Americans Must Put Children and Families First, Expert Says
Published: Dec. 19, 2005
URBANA - "In America, we know how to build programs. Now we need to learn how to build communities that fall in love with our kids and make children our number one priority," said Peter Benson, president and CEO of the Search Institute in Minneapolis and featured speaker at last week's lecture of The Pampered Chef® Family Resiliency Program at the University of Illinois.
"Although many things compete for our national attention, I would stop paving roads before I would neglect our human development infrastructure," he added.
Support from a caring neighborhood is just one of the Search Institute's 40 Developmental Assets®, building blocks that help young people become healthy, caring, and responsible adults. Building these assets in youth is a strength-based approach to human development rather than one that focuses on problems, he said.
All children have the right to be named and known in their neighborhoods by caring adults who aren't related to them, but only four of ten American children report having this experience, Benson said.
So when a Houston school district decided to adopt the Search Institute's strength-based approach to character building in youth, school-bus drivers were instructed to use each child's name within 10 seconds of his walking through the door.
"Positive human development is the accumulation of thousands of moments like that," said Benson. "Far too often, adults actually avert their eyes from the youth they meet."
Americans need to shift our energies from putting out fires to starting fires--giving children support and lots of opportunities to succeed, said Benson.
"As a culture, we measure what we value," he added. "And we rarely think about the pathways to success; instead, we tend to study problems. For every 50,000 studies of depression, we have 50 studies of joy. The way we study children pathologizes them.
"We're all much better at telling our children what to say no to than what to say yes to," he continued. "Deficiencies in developmental assets occur across cultures, racial groups, and income levels. Children from wealthy suburbs are no richer in assets than kids from small towns.
"Americans need to develop a shared vision that honors science while it unites us about the kinds of positive experiences we want our kids to experience. What do we expect of our young people," he asked, "and how can we reintegrate them back into the community?"
Benson's developmental assets include the support of family and unrelated but concerned adults; a caring school climate; empowerment through service and safety in their community; boundaries at home, school, and in the neighborhood; high expectations; positive peer influence; and a constructive use of time in creative activities, youth programs, religious communities, and at home.
Internal assets that Benson would like to see children develop include a commitment to learning; positive values, including honesty, responsibility, and restraint when faced with alcohol, drugs, or sexual activity; social competencies, such as planning and decision making, empathy, and friendship skills; and positive identity traits, including self-esteem, a sense of purpose, and a positive view of the future.
According to Benson, the 40 developmental assets not only protect children from high-risk behaviors, they promote thriving in such categories as leadership, scholarship, and ability to delay gratification. The number of developmental assets that children possess correlates with their success in these areas and others.
And the power of these assets to build and protect children is remarkable. "When building developmental assets becomes a priority in schools, achievement scores climb."
If children fall behind in developing these assets, it's increasingly difficult for them to make up ground as they age, Benson said. That means young people are moving into busy adult lives when they are ill equipped to parent.
For a complete list of the 40 developmental assets, visit www.search-institute.org.
In 2000, The Pampered Chef, Ltd., made a financial commitment to the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences in Urbana-Champaign to establish The Pampered Chef® Family Resiliency Program. Directed by Professor Laurie Kramer, the program consists of a lecture series, faculty research grants, and graduate fellowships in the area of strengthening families.
That initial commitment has been extended through 2009, ensuring that the program will continue to support innovative research, education, and public engagement activities that hold potential for strengthening families with practical strategies to improve family life.
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