Welcome to the Reaching Teens community. We are a group of youth-serving professionals and community members who care for and about young people, and who are willing to be intentional about being the kind of adults who will support all youth to thrive.

Because you entered the electronic version of Reaching Teens through the pathway specific for your practice setting, you will receive the following tailored materials.

• An introduction to why Reaching Teens is particularly relevant in your setting.
• Suggested chapters that will be most helpful to you.
• Group learning and discussion/personal reflections cases written for the youth you interact with in your setting.

The pathway designed for your setting does not exclude you from any content. Rather, it gives you the option of streamlining your experience.  We suggest that in addition to taking advantage of the pathway, you become familiar with the other options of navigating Reaching Teens. Chapter 10 offers a detailed description, but Navigating Reaching Teens provides a good summary.

[Please note that if you view a chapter from the below access points, you will get the general audience materials, whereas if it has been selected in your setting-specific pathway and you access it from that pathway, you may have tailored materials.]

Getting Oriented to the Toolkit

You may find it useful to first have an overview of key philosophical and practice points. Once you “own” these, you’ll get more out of every other chapter.

We recommend the following chapters to get started:

• “Reaching Teens: Preparing You to Become the Adult Young People Need in Their Lives” (Chapter 1)
• “Reframing Adolescence: Holding Youth to High Expectations and Refuting Undermining Portrayals” (Chapter 6)
• “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13)
• “The Language of Resilience” (Chapter 27)
• “Trauma Sensitive Practice: Working with Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37)
• “Reframing Youth Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization” (Chapter 38)
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44)
• “Healer, Heal Thyself: Self-care for the Caregiver” (Chapter 90)

Orienting New Staff

Professional development (PD) sessions are generally offered in an annual or biannual cycle. This means that staff hired on an ongoing basis may not be exposed to key information until the next time the topic is offered. This leaves them unprepared to join your organizational culture, and more importantly could lead to their making unnecessary errors in serving youth. In addition, many staff may be coming from programs that do not use a strength-based perspective and will need extra support to shift to this approach.

You may assign these chapters to orient new staff prior to their contact with youth:

• “Reaching Teens: Preparing You to Become the Adult Young People Need in Their Lives” (Chapter 1)
• “Boundaries” (Chapter 24)
• “De-escalation and Crisis Management When a Youth Is Acting Out” (Chapter 34)
• “Trauma Sensitive Practice: Working with Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37)
• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44)
• “Helping Youth Overcome Shame and Stigma (and Doing Our Best to Not Be a Part of the Problem)” (Chapter 49)
• If new staff does not a youth-development background:
  • “Understanding and Supporting Healthy Adolescent Development” (Chapter 13)

Familiarizing Yourself with All 95 Chapters Available

You can see the overall Table of Contents here. 

If you want to see a brief overview of what each chapter contains, the easiest way to view that is by looking at the introduction page to each of the 11 Reaching Teens sections. The introduction page offers a brief description of each chapter in the section. Click to see the chapters within each section.

• Section 1 (Chapters 1–6): Orientation to a Strength Based Approach sets the philosophical tone and rationale for strength-based, trauma-sensitive communication.
• Section 2 (Chapters 7–12): Orientation to Using Reaching Teens as a Toolkit offers strategies to get the most out of this toolkit in your personal practice or professional setting.
• Section 3 (Chapters 13–21): Understanding Adolescents and Their World prepares you to consider the developmental milieu and environmental contexts that affect teens.
• Section 4 (Chapters 22–25): Connecting with Adolescents and Their Families offers strategies to build trustworthy and effective relationships.
• Section 5 (Chapters 26–35): Communicating with Adolescents offers essential strategies and approaches to reach youth and facilitate behavioral change.
• Section 6 (Chapters 36–43): Working with Adolescents Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization focuses on applying trauma-sensitive practices.
• Section 7 (Chapters 44–51): Empowering Adolescents to Build on their Strengths and Avoid Undermining Behaviors offers specific strategies that use a shared decision-making model to empower youth to make wiser decisions and healthier choices.
• Section 8 (Chapters 52–58): Supporting Effective Parenting considers how we as youth-serving professionals can support parents to most effectively monitor and guide their children.
• Section 9 (Chapters 59–79): Mental, Emotional. And Behavioral Health includes strategies to help youth navigate a variety of specific psychosocial and environmental challenges.
• Section 10 (Chapters 80–89): Serving Young People Deserving of Focused Attention addresses the specific needs of unique populations.
• Section 11 (Chapters 90–95): Caring for the Caregivers recognizes that this work is emotionally challenging, sometimes exhausting and demoralizing, and that unless we care for ourselves with the same degree of commitment with which we care for others, our capacity to serve over a lifetime will be diminished.

