Child development experts emphasize the importance of setting realistic expectations for the holidays, sticking to a normal schedule as much as possible, getting time outside and practicing gratitude together. Simplifying gift-giving, practicing social skills before get-togethers, giving teens space to be moody are also solid strategies.  

What else can you help the young people in your life this winter? Use the same guidelines our staff and volunteers do to build strong relationships at Camp Fire! Follow the Search Institute’s framework for positive developmental relationships to bring some consistency and affirmation to the season. 

These tips are relevant whether you are trying to encourage kids and teens you are raising, related to, and/or in your wider chosen family. We’ve taken the Search Institute’s framework and given it a holiday twist below to create 20 ideas for supporting young people through the holidays. Let’s go! 

Express Care

1. Be dependable: The holidays are no time to play the flakey funcle card. Follow through on your commitments. If you say you’re going to be there, be there!
2. Listen: Join the kids’ table (metaphorically or literally) and have a real conversation. You might be surprised by what you learn!
3. Believe in me: If you’re giving gifts for the holidays, consider one that feeds a young person’s sparks — the skills, commitments or qualities that are lighting them up right now. If you don’t know what they are into, ask!
4. Be warm: Don’t forget to individually greet kids at your next holiday get-together. Make sure they know they are welcome and that you’re happy to see them, not just their accompanying adults. 
5. Encourage: Specific compliments go a long way. Look for opportunities to call out a young person’s unique point of view, persistence, or character as you’re going about your holidays.

Challenge Growth

6. Expect my best: Experts agree that the holidays are a good time to let the small stuff go. But when it comes to the big things — your community’s shared values, for example — keep standards high for yourself and young people. 
7. Stretch: Helping a young person take their next spark step can be as simple as working on a robotics project after a holiday dinner, gifting a book one reading level up, or teaching them a new phrase in a language they are learning. 
8. Hold me accountable: If you lose your seasonal cool, model how to deliver a timely, sincere apology and any necessary restitutions. Expect the same (in developmentally appropriate ways) from any young people you’re responsible for. 
9. Reflect on failures: If a holiday event or activity doesn’t go as planned, debriefing calmly (and with humor, if possible!) can help young people learn failure is part of growing, not something to be scared or ashamed of. 

Provide Support 

10. Navigate: Stressful holidays situations looming? Help young people brainstorm solutions and strategies to manage. 
11. Empower: Get time with your favorite young person to ask what their goals are for the new year — and if there’s anything you can do to give them an assist.  
12. Advocate: If any holiday gatherings have become potentially harmful for the young people in your life (if family members aren’t affirming of an LGBTQIA2s+ teen, for example), take action. If you’re the primary caregiver, you can set protective boundaries for your family, including not attending potentially harmful events. If you are an extended family member or friend, ask the young person how they’d like to be supported and make a plan for how you’ll intervene. (This Parents article has some great resources!)
13. Set boundaries: If it’s within your control, set limits on the seasonal schedule. Help young people prioritize their favorite activities instead of getting overwhelmed. And keep sleep at the top of the to-do list! 

Share Power

14. Respect me: If you’re getting resistance to a particular holiday tradition or gathering, stop and ask why. Even if you ultimately ask for their participation, try to clearly understand their concerns first and come to a fair solution. 
15. Include me: Include kids and teens as you’re building your holiday schedule. What gatherings, activities or traditions mean the most to them? What are their priorities for the season? Give them a say in the decisions that affect them. 
16. Collaborate: Can you create a new holiday tradition with the young people in your life? What fun, new December adventure can you come up with together?  
17. Let me lead: Consider asking the kids and teens in your family if they’d like to lead a holiday activity traditionally headed up by an adult. What would change if the kids took over?

Expand Possibilities

18. Inspire: Do you know a young person who shares some of your sparks? Can you schedule some inspiration time (a work tag-along or a hobby session) with them this holiday break? 
19. Broaden horizons: Stuck in a holiday rut? Take the young people in your life on a mini-adventure. It could be as simple as visiting a new park or trying a new kind of food — the point is novelty! 
20. Connect: Do you know a child or teen who hasn’t tried Camp Fire yet? Find an affiliate or program near you. There’s no better gift than helping a young person connect to nature, others and themselves!

The post Supporting young people through the holidays: 20 ways to help this season appeared first on Camp Fire.

“The associate executive director at Camp Fire New Jersey is so amazing and has become a significant person in my life since I have met her. I learn something from her every single day. I have learned that sometimes in life there are setbacks, but it is okay to set goals and keep striving to meet them; that it is okay not to meet your goals sometimes, but to never give up trying. I have learned that it is always okay to not be okay, and that whatever I am feeling is 100 percent valid. It is okay to share it and there is a solution to whatever problem I am having. My relationship with her is unique because she is the most positive person in my life. She is my biggest supporter in a way my family cannot be. She may not know my entire life history or back story, but she supports me in everything I do. She texts me frequently sending me positive vibes and quotes always cheering me on.” – Catherine Loye

—

“The pastor for my campus’s United Campus Ministry group plays a really positive role in my life. I frequently refer to her as my college mom. The most important thing she does for me is remind me that she is always there. I have known her for three years now, and whenever I am going through a tough time, need advice on a life situation or need guidance from someone, she is there. Not only does she provide me with her wisdom, but she gives me opportunities to grow as a leader and to get myself out of my comfort zone.” 

