The following was part of a Question and Answer session which took place during Kim’s recent webinar, The Soul of Discipline for Teens and Tweens. We so often wonder about how best to nurture qualities of compassion and service in a way that is age appropriate. Here are a few ideas. What other means of service have you found that worked well? Please share in the comments.
Q: My 13 year old stepson’s church organizes community outreach trips abroad and tries to recruit the youth from the church to participate. This summer they went to Swaziland for a week to work with AIDS-infected children at an orphanage. The next trip is to Nicaragua. My feeling is that our 13/14 year old son is too young to be exposed to this sort of thing. Is this an appropriate age to engage in this type of volunteer experience, and, if not, what is an appropriate experience at this age?
Kim says: Yes, I share your concern about his age readiness for something like this. In this next session, we will be going deeper into the dynamic of the young person at this age needing to move out into the world. Some people sense this need, and it is wonderful that they are attuned to this, but the problem can be that they move the young person too far into the world, too soon.
It is difficult to protect your child from this, as it seems so well-meaning and civically minded, but premature exposure is, well…premature. No matter what the vehicle. What about starting closer to home – figuratively and practically – by volunteering at the local Community Support Agriculture (CSA) Farm or at a Food Bank or any number of other very important and worthy endeavors?
Do it rhythmically, once or twice a week, so that it becomes a part of the young person’s life. In this way, he develops medium and long-term relationships with good people doing good work in the world. In this sense, he is following the ancient apprenticeship path that has so much developmental wisdom to it. Only now, it is a wonderful and deep social apprenticeship. This may well be better than the “big trip” which often presents so much to take in that the real mission of doing good work and building relationships becomes diffuse.