Broader Topics and Overarching Themes

Whether you use Reaching Teens to develop professional development sessions or are navigating it on your own, you will likely want to teach (or learn) overarching themes or broader topics. In some cases, a single chapter will suffice for a topic (e.g., depression). In most cases, however, you’ll consider topics like “How to remain calm amidst chaos,” or “How to transform to trauma-sensitive practices.” In these cases, you’ll want to draw key elements from a group of chapters.

Below are some topics we know based on feedback and experience that the Reaching Teens community have been interested in. Others may be added as we gain feedback from the second edition. Click here to see the variety of chapters that intersect to support each topic. You’ll notice that many key chapters exist in more than one unit. This allows for reinforcement of critical concepts.

• Transforming to a Strength-Based Approach
• Helping Communities and Youth-Serving Professionals See Youth Through a Strength-Based Lens
• Reframing Youth: Addressing and Refuting an Undermining Cultural Narrative About Youth
• Honoring Diversity and Practicing Cultural Humility
• The Basics of Effective Communication With Youth
• Adolescent Development 101
• Adolescent Resilience 101
• Instituting Trauma-Sensitive Practices
• Helping Young People Learn Self-regulation Both to Calm Their Minds and to Improve Their Behavior
• Stress Management
• Building a Sense of Control Within Youth
• Maintaining Your Cool Amidst Chaos So You Can Better Co-regulate With Youth and Settle Their Behaviors
• Supporting Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health
• Meeting the Needs of Youth Who Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer/Questioning
• Creating Effective Professional Boundaries
• Preventing Professional Burnout
• Self-care for Youth-Serving Professionals

This section builds the case for strength-based communication and approaches to young people, and is essential reading for all youth serving professionals. For those professionals working with youth using alcohol and other drugs, this section sets the foundation from which other chapters are built.

• “Reaching Teens: Preparing You to Become the Kind of Adult Young People Need in Their Lives” (Chapter 1) presents the core philosophical principles that guide Reaching Teens. Furthermore, it calls for a needed course correction. An awareness of trauma, rooted in irrefutable emerging science, could change the course of humanity for the better.
• “The 7 Cs: An Interdisciplinary Model That Integrates Positive Youth Development, Resilience-Building Strategies, and Trauma-Sensitive Practices” (Chapter 2) introduces a comprehensive model that captures the key ingredients youth need to thrive in good times and rise above adversity in challenging times.
• In “The Journey from Risk-Focused Attention to Strength-Based Care” (Chapter 3) we learn that because we care so deeply about the well-being of youth, we naturally focused on mitigating their risks. Now we understand that one of the most effective ways to address risk is to build on existing strengths. You will see how the positive youth development and resilience movements forms the framework for strength-based communication and interventions.
• “How a Strength-Based Approach Affects Behavioral Change” (Chapter 4) will contextualize how many of the approaches suggested in Reaching Teens fit into an overall strategy to apply these frameworks and promote positive behavioral change in youth.
• “Youth Are Experts in Their Own Lives” (Chapter 5) covers how recognizing teens as the greatest experts on their own lives—one of the core principles of positive youth development—better positions adults to engage in a shared decision-making process with adolescents.
• “Reframing Adolescence: Holding Youth to High Expectations and Refuting Undermining Portrayals” (Chapter 6) discusses the myths and misperceptions about adolescents that generate an undermining cultural narrative. This false storyline harms teens’ self-perceptions and undermines adult-youth engagement. If young people are falsely seen as inherently risky or irrational, adults will believe they have little influence. If young people are seen as rejecting adult guidance, or uniformly resentful of parental involvement, we will pull away precisely when we should be drawing nearer.

Adolescence is a time of tremendous opportunity, precisely because it is a time of profound growth and change. To effectively work with teens, it is important to understand both adolescent development and the environmental and emotional contexts teens navigate.

