal responsibility as a keynote in their lives and attitudes, crucial to the issue of pregnancy and the creation of lives on large and small scales that they are motivated to move towards.

The practical nature of the project appeals to the young people's needs to test themselves in the world in a real and tangible way. The theoretical nature of their schooling often misses their need to 'test their metal' in the 'real world', an initiatory task that is often left to the kind of gang culture and law breaking that we commonly associate with youth.

As they are required to form relationships with the toddlers in the nurseries and to be useful members of staff they are challenged and stretched to manifest their capacity to be caring, reliable, creative and communicative. This expectation alone and the obvious responsibility of having a child to look after often pulls the teenagers in to parts of themselves that allow them to feel vibrant and alive and which they also like and respect. The enthusiasm that they display at the end of toddler time usually reflects a fascination with the application of the material they are learning about child development and good communication skills, as well as a sense of satisfaction in having been needed, wanted and responded to by staff and toddlers. This forms an attitude internally of 'I can' as they integrate the positive expectations of the toddlers, staff and facilitators.

Additionally, the project provides a strong sense of community for adolescents, often a strongly missing link in their lives, yet one that they desperately need. So much of their culture today teaches a myth of isolation and individualistic self at the expense of providing a sense of interconnection and belonging. The formation of their group within the nursery, the peer and facilitator relationships, and the sense of community within the nursery itself are a very important part of stressing the importance of being inter-dependant on each other, and that therefore their behaviour has a strong impact on others. The de-sensitisation that comes through the breakdown of community allows young people to be anaesthetised to their surroundings and makes it acceptable to harm and exploit others. Bringing them in to relationship over a period of time sows seeds that enables them to bring a sense of pride to the caring and positive impact they have on their community. This sense of belonging in a productive way is key to the success of the project.

Additionally the project addresses these developmental issues through:

Anger management. This is a unit within the curriculum that has proven to be particularly effective and popular with the teenagers. Using a variety of techniques to identify early signals of anger, the facilitators also work with each young person to develop several strategies for minimising acting out and turning aggression in to assertive behaviour. Role-play is often used to work through real-life situations that the teenagers are involved in at school or at home. Occasionally there are disputes or conflicts within the peer group during the project and this provides a productive opportunity to make the theory absolutely real and current. This gives them an immediate experience of how to manage anger. Peer input and discussion is used for suggestions and support as to how to handle these experiences differently. The fact that the project provides such dynamic and real interaction with staff, facilitators, toddlers and peers takes this subject beyond cold theory and brings it alive. This gives the teens an experience of 'here and now' choices and the power they have to create different outcomes for themselves. This dramatically increases their motivation to continue to choose differently in other areas of their lives. Additionally, changing the negative outcomes of angry reactions in to positive outcomes from assertive communication is a major re-framing in a culture that usually promotes the necessity of 'keeping face' at all costs.
More specifically, the boys on the project explore their own fathering experience, which is often absent or abusive, and to challenge the unconsciously inherited messages that 'to be a man is to be macho and look after number 1'. Lacking other places in which to re-define what male strength is, they are often destined to repeat the wounding they received with their own children. Teens and Toddlers creates a supportive environment which encourages them to explore the nature and meaning of strength, and within the context of being kind and caring towards a toddler who is loving and needing them, they build new and more productive value systems which will form firmer foundations for them as growing men.
Development of loyalty beyond the immediate family unit. For most of the teenagers there is a strong tribal code of loyalty within the family, which means they inherit unconscious values and behaviours. Additionally, it is often considered disloyal to speak about problems at home with anyone outside the family and so adolescents are left holding a lot of confusion, pain and responsibility with no adult intervention to help them 'chew' over what is occurring in their lives. This 'chewing' is vitally important, enabling young adults to develop reflective muscles which will provide a more robust capacity to 'think through' challenges and choices in the future. Teaching them to use their minds in this capacity is something the current education system fails to address, and is one of the project's strengths. Through sharing at both peer group level and one-to-one time with facilitators the young people create bonds beyond the immediate tribe and digest the inherited opinions and values of their immediate family and peer group to develop a more clearly individuated sense of themselves.
Facilitators provide the young people with an experience of straight talking, tough love and containment alongside the heart-opening experience of being related to by the toddlers. This potent combination evokes both their Will - to make choices and not just be blindly led by unconscious behaviour - and their Love - through the empathy, understanding and interest shown to them by the facilitators, and from the love, need and respect shown to them by the toddlers. Most approaches to working with young people tend to focus on one or the other and thus something significant is lost. One sides approaches often end up either re-creating a tough world that has certain expectations of them but feels ultimately hollow, or a too-floppy containment that attempts to understand root cause without the necessary robustness to challenge new behaviour. Finding a way to include the evocation of both Will and Love is another of the project's strengths.
Young people are used to shaming each other and generally putting each other down as a way of scoring points in the hierarchy within their peer group. The project spends a lot of time addressing their ability to listen respectfully to each other, and to give positive feedback. This re-frames a habitual way of communicating that they would otherwise take in to their adult lives, teaching what creates intimacy and builds trust (something that they come to enjoy as they feel closer to each other) rather than humiliates and alienates. Given the way in which many adults relate, providing this early intervention has countless ripple effects in the communities that the teens belong to.
The project gives the kids something worth towing the line for and therefore sufficient motivation to have a positive experience of engaging with respect and an ability to integrate other's rules and expectations. Being with the toddlers, feeling listened to and engaged with in debate during classroom time, and experience of peer group outside of school and the usual social circles - in a more focused way that encourages honesty, listening, respect and intimacy - are all very strong motivating factors for the young people to behave and interact in new and more useful ways than the often bored interactions they usually have with the world around them. Bonds to their peers and facilitators made here are often much deeper and provide a blueprint for possibilities of relating respectfully and productively beyond the project. These bonds go beyond 'mucking about together' or generally gaining respect from peers via breaking rules and acting out.

Distinctiveness of Teens and Toddlers compared to existing services

No other programme that we have found takes the educational stance and provides the methodology of 'empowering' young people in the way that Teens and Toddlers does. We aim to teach adolescents how to create strong internal boundaries for themselves by enabling them to get in touch with their basic values and aspirations as to who they want to be in life, and to give them the experience that they can indeed be that person.

Teenagers are very pragmatic and practically focused. They want to know 'how' and 'when' rather than 'why'. Just as our teaching affects and influences them, their feedback helps to build a better programme focused on approaches that speak to their priorities and meaning-making in life - so often different from ours as adults.

The practical, 'hands on' of the project, is therefore is based on Confluent Education methodology, integrating personal experience with theoretical understanding of the material. It recognizes the value of 'learning by experience' and how this enables the student to more wholeheartedly engage with course material.

Teenagers are also at a developmental stage of needing to increase their capacity to make individual decisions rather than be dictated to by others. The project enables them to know how to operate within their own limits, boundaries and discipline, based on the consequences that work or don't for them, rather than on rebelling or lining up with what's expected. In this way, the teenagers are in the process of forming a strong and reliable sense of themselves in an often changeable and chaotic world.

They acquire both the awareness and the necessary skills for taking personal responsibility and demonstrating caring behaviour. The project provides them with a sense of belonging and of being able to contribute to rather than abuse their community. The long-lasting nature of the change catalysed by the programme is founded on the fact that the teenagers fully integrate the material into their own value system and life choices, rather than feeling dictated to, and therefore not taking ownership of the issues that the course raises.