Can Troubled Teens Be Taught Responsibility?
Adolescents present a special set of challenges. Professionals can become quite overwhelmed by the demands these troubled young people place on them. Sometimes teens are noncommunicative and sometimes they are explosive. Their hardened and non-trusting manner often hides a hurt and lost child who becomes more and more difficult to reach with age. Adolescence is about autonomy, about discovering how one fits into the peer world and the world beyond home. Yet, adolescents have, like every one, a strong need to belong, to be rooted. For many teens, their roots in the family are weak, and the family soil is not strong enough to “hold” them in place. In a world that offers instant happiness in the form of material goods, and instant “family” in the form of disconnected peers, too many hurt teens are drawn to self-destructive paths. Punishment based approaches, used alone, only further alienate these troubled young people. Adolescents need help to heal from the wounds of the past and become