• “The Teen Brain” (Chapter 15) tells us about the rapidly developing adolescent brain. An understanding of the teen brain enables us to better understand adolescents’ emotions, thinking patterns, and behaviors. It also prepares us to more effectively communicate with young people. Having a basic understanding of adolescent brain development is key for those who work with youth who are using substances or who demonstrate signs of vulnerability for use. Recognizing the important growth and development during this age clearly demonstrates the magnitude of injury substance use can cause. It is information that keeps all youth-serving professionals and parents from becoming lackadaisical about alcohol and marijuana use with attitudes like “at least it’s not hard drugs.” It demonstrates that all adolescent substance use is risky use for this age group.

If we are to enter adolescents’ lives, they need to understand that we genuinely care for them and are worthy of their trust. Although trust is built over time, an initial impression can make a difference, especially for a marginalized teen. Sadly, many adolescents become used to being judged and held to low expectations, making it necessary for us to demonstrate that we expect the best of them. We also need to create spaces that convey that we are fully invested in serving them in enriching environments. As we connect, we have to do so in a way that is well-boundaried so that we can safely and therapeutically serve them. Finally, we have to recognize that we are creating two-way (albeit well-boundaried!) connections, and that we benefit greatly from working closely with youth. When youth know that we genuinely enjoy their presence, our connection is more meaningful and authentic.

• “Setting the Stage for a Trustworthy Relationship” (Chapter 23) offers a strategy to initially address some of the major issues teens and families consider as they extend their trust to you. The most important factor in working with youth who use alcohol and other drugs is connecting in such a way that it allows them to feel safe enough to be rigorously honest, especially regarding their use. A trusting relationship will only happen after we have proven repeatedly that we do not have our own agenda (i.e., “You need to quit drinking/using”) if it is not aligned with theirs. It is safe to assume that the majority of interactions they have had with adults included being told they shouldn’t use, along with a litany of reasons why. Instead of asking “Why don’t you quit?”, we ask “What do you think will happen if you quit ?” Then we must be genuinely interested in hearing the answer. Trust is built when the young person knows that we will stay and keep listening without our own agenda for however long it takes. This chapter explores strategies in building such relationships.
• “Boundaries” (Chapter 24) is a critically important chapter in a body of work that states “unconditional love and absolute respect” are key to reaching youth. We must not be afraid of the word “love,” but we must be very clear about what it means and must practice love with boundaries both to be protective of our own emotions and to prevent youth from becoming reliant on us in a way that could interfere with their own autonomy. This chapter is a cornerstone of this work and should be continually reflected upon as part of your organizational culture and individual practice, Boundaries are what allow us to serve over a lifetime while maintaining our personal lives. They are not what separate us from the youth we serve, they are what allow us to draw nearer. Because of the powerful nature of being in recovery from a substance use disorder and feeling you have been given a second chance at life, this field attracts many people who have the shared experience. In addition, with the growing trend of using peer support specialists, many states require lived experience as criteria to become certified. Research has shown that “peer support” with people in recovery for substance use can markedly increase better outcomes. Subsequently, this chapter is critical reading for those working in the field of substance use, especially if they are in recovery themselves. Understanding what boundaries are and why they are important to both you and the young people you serve is crucial. Knowing when it is appropriate to self-disclose and how much to disclose are critical questions to ask. This chapter provides indicators, warning signs, and ways to stay accountable with maintaining healthy boundaries.

This text hopes to build your repertoire in using resilience-focused, strength-based, trauma-sensitive strategies to promote adolescent health and well-being. This section builds on the previous section that focused on the early connection that sets the tone for communication. In Section 5, both general strategies and specific skills for effective communication are explored. Chapters 27, 31, and 33 are important chapters for professionals working with youth who abuse substances. Connecting with youth in an honest and genuine way is essential to helping them move through the stages of change toward a healthier lifestyle. These chapters provide techniques and skills to genuinely engage youth.

• “Language of Resilience” (Chapter 27) offers examples of how we support versus undermine resilience with our words.
• “Healing Centered Engagement: Fostering Connections Rather Than Forcing Disclosures” (Chapter 31) underscores that our goal is to form relationships, not to gain information. This is key to creating the safe, secure, and sustained relationships that heal youth.
• “Strength-Based Interviewing: The Circle of Courage” (Chapter 33) is an interview technique that elicits and reinforces existing strengths by focusing on 4 assets—belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. It allows the interviewer to also have a focused discussion on building strengths in those areas that need further development.
• “Examining Our Unconscious Biases” (Chapter 29) looks at thinking patterns and assumptions we may have that can interfere with our ability to objectively draw the most appropriate conclusions, and even guide people towards their most positive futures. By providing opportunities for the reader to explore their own unconscious biases and calling attention to more trauma-sensitive approaches, this is a key chapter for developing skills essential to working with youth using alcohol and other drugs. The trauma-sensitive strategy needed to assist a youth to move through the stages of change begins with a safe and non-judgmental relationship. This chapter provides information on how to build that.

