Whether you're a teacher, counselor, nurse, student assistance coordinator, school administrator, volunteer from the community or simply a concerned adult, you matter to children.

What You Can Do

We know what protects children from adversity: nurturing environments and ongoing, supportive relationships with adults and friends.

While all children need this kind of caring, it's kids from troubled homes that demand our attention. They're the young people that may lack the love and attention to carry them successfully into adulthood.

Six Actions Steps To Help Kids From Troubled Homes:

Action Step #1

Build resilience in young people by focusing on their strengths.

All children can bounce back from adversity.

You can help when you communicate your high expectations of kids and focus on their strengths. Attaching positive labels and letting kids know you believe they're capable going a long way toward helping them overcome negative self-images. Your challenges is to focus on strengths, rather than dwell on deficits.

Young people become stronger when you help them solve their own problems. You can do this by asking them:

These four questions let children know they share the responsibility for solving their own problems. And, by using these questions you imply kids aren't helpless victims, but can take control of many aspects of their lives.

Action Step #2

Connect with kids in order to resolve their inappropriate behaviors.

Children always have reasons for acting the way they do. They're often confused, however, and their inappropriate behaviors usually reflect their misguided attempts to feel better about themselves and control their situations.

When children must be held accountable for their actions, it's necessary to look behind their behaviors. You're most likely to improve young people's inappropriate behaviors by forming a caring relationship with them. This means connecting with kids at a personal level by discovering as much about what they feel as what they know. It means focusing on kids one at a time, asking about things other than problems, knowing their interests and finding something in common.

Action Step #3

Be receptive and listen patiently when children reach out for help

Children from troubled homes often become "recruiters" of caring adults from outside their homes. When their families don't give them the love and support they need, they find others who are willing to take the time to build supportive relationships. As often as not, the "other" adults are teachers, club advisors, school nurses, friends, families or bus drivers and maintenance people.

The buffering relationships children create with adults and friends at school can have a profound impact on their lives. Specifically, they become more resilient when they have access to healthy, caring people outside their families.

You don't have to be a professional counselor in order to make a child feel comfortable and safe with you. You simply need to find a quiet time and place to listen. Often, all you need to ask is "It seems like something is bothering you today, would you like to talk about it? Is there anything I can do to help?"

Action Step #4

Act decisively when you suspect neglect or abuse.

Children and families have a right to privacy, but if you suspect child abuse or neglect you are legally required to report it, You're not expected to be a social worker or an investigator, but you do need to collect enough information to complete the required report. You must assure yourself that you have what you need to explore with the child how to prevent additional abuse or neglect.

Young people of school age can be taught to recognize abuse, and to the extent it is within their power, to discourage and report maltreatment. You can help them do this by discussing home routines with them and teaching them to protect themselves in their daily lives. For example, talk very specifically with a child about when abuse is most likely to occur and what he or she can do to get out of the situation. You can also make sure kids know how to reach the police, child protective services and other caring adults.

Action Step #5

Involve and encourage parents and guardians as much as possible.

Loving and supportive relationships are essential for the healthy development of children. What young people experience within their homes is a predictor of later success. The first and most critical relationship of life is between children and their parents.

Virtually all parents love their kids and want them to succeed. This includes neglectful and abusive parents. The difference is that caregivers in troubled homes are often highly stressed and isolated. They may be preoccupied by poverty and personal problems. Others are overwhelmed by their own emotional needs or chmical addictions. But they, too, have strengths.

When you avoid blaming parents or guardians, you make them feel that you're their partner rather than their adversary. In this way you open the possibility that you can help them discover more productive ways to relate to and nurture their children. Rather than confronting parents, involve them and suggest positive ways they can assist their kids.

Action Step #6

Protect kids by creating caring teacher-student relationships.

A caring teacher-student relationship is at the core of successful learning experiences for most children. Whether or not you're a teacher, you can encourage young people to strengthen their relationships with adults at school. This is particularly true for kids from troubled homes.

Then extended family that today's young people need includes all of us. Our kindship with them does more than communicate that they're not alone in facing life's challenges, it tells them they have potential and matter enough to warrant our concern. If you want to help young people from troubled homes, listen to young people, understand them at a personal level and demonstrate by your actions that you care.