{"id":6178,"date":"2024-08-23T02:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T18:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darylchow.com\/frontiers\/?p=6178"},"modified":"2024-12-27T02:16:24","modified_gmt":"2024-12-26T18:16:24","slug":"working-with-youths-part-iii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darylchow.com\/frontiers\/working-with-youths-part-iii\/","title":{"rendered":"Working with Youths. (Part III)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Note: This article was originally published in Substack on 23 Aug. 202<\/em>4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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1. Research:\u00a0On Father Absence<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I tried to explain this research to a friend once. He thought I was nuts.
In this study<\/a>, the researchers looked at associations between father absence and girls\u2019 early puberty. This was the first time a study looked at this prospectively.

Key Graf:
– Girls with absent fathers from higher-income, but not lower-income families exhibited earlier pubertal onset than those from father-present homes.
This leads to several possibilities of why this is the case. The researchers speculate<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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i. Among higher-income families in the U.S., there are weaker social support networks compared to lower-income communities, for whom reliance on alternative caregivers may be more normative. An absence of social support may be particularly deleterious when mothers are the sole income earners and are working long hours, as may be the case in higher-income, father-absent families.\u00a0Maternal workload<\/strong>\u00a0may result in\u00a0familial stress and maternal emotional distance<\/strong>, which have been linked in previous studies to girls\u2019 early puberty.

ii. \u2026Higher-income families tend to experience less father absence, therefore, early departure of the father from higher-income homes may signal a history of early childhood exposure to\u00a0high marital conflict<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0related familial stress<\/strong>, which may have influenced puberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ii. \u2026Girls from higher-income father-absent families may be exposed to higher levels of certain environmental toxins, such as endocrine disruptors<\/strong> (e.g., placenta-containing hair-straighteners, beauty products), which may accelerate puberty. These girls may also have more exposure to technology (e.g., computers, video games) that increases exposure to artificial light and disturbs sleep patterns, which have been linked to puberty. [Emphasis mine]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2. Book:\u00a0Collaborative Brief Therapy with Children<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This book by Matthew Selekman was a gem when I was working with children between 6-12 years old. Packed with useful exercises and clinical examples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3. Video:\u00a0The Power of One Caring Adult<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story.
Watch the talk<\/a>.
And here\u2019s a visual map of the talk by Josh Shipp:<\/p>\n\n\n

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4. Movie\u00a0Riceboy Sleeps<\/a><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A tender and moving Korean film.
I watched this on a plane ride home.
From IMDB: Set in the 90s, a Korean single mother raises her young son in the suburbs of Canada determined to provide a better life for him than the one she left behind.
Why this Movie:
We need stories from our past. We need to know a coherent embodied narrative of not only who we are, but also where we come from.
This became apparent to me when I was working with youths in residential and foster care. When they do not have a coherent story of their parents and their own background, there seems to be a heart-shaped hole permeating in their lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I often suggest to youths to learn more about their parents\u2019 pasts, including their upbringing, as well as their funny, significant and painful stories. Ask the parents, \u201cWho was a significant figure in your life?\u201d
Or to begin in a more open-ended fashion, \u201cTell me the story of [fill in the blank].\u201d
One time, a father said to me that he didn\u2019t want to share too much for fear of imposing on his children about his past. I understood what he meant. He didn\u2019t want to sound naggy by imposing supposed life-lessons on them. This father had survived an adverse upbringing, took care of his younger brother, and builded his own company in his early twenties. His kids had no idea about his stories of the past. All they knew about him were mostly about his successes. His kids knew the outside story, but not the inside story.
We need personal<\/em> stories to make sense of the world, so that we can move forward and create new stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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5. Words Worth Contemplating:<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

“Our past is the soil in which the seeds of our future are planted.”<\/strong>
\u2014\u00a0Unknown<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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