Reaching Teens’s trauma-sensitive focus does not only reside in this section, but instead is integrated throughout its entirety. In fact, the Reaching Teens Trauma-Sensitive Model holds as a central imperative to integrate positive youth-development principles, resilience-building strategies, and the knowledge we have gained about working with people who have suffered trauma and hardships. It is this integration that assures we will offer the accountability critical to growth and maintain the high expectations that generate confidence. It is this integration of models that gives us hope that, under the right circumstances, people can recover from hard lives. Therefore, all of the chapters that focus on development and resilience are an integral part of our trauma-sensitive approach

Research indicates that anywhere from 80–95 percent of those with substance-use disorders have been impacted by trauma or adverse childhood experiences. Therefore, it is imperative that professionals working with youth who use substances are trauma sensitive. Creating psychological safety and helping youth identify “trauma triggers” will help avoid relapse or high emotional dysregulation.

• “The Impact of Trauma on Development and Well-Being” (Chapter 36) offers the scientific grounding on what childhood trauma does to the body, brain, and behavior.
• “Trauma-Sensitive Practice: Working With Youth Who Have Faced Adverse Childhood (or Adolescent) Experiences” (Chapter 37) provides a detailed summary of the Reaching Teens Trauma-Sensitive Model and contextualizes it in the existing trauma-informed literature.
• “Reframing Youth Who Have Endured Trauma and Marginalization” (Chapter 38) covers the importance of avoiding labels and understanding past traumatic experiences as the origins of current behavior. It goes a step further by offering strategies in recognizing, elevating, and reinforcing the strengths of youth who have endured adversities
• “Supporting Youth to Build Their Self-regulation Skills” (Chapter 39) discusses approaches to helping youth gain a sense of control and regulate their response to stressors.
• “Working with Youth Who Have Experienced Sexual Trauma” (Chapter 43) reviews approaches to working with youth who have experienced sexual violence victimization.

This section offers approaches and strategies that support adolescents to make wise behavioral decisions. These chapters are about enhancing personal empowerment and increasing self-control. Therefore, these chapters are critical both to supporting healthy adolescent development and to restoring control to those youth who have had too little given to them.

• “Focusing and Building on Existing Strengths: A Strategy to Overcome Risks and to Prepare Adolescents to Be Their Best Selves” (Chapter 44) is the heart of Reaching Teens. It is about seeing young people the way they deserve to be seen, and leveraging their behaviorally operational strengths to drive their forward progress. This can be useful with all young people, but can be key to engaging demoralized youth who may have internalized disempowering messages.
• “Restorative Practices: Addressing Problems by Using Strength-Based Rather Than Punitive Strategies” (Chapter 45) is about including rather than excluding youth. It allows us to hold young people accountable to being their best selves in a way that supports, rather than disrupts, our relationships with them.
• “Motivational Interviewing” (Chapter 46) is a strategy rooted in the transtheoretical model of behavioral change that facilitates youth to consider advancing to the next stage of change. It trusts them as the experts in their own lives and lets them guide their own progress. This strategy is a very effective in communicating with youth to provide them space to explore where they are in regard to wanting to change their drinking/using behavior. The model was developed in the 1970s specifically for adults with substance-use disorders.
• “Health Realization—Accessing a Higher State of Mind No Matter What” (Chapter 47) assumes that humans have a natural predisposition to be healthy, and that professionals can be more effective when we assume the role of facilitating youth back to that state of equilibrium.
• “Helping Adolescents Own Their Solutions: Talking with Youth, Not at Them” (Chapter 48) offers an approach to facilitate youth to make their own decisions. The strategies covered in this chapter both facilitate healthy development and are central to trauma-sensitive practices because they increase youths’ self-control. The chapter offers communication strategies to use in lieu of the dreaded lecture, which backfires by triggering and disempowering youth. It also offers a strategy for working with youth who have grown to view themselves as powerless in their ability to move away from worrisome behaviors. It allows them to contemplate alternate futures and take simple steps toward desirable behaviors.
• “Helping Youth Overcome Shame and Stigma (and Doing Our Best to Not Be a Part of the Problem)”(Chapter 49) offers strategies for guiding youth to overcome some of the key barriers that may prevent them from seeking needed support. This chapter examines stigma and its impact on young people. By providing opportunities for the reader to explore their own unconscious biases, and calling attention to more trauma sensitive approaches, this is a key chapter for developing skills essential to working with youth using alcohol and other drugs. The critical strategy needed to assist a youth to move through the stages of change and take action to get help begins with a safe, trusting, non-judgemental relationship. This chapter provides information crucial to building that.
• “Stress Management and Coping: Powerful Strategies to Take Control Over One’s Life” (Chapter 50) will allow you to move beyond telling youth what not to do, and instead will prepare you to suggest positive coping strategies that also alleviate stress. The comprehensive coping strategy presented will aid youth to choose healthy means to deal with discomfort rather than reaching for potentially dangerous quick fixes.
• “Mindfulness Practice for Resilience and Managing Stress and Pain” (Chapter 51) helps youth live fully in the moment while forgetting the past and not worrying about the future. It relieves stress and allows focused thinking. When a person has used alcohol and other drugs as a means of coping and then quits, racing thoughts, restlessness, and irritability often occur. Mindfulness practice is a key way to “rewire” the brain and is a very effective tool for people in recovery.

