New Light On Growing Up Healthy

By Peter L. Benson, Ph.D.
(From December 1990, Source newsletter) Late at night the phone rings. A sleepy parent answers, to hear the voice on the phone say, "This is the city police. We have your teenager. . . ." And thus begins a long nightmare not only for the teenager but his or her parents.

Today's teenagers have a frightening array of ways to be in serious trouble. While not all of these activities come to light in a phone call from the police, involvement in any of hem threatens teenagers with the possibility of short-term personal misery as well as some devastating long-term scars. The list of activities that can severely disrupt a teenager's life includes not only those that spring immediately to mind--heavy drinking, use of illicit drugs, and too-early sexual activity--but others, less highly publicized but also harmful. Among them are extended periods of depression, attempted suicide, vandalism, fighting, theft, truancy, or driving after drinking. Most of these put a teenager's chances for a smooth transition to adult life seriously at risk.

Suppose, then, that a vaccine were discovered that would inoculate adolescents against not just one of these problems, but all of them? In order to shelter their young people against the personal disruption and the long-term scars that involvement in such behaviors often bring in their wake, what would parents and communities be willing to do?

While there is no such vaccine, adults who care about teenagers have for many years sought to identify one or more life ingredients that would successfully insulate them from the disruptive consequences too often painfully illustrated in teenagers' lives.

The problem is that, up until now, most of the research on the major so-called "at-risk" behaviors has been concentrated on a single kind of behavior--premature sexual activity, for instance, or illicit drug use. What has been lacking is a study of the whole set of adolescence-distrupting problems. Suppose that such research were done, and that it provided a road map to prevention of a whole complex of these at-risk behaviors among teenagers. What would that mean to families, schools, churches, and communities as a whole?


A New, Broad-Spectrum Portrait Of Adolescence

Early in October, Search Institute made public the results of such a study, a study of unprecedented scope and size. It deals with no fewer than 20 indicators that place young people at risk. Set against those indicators, the study outlines a wide range of factors in the family, in the community, in the schools, and within young persons themselves that predispose the youth to either healthy or unhealthy activity during their teenage years.

As a result, we are able with considerable certainty to trace a pattern of factors that promote the positive development of youth. With one important exception*, most of these factors can be altered in an individual young person's surroundings if the adults in that young person's family and community consider it important enough to do so. (*The single factor most difficult to alter is the provision of economic security. Poverty among families with children inhibits the kinds of nutrition, housing, and life experience crucial for healthy adolescent development. The United States leads the industrialized world in the percentage of children being raised in poverty. If we are to solve this disgrace in our society, a circumstance now so prevalent that much of our population has come to take it for granted.)

The list of these important controllable factors codifies a set of family and community supports that sound curiously familiar, faintly old-fashioned in character. But they are not a direct transfer of the ethos of the strict parenting practices of our parents and grandparents. The implied element of enlightened care and understanding in this list separates it from the the old "spare the rod and spoil the child" days.

Analysis of the study reveals two important groups of factors that reduce the likelihood of adolescents' participation in behavior that puts them at risk. The first group is identified as assets external to the adolescent, present in family and community. A second group identifies characteristics that are internal strengths within the adolescent.

The study further points out that life, along with external assets, confronts youth with certain deficits, and the report deals with the influence of these deficits on at-risk student behavior. Some of the deficits may be of the teenagers' own choice (overexposure to TV, for example, or attendance at drinking parties), while they have no control over others (such as a parent who is addicted to alcohol or other drugs).

The balance of assets, internal strengths and deficits is a complex one, each of them making a marked impact, positive or negative, on adolescents' chances for positive personal and social development throughout adolescence.

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External Assets Identified

One of the major contributions of the report is that it identifies those elements in the family and in the community that appear, in effect, to protect teenagers against the kinds of trouble most feared by parents, teachers, and others who work with adolescents. The more assets a given teenager reports being present in his or her life, the fewer the at-risk behaviors that teenager displays.

These sixteen external asserts provide the framework for the kind of interest, care, and structure that prove to be essential if an adolescent is to progress through the teenage years relatively untroubled. They supply a necessary network of support while adolescents are developing internal supports of their own firm enough to carry them successfully into adult life.

The external assets fall into three categories: support, control, and structured use of time. Eight of them lie mostly within the control of individual families. The remaining eight are community-based, requiring the cooperation or initiative of persons or groups outside the family. Thus it is evident that neither the community nor the family can assume the entire responsibility for the support of adolescents. They have to work together.

