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Youth-Adult
Relationships Spectrum
By Adam Fletcher
 Intro
Engaging young people
can draw out the grand assumptions from people who
work with children and youth. There are usually two
specific extremes inherent in those assumptions:
over-controlling and over-permissive
relationships.
Over-Controlling Youth/Adult Relationships
often occur when adults react to a negative
perception or misconception of youth “freedom”.
Taking the guise of concern for youth,
over-controlling youth/adult relationships are
defined by distrust or misunderstanding of young
people. This type of relationship can lead to
children and youth being infantilized, or
made to feel like infants who are incapable or
subhuman. Over-controlling can lead to locked
doors, coded language, and/or choices made for
youth that often force them to participate.
Over-Permissive
Youth/Adult Relationships are the opposite
end of the spectrum, when adults assume young
people have too much ability. This can
reflect a misguided attempt by adults who think
“the best” of youth or want to be their
“friends”. However, this is a disingenuous
relationship, in the same sense that we would
never give a 16-year-old the keys to a car and
expect them to teach themselves how to drive.
This type of relationship is often though of as
empowerment, despite actually making some
young people less able to exercise power.
Over-permissiveness may take the form of
ill-trained, under-informed young people acting
without adult input.
However, the ideal
relationship might be the most realistic, and
the most responsive. Responsible Youth/Adult
Relationships are typified by the Kent-based
Institute for Community Leadership. They train
students and adults about responsibility in
terms of being able to respond, or
being Response-Able. Response-Able Youth/Adult
Relationships require adults to become able to
respond appropriately to the demands of engaging
youth throughout our communities. This type of
relationship often creates adult allies and
youth/adult partnerships. That often means
providing training, engaging youth wisdom, and
saying “no” when it is appropriate. It also
means being an ally and partner with young
people.
This continuum is not
meant to imply that there is one way to treat all
young people at all times. Circumstances can often
justify the relationships young people have with
adults. However, the premise behind the
Washington Youth Voice Handbook is that many
assumptions about these circumstances are either
misguided or ill-informed. The Freechild Project
believes that our communities need Responsible
Youth/Adult Relationships. Engaging Youth Voice can
provide the most authentic, responsive and
appropriate engine for communities to create those
relationships.
©
2010. Adam Fletcher owns the copyright
for this material on behalf of The Freechild
Project. You are welcome to print out
this material for educational purposes
only - you cannot make any financial
gain from them without the explicit
permission of the author. You may not
photocopy any part of this material
without explicit permission of the
author. For more
information write info [at] freechild.org
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