Adolescents’ Relationships With Important Adults: Exploring This Novel Protective Factor Against Interpersonal Violence Victimization and Perpetration

Despite the increasing influence of peers during adolescence, adults continue to play a significant role in impacting the lives of adolescents. Adolescents’ relationships with caring adults are associated with a host of positive outcomes, including improved psychosocial, educational, and behavioral outcomes, and reduced problem behaviors. However, research has not explored the influence of relationships with caring adults on adolescent interpersonal violence (AIV) risk. The aim of this paper was to examine the associations between the presence of an important adult (i.e., an adult youth can go to if they need help with a problem or decision) and youth reports of AIV victimization and perpetration. Participants included 2,173 youth (53.5% female, 76.0% White) in grades 7-10 who participated in a multiple baseline study of a youth-led sexual violence prevention project. Data from the second baseline survey were used to conduct eight binary logistic regression models to test the association between the presence of an important adult and each of the victimization and perpetration types (i.e., any, bullying, sexual harassment, sexual and dating violence). Results showed that youth who reported having an important adult reported significantly lower likelihood of reporting any victimization and perpetration, bullying victimization and perpetration, and harassment victimization and perpetration. There were no significant associations between the presence of an important adult and sexual and dating violence victimization and perpetration. Given the potential for relationships with important adults to protect against some forms of AIV victimization and perpetration, prevention strategies should include connecting youth with important, caring adults and training such adults to help promote attitudinal and behavior shifts that foster AIV prevention.

Cross-Cutting Themes

This chapter provides a pause and the opportunity to integrate case illustration insights with the vast literature on urban gun violence. Bringing together these two worlds—practice and theory—allows the ability to garner lessons for moving forward in crafting urban interventions addressing this key issue. Those who are practice oriented can take these lessons and craft interventions that take into account local circumstances, which is a key element in best practices. Academics can take marching orders for furthering scholarship on this violence. Readers can see cross-cutting themes that emerged with implications for how academic disciplines and helping professions can collaborate with urban self-help organizations in helping them, and readers, carry out their respective missions. Opportunities for youth to connect with caring adults is also important in efforts to interrupt gun-carrying behavior, and they must also be part of the equation within self-help organizations, as seen in these case illustrations and throughout the book. Changing youth attitudes and behaviors influences future gun use by these individuals as they survive youth-hood and emerge as adults. The focus must be on the present with an eye toward the future and respect for the past.

MANIFESTATIONS OF DEVIANCE IN CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES AND FEATURES OF THEIR PREVENTION IN ADOLESCENCE

Manifestations of deviant behavior in adolescents with disabilities, noted by parents, teachers, psychologists, defectologists and educators, can often be explained by the physical illness and mental distress of the child, which necessarily orientates all subjects of the educational space, to assist such a child, from all specialists and caring adults development of preventive measures.

Application

During the initial years of the L.E.A.D. program, one of its core values was to incorporate Outdoor and Experiential Education (O.E.E.) for students identified as ‘in-risk' of not graduating. Teacher candidates at the University of Windsor enrolled in the L.E.A.D. program were encouraged to embrace O.E.E. to assist students in building skills that promote overall personal and social development. A major component of the L.E.A.D. program was for teacher candidates to plan O.E.E. activities such as a 3-day overnight camping excursion and a retreat to the Ojibway Nature Centre and Ojibway Park. Embarking on these O.E.E. activities with selected secondary school students deemed to be ‘in-risk' accompanied by a group of caring adults provided the opportunity for rich outdoor experiences for all participants. This chapter highlights and explores the various O.E.E. activities experienced by L.E.A.D. teacher candidates and L.E.A.D. program students ‘in-risk', and shares research that describes the benefits of participation in O.E.E.

Crystallizing the relationship between adolescents, music, and emotions

The ways that young people use music to work with emotions is impressively diverse and difficult to box into categories of good and bad, helpful and unhelpful. The intersection of where, when, and why the young person is using music is further complicated by what music, what associations, and what conscious and unconscious intentions the young person has. This introductory chapter canvasses the vast landscape of music, adolescents, and emotions, using the lens of crystallization to consider the different perspectives offered by young people, music therapists, and music psychologists. The result is a rich and varied picture that places agency in the hands of the young person and encourages all caring adults to engage with the multiple possibilities that music affords.

Caring Adults “R” Everywhere (CARE)

The United Nation Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) recognizes that children in out-of-home care are entitled to special protection to promote their physical and psychological recovery. The Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, which are intended to enhance implementation of the UNCRC, also acknowledge the importance of transitional and after-care support. This chapter explores progress toward realizing the rights of youth leaving out-of-home care in Australia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The emerging picture is that all these jurisdictions have some way to go to meet the standards enshrined in the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children and that emerging adults with complex needs are not currently sufficiently empowered or enabled to exercise their rights.

Our Sports Clubs: The Sport-for-All Dream in Crisis? Book Review of Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. By Robert Putnam. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015, 400 pp.; ISBN: 1476769893.

This review investigates the potential implications of Putnam’s recent book <em>Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis</em> for the field of social sport sciences. The main themes in Putnam’s <em>Our Kids </em>are class segregation and the widening ‘opportunity’ gap between the ‘have’ and ‘have nots’ in American society. The question can and needs to be asked: what the impact of class-based segregation has been on ‘our sport clubs’? Furthermore, Putnam also discusses the importance and unequal provision of Extracurricular activities. Putnam sees such activities as contexts for developing social skills, a sense of civic engagement and even for generating upward mobility. An important advantage of such activities is, according to Putnam, the exposure to caring adults outside the family, who can often serve as valuable mentors. However, throughout the book, Putnam uses a rather judgmental and moralizing language when talking about the parents of the ‘have nots’. The lesson that sport researchers can learn from this is to be sensitive and critical to moralizing approaches and deficiency discourses regarding the inclusion <em>in</em> and <em>through</em> sport of children and youth living in poverty.