It is likely that the connection to responsible adults who believe in youth unconditionally and hold them to high expectations is the pivotal determinant of whether a youth will thrive. Ideally, that connection is to parents. When it is, then we who serve youth add an extra layer of protection. When it is not, then our role takes on even greater importance. Despite the popular assumption that teens reject their parents’ views entirely, it is parents who have the greatest influence on teens. We may do our greatest good by supporting the parent-adolescent connection and by guiding parents on how to most effectively make use of that connection. Reaching Teens offers a wide variety of communication strategies that are directed to professionals but that can certainly be passed along to parents. Further, the importance of building trustworthy partnerships with parents is highlighted in many chapters.

• “Promoting Balanced Parenting: Warmth, Clear Boundaries and Effective Monitoring” (Chapter 54) discusses the balance of love, warmth, and boundaries that position parents to have the most influence over their children. This balanced style has been shown to lead to decreased substance use in young people.
• “Delivering Upsetting News to Parents: Recognizing Their Strengths First” (Chapter 55) offers a strategy to engage parents so they can support their children to navigate through challenges. It focuses on doing so without shame or stigma, and while recognizing the parents’ strengths and their critical role in their teen being able to move forward. When youth who use substances arrive at the point where they are ready to ask their parents for help, it can be a challenging situation. This chapter will provide you with examples and strategies to help you engage the parent and assist the young person in a trauma-sensitive manner.
• “When Parents’ Resilience Reaches Its Limits” (Chapter 56) recognizes that parenting a teen can sometimes be difficult, and that moments of anger and exhaustion are expected. It emphasizes that especially during those times, parents need to make the effort to renew strong connections with their teen.

Adolescents’ health is tightly linked to the behavioral choices they make and their mental and emotional well-being, which, in turn, is heavily influenced by the environments they navigate.

• “Reaching Treatment: An Overview of Mental Health Treatment” (Chapter 61) will help you better understand different types of therapies and therefore better interface with mental health services, positioning you to guide a young person to desired services.
• Chapters 62-71: Although these chapters will help you better understand these conditions, they are not designed to help you make a diagnosis, nor to offer a specific treatment plan. Rather they focus on how a strength-based approach can help you interact with a young person with these conditions or circumstances. In most cases, they will serve as reference chapters for you. They will not usually require group discussion for you to consider how to add this knowledge to your working skill-sets. Youth suffering with a mental-health issue and a substance-use disorder may have similar symptoms and patterns of behaviors. This makes responding to the young person more complicated, as symptoms overlap and fluctuate. In order to be trauma sensitive, professionals working with youth using substances must have a working knowledge of both substance use and other mental health issues.

In recognition that this work is emotionally challenging, and sometimes exhausting and demoralizing, we understand that unless we care for ourselves with the same degree of commitment with which we care for others, our capacity to serve over a lifetime will be diminished.

• Chapters 90–95: These chapters discuss the importance of self-care and preventing burn out, and provide strategies to achieve that.