Nurturing an Endangered Generation

The statistics are pretty grim - the young people of the US face an ever increasing tide of poverty, alcohol, and drug abuse, violence, suicide, and family dysfunction. However, society's response has been slow. Too many young people do not receive consistent, positive, and realistic validation of themselves from the adults on whom they depend. The problems facing today's youth demonstrate the critical need for responsible adults to establish close, helping relationships with our young people. This means not only helping them achieve academically, but also teaching them skills such as assertiveness, decision making, conflict resolution, impulse control, anger management, empathy, sensitivity, and tolerance of difference. This book goes beyond the stilted rhetoric on the problems of youth and the dilemma for society by outlining specific treatment intervention and prevention strategies that address the full spectrum of dysfunctional behavior. It introduces structured intervention strategies for school and community collaboration, with an emphasis on remediation and treatment. Educators and helping professionals will find counseling strategies and psychoeducational techniques that focus on primary prevention. These primary prevention strategies are supported by an understanding of critical social, emotional, and cognitive skills. Each chapter introduces the latest demographic data and the factors that make children and adolescents vulnerable to self-defeating or self-destructive behaviors, and then counteracts these factors with structured intervention and prevention