And What Is It That You Do Again and Why? The Shiftless Wanderer’s Work
Nov 1, 2022- We are growing! With new readers and followers, I thought it might be a good idea to re-introduce The Shiftless Wanderer, what we do, why we do this work, and how.
Let me start with the Why
A 16 year old confides in their school counselor, who has assured them of confidentiality, that they are having suicidal thoughts and also some questions about gender. Within a few hours, the young person is called down to the office where there is a meeting with the parents. The student feels betrayed and cannot find it in them to trust a counselor again for quite some time.
The parents of a 14 year old boy with complex post-traumatic stress disorder let their son’s therapist know that he rifled through their wallets and stole a few hundred dollars from them. The therapist advises them to report their child to law enforcement.
A middle school teacher has a personality conflict with one of her 7th grade students who constantly defies her and disrupts the class. For the remainder of the year, the teacher, at her wit’s end, greets the student even before class begins with the question, “Do you want to go to the office now or later?”
A local high school has a solid suicide prevention plan and active school shooter plan in place but when surveyed more than 30% of the students report feelings of depression, isolation, not belonging, and of being unsafe.
Working in private practice, in schools, and in communities, I have heard and witnessed far too many situations in which the adults who are there to support and serve adolescents fail them.
Most service providers are well-intentioned, doing the best they can, and care deeply. Others are overwhelmed, burnt out, and past caring. In the case of community mental health and public education systems, the systems are overwhelmed, flawed, and toxic, causing trauma or retraumatization of the very children they exist to serve while also resulting in the traumatization or vicarious trauma of the service providers!
As a service provider myself, I know all too well the challenges we face when we work to meet the needs of the adolescents we serve. I have had ample opportunities to reflect on and repair the damage that I myself have done to the kids I’ve taught, counseled, or been in personal relationships with. Likewise, I’ve looked closely at how invalidation, fear, lack of trauma-informed skills, and the misapprehension of the developmental traits and needs of adolescence negatively affect the way that agencies, organizations, programs, staff, and therapists are with their kids.
What we do
In a nutshell, we offer training, workshops, and presentations to agencies, programs, and schools to support the staff and their work. The longer answer is that we help staff remember why they serve adolescents, the joy and fulfillment to be found there, and to reconnect with their own Inner Adolescent parts. The overarching and underlying belief and mission of this work is to heal our patho-adolescent culture.
Adolescence poses a conundrum. This stage of development is a unique and significant gift to our humanity, and it comes with more than its fair share of challenges, even under the best circumstances. However, currently, we are failing our teenagers. And in doing so, we fail to live up to our potential as a species. In 2021 the rates of mental health issues in children and adolescents were such that the trifecta of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association issued a declaration of emergency and called for legislative action.
Your work as a provider, teacher, mentor, or employer of adolescents is life-changing for them and vital for the health of our world. The Shiftless Wanderer seeks to provide the support you need to do this work with the resources and tools that increase efficacy, confidence, and knowing that you and your organization are part of the solution to address the state of adolescent mental health.
How we do what we do
I have learned so much of how to effectively navigate my personal and professional relationships with teenagers by paying close attention to when it goes wrong and why. This includes my own mistakes and failures, hearing from parents, teachers, and other adults in the lives of teenagers, and observations between teens and adults. I’ve learned from the stories of small faux pas to epic failures by adults from teens and adults who remember, with tremendous grief and shame, interactions from their adolescence. Additionally, I’ve listened when it has unfolded beautifully.
Make no mistake; if our interactions with teenagers are bad, they’re feeling it hard. And if these interactions are daily occurrences, then we’re looking at the seeds for traumatic invalidation. It may surprise you to know that our inability to be in healthy relationships with teenagers can cause trauma.
To that end, here the four tools that we use at The Shiftless Wanderer as the basis of our teachings.
engaging in the process and practice of validation;
using compassionate curiosity to open healthy space between adults and teens;
turning toward love and courage as antidotes to the inevitable fears that arise when we are in service to adolescents;
and understanding the essential nature of Adolescence.
These are tools, maps for the territory we travel with our kids to guide us to through these years we call Adolescence with grace, courage, and deep compassion which will resonate for years and generations to come in the lives of these young people.
Photo by standret