“My name is Levar and I stand in front of you as a product of the
foster care system,” a young professor from Morehouse University starts.
And so it begins, a gut-wrenching speech about poverty, adolescence and
a non-profit called Summer Search, an organization that offers
low-income teenagers opportunities to participate in fully funded summer
programs and ongoing mentoring.
At every Summer Search fundraiser, a current high school student or
alumni stands before a crowded room willing to unearth their remarkable
story, revealing dark secrets, raw emotions and becoming vulnerable.
As founder of Summer Search, I am often asked how students who have
clearly struggled with adversity can speak in such intimate ways about
their life to a crowd of hundreds of people.
At the Four Seasons no less! With total confidence!
What does Summer Search do to those kids?
Actually, the question is larger and one that many parents from all
incomes struggle with as well. Don’t we all want our kids to feel
confident in themselves?
Yet at the same time, does our anxiety sometimes get the better of us
when they fail? What should we do when our kids get a bad grade, or
take a shortcut and cheat on homework, or make the mistake of not
showing up at something?
After raising three adolescents who have gone on to become confident
adults, and spending the past two decades working with disadvantaged
kids who have also gone on to become confident adults, I have three
seemingly simple suggestions for parents, mentors and anyone hoping to
be impactful with kids.
First, listen. Second, avoid judgement. Third, resist the impulse to fix.
Listening with an open mind is one of the greatest gifts any of us can
give to another human being, whether it’s a child, a friend, or a
stranger.
It is amazing what happens when someone realizes they are not going to be interrupted and will continue to be listened to.
It’s a moment you can actually see them gain in confidence. They sit
up straighter, look you in the eye and their voices even get stronger
and sound more confident.
Summer Search mentors start by telling referred students that the goal
is to get into their shoes — to understand what it’s like to be them.
Then the mentors indicate they will sit quietly and listen as long as
students want to talk. Some students decide this is not for them but
the vast majority recognize the opportunity they are being presented and
decide to “spill the beans” as one student so succinctly put it.
Most adolescents will suddenly want to talk, too — it is important as a parent to stop everything and make time to listen.
The next thing to do on the road to building confidence is to take what
you hear and respond, but at the same time avoid judgement — which is
hard to do.
For example, what if your mentee or your teen mentions their friends
are thinking about experimenting with marijuana and alcohol. Ask this
simple question: “How do you think that behavior might help them and how
might it hurt them?”
The final question is, “What did you learn by thinking out loud and what will you do with what you learned?”
You will be surprised by how thoughtful their response often is. Our
teens are actually much more astute and think about the issues we
lecture them about much more frequently than we know.
Building genuine confidence in kids, whether it’s in your living room,
in a mentoring situation, or a more formal interview, comes when they
learn it is okay to speak honestly from the heart; that they will not be
judged about what they say but understood, and that they will not be
told what to do.
Most, but not all of the time, it’s their responsibility and unique
opportunity to find their own more lasting solutions to their
struggles.
Linda Mornell is the founder of Summer Search,
a nonprofit organization that provides disadvantaged young people with
life-changing and challenging summer opportunities. She is also the
author of the book “Forever Changed: How Summer Programs and Insight
Mentoring Challenge Adolescents and Transform Lives.”
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