Who Are Youth?

After reading Lesley's article titled, "Framing Youth: Writing Youth in Social Context", I started to think about how the world perceives Youth in a Leadership setting, whether it be on a sports team, in a student organization, or simply in life. From the age of 9, children are difficult and impossible to reason with because of their “changing bodies”, but if you honestly sat down with a young person that fits into this age bracket, you could be amazed at the conversations that you have.

In the chapter from Dr. Bogad’s article, Thorne argues that, “to learn from children, adults have to challenge the deep assumption that they already know what children are ‘like’ both because, as former children, adults have been there, and because, as adults, they regard children as less complete versions of themselves”. I find this as something that fits in with my philosophy on how I work with youth. I try use my experiences that I have had as a child to try and assist the young people that I work with. Children now a days are always evolving, and they are growing in ways that sometimes adults cannot comprehend.

There is this idea that teens and young people live a separate life that their parents do not understand. This phase of life is usually known as Adolescence, or the teen years. This point in a teen’s life they are becoming more of who they will be in their future, except for the fact that a lot of people do not see them as leaders completely. This could be because a lot of people tie together the ages of Puberty with the Teen years. These kids are more thoughtful and resilient than most adults because they are still developing, and they are becoming who they want to become. If we let youth that are around this age, can look towards their future with leadership in their minds then they will want to be the future leaders. This can be achieved by letting these youth work as individuals and not put a stereotype on them while they are in this age group.