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External Assets--Support

One of the near-universal characteristics of young people is a sense of uncertainty about the world and their place in it. In adolescence, as perhaps at no other time past infancy, the young person needs the reassurance of being loveable, of being capable, of being worthwhile, and of being able to meet most day-to-day situations with reasonable success. Instead, many adolescents are surrounded with constant criticism and conviction of failure that eventually harden into a permanent expectation of defeat in life and the conviction that society has judged him or her as "no good." The seven external assets described below create an atmosphere of appreciation and encouragement that provides young people with experiences of success, of being loved, of feeling worthwhile. Thus equipped, one can survive and learn from the inevitable temporary failures and defeats of daily life. The first four assets, described above, are almost entirely family-generated. The remaining three, however, depend largely on institutions outside the family Return to top of page


External Assets--Control

The research affirms the need for externally-encouraged controls on behavior as an essential part of the adolescent's network of support. Few of us succeed in adult life without knowing how to exercise a certain amount of self-discipline. Successful adults know the necessity of exerting willpower to complete tasks long after the initial interest in the activity has waned. They know the necessity of allocating time to life's demands according to carefully-thought-through priorities rather than the impulse of the moment. These are essential capacities which some youth easily learn, but which most need to absorb by having certain controls imposed throughout adolescence. While the first four of this category are largely parent-controlled, the final one is related to circumstances largely beyond family control: Return to top of page


External Assets--Structured Use Of Time

Successful adult life also requires some disciplined structureÐone must often work at a task to meet given deadlines, not at one's own convenience or whim. Not only does structured time in adolescence prepare one for succeeding within the structures of adult life, but, according to this report, it accompanies lower involvement in at-risk behaviors during the adolescent years.

Four elements fit into this category of external assets. All of them, though partly dependent on family decision, largely depend on activities provided and supervised by adult members of the community for youth. Return to top of page


Implications

The hope is that the external supports outlined above will be kept in place while adolescents develop the internal strengths essential to carry them through later adolescence and into adulthood. In a perfect world, these internal strengths would develop gradually, while external supports were being removed at the same gradual rate. The research shows, however, that, while some internal strengths do firm up during the teen years, for too many, the external assets are being removed before adequate internal strength development occurs. Certain of the internal strengths, in fact, are found to diminish between sixth and twelfth grade.

Future issues of Source will include additional description of at-risk behaviors, internal strengths, and deficits. They will also include description of life elements that allow some adolescents, even though handicapped by such powerful deficits as physical abuse, sexual abuse, or parental addition, to develop into successful adults leading productive and satisfying lives.


Making A Difference

This listing of the external assets that support adolescent youth will make it evident to readers, whether they are parents, youth-serving professionals, or volunteers in community work with young people, that they are in a position to make a positive impact on the young people they care most about.

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Characteristics Of The Sample

The study reports on more than 46,000 young Americans in grades 6 through 12 and yields information of great significance to all those who are interested in providing youth with a chance to grow up healthy. As the chart of sample characteristics given below shows, the students included in this research come mainly from the Midwest, most of them in communities under 100,000 in population. Ninety percent of them are white. However, in spite of its characteristics, on key indicators for which representative national data are available (e.g., alcohol use, tobacco use, sexual abuse, involvement in extracurricular activities, and exposure to television), percentages in this study are remarkably similar to those of national data on in-school youth.

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Resources

The study from which the information in this issue of Source is drawn was underwritten by Lutheran Brotherhood as a part of its RespecTeen program. RespecTeen is a nationwide effort aimed at helping parents, adolescents, schools, youth-serving agencies, congregations, and communities work together in promoting positive youth development. One component of RespecTeen is a survey-based needs assessment done on behalf of public and private schools. RespecTeen makes the survey available, free of charge, to participating school districts in order to help them meet the specific needs of adolescents in that district, as developed.

The full report, The Troubled Journey: A Portrait of 6th - 12th Grade Youth by Search Institute president Dr. Peter L. Benson, is a composite look at public schools in the first 111 communities to participate in the survey, and is available from Search Institute. For further information about RespecTeen, or about having the survey done in your school district, call 1-800-888-3820.

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Copyright © 1995 by Search Institute. This article may be printed for personal use only. Other uses require prior permission from Search Institute, 1-800-888-7828. All rights reserved.