Another adult that plays a positive role in my life is my mentor Melanie Herman, who is a member of Camp Fire’s National Board of Trustees. She and I have formed a very strong relationship over the past year. When we first began talking, we talked about Camp Fire’s Youth Advisory Cabinet (YAC) and the direction of Camp Fire, but now we are having more in-depth conversations about what changes we want to make, how we can make those changes and the benefit of them. She also provides me a lot of guidance in my own personal life by giving advice whenever I call her and making sure that my personal life is progressing as well. Melanie is someone that I know I could call at any time of day, and she would pick up the phone to help me out with whatever I needed.”  – Nicole Pate, YAC Vice Chair

Learn more about developmental relationships and why young people need them to truly thrive. 

The post Developmental Relationships in Action appeared first on Camp Fire.

Elizabeth Guzman Arroyo, Director of Teen Programs for Camp Fire Columbia, says they’ve seen higher retention rates and more student engagement as they’ve focused on building developmental relationships. One of the most effective strategies they’ve discovered is helping their staff integrate the framework into their supervision and communication styles.

“I’m a firm believer that we need to practice the things we are trying to teach our students,” says Elizabeth. “It’s so much easier to implement the framework with our students when it’s become our natural way of communicating.” 

They’ve also been learning how to pair other resources with the framework to make it as effective as possible. 

Elizabeth says combining the developmental relationship framework with proactive inclusivity is a powerful move: “The framework leads you in the right way, but you have to actively work toward inclusivity.” Camp Fire Columbia does ongoing training to ground its staff in inclusive practices, so they can approach developmental relationships knowing every individual will have different identities, needs, and barriers. 

They are also supplementing the project with professional development on mental health, trauma-informed care, and healing-centered practices. Elizabeth says that as her staff’s relationships with students grew stronger, the teens began sharing more about their lives. Sometimes that included discussing personal traumas, including sexual abuse and encounters with racism, transphobia, and more. 

“It can be triggering for our staff and their own traumas,” says Elizabeth, “so we needed to learn how to support our students in the best way we can while also taking care of our staff.”

As Camp Fire shares what we’ve learned from ROI with other councils, Elizabeth suggests remembering that this is hard work. As they were starting to focus on developmental relationships, most of her staff went through a period of time where they questioned whether they were “the right people for the job.” 

She says forming developmental relationships takes a lot of practice: “There’s always a new challenge or a new experience folks haven’t encountered before.”

Nikki agrees, saying, “It requires a commitment to be inclusive and intentional with relationships and a willingness to continuously engage in self-reflection.”

“They all came to a moment where they needed to decide whether they were willing to sit in this discomfort and continue to learn and grow…or not,” Elizabeth said. “But they all decided to stay, and now they are great at implementing developmental relationships.”

Camp Fire councils across the country now have online access to the Search Institute’s “Growing Developmental Relationships” course and an in-person application-based training module on developmental relationships designed for direct-care staff. 

“The ROI project will help us scale the best practices that have been found at Camp Fire Columbia and other partner organizations,” Nikki says, pointing out that the benefits extend beyond relationships staff build with youth in Camp Fire, but also to staff-to-staff and kid-to-kid connections. “The ROI project will give us the tools to build a truly relationship-rich organization—one where relationships are central to our work in helping young people reach their full potential, now and in the future.”

The post Developmental Relationships: What Camp Fire Columbia is learning appeared first on Camp Fire.

“No matter the source of hardship, the single most common factor for children who end up doing well is having the support of at least one stable and committed relationship with a parent, caregiver, or other adult,” reads Harvard’s The Science of Resilience. 

The Search Institute has been studying the kinds of connections that help us become our best selves. Developmental Relationships are relationships that help us discover who we are, develop the skills we need to live with agency, and connect and give back to others. 

When kids have a stable web of developmental relationships in their lives, they do better in school, boost their social-emotional skills, take more personal responsibility and take less risks. 

Unfortunately, 22 percent of middle and high school kids have none of these crucial connections. And 18 percent say they just have one. 

“With one in five youth reporting they have no developmental relationships, there is a sense of urgency for us, as a society, to collectively ensure all youth have access to and experience impactful relationships,” says Camp Fire Director of Program Effectiveness Nikki Roe Cropp. “There is an opportunity, if not an obligation, for those of us working with young people every day to close that gap by ensuring ALL youth have an adult to champion them.”

Camp Fire has been partnering with the Search Institute to help encourage these key developmental relationships, especially in the context of marginalized communities. Camp Fire Columbia is in its third year of investigating innovative ways to strengthen connections through the Relationships for Outcomes Initiative (ROI). The project’s goals are to design intentional, inclusive relationship-building tools and strategies and to demonstrate how those relationships can improve youth outcomes and transform lives. (Read more in our next post!)

The project uses the Search Institute’s framework for developmental relationships—the five components of a powerfully positive connection:

1. Express care—Show me that I matter to you.
2. Challenge growth—Push me to keep getting better.
3. Provide support—Help me complete tasks and achieve goals.
4. Share power—Treat me with respect and give me a say.
5. Expand possibilities—Connect me with people and places that broaden my world.

“The framework is very accessible,” says Nikki. “It’s arranged around five main elements expressed in 20 specific actions. Just having simple, yet explicit things to do—like help young people think through options and resources they have when they encounter obstacles—makes the possibility of actually building developmental relationships with young people all the more attainable.”

Read on to learn how Camp Fire Columbia is putting the developmental relationships framework into practice.

Want to know how you can use the developmental framework in your own life?

• Check out the Search Institute’s ideas for adults, parenting adults, teachers, youth program leaders, and young people themselves.
•  The institute has also published an in-depth guide for families, Bringing Developmental Relationships Home: Tips and Relationship Builders.
• Dig deeper into how to express care, challenge growth, provide support, share power and expand possibilities on the Search Institute’s blog.  

The post Camp Fire and Developmental Relationships: How strong connections help kids thrive appeared first on Camp Fire.