Families Taking Action
What Asset Building Offers Families
Asset Building in Action
Equipping Organizations to Serve Families
If anyone plays lead in the asset-building band, it is the family. Without a strong family, it is much more difficult to nurture a solid foundation for development in children and adolescents. Thus, nurturing strong, asset-building families-regardless of their composition-needs to be a high priority in communities committed to children and adolescents.
Yet families too often find themselves caught in a crossfire of political and ideological agendas. Parents are often blamed for all of young people's problems, saddled with all the responsibility for ensuring that their children grow up successfully, and hit with a barrage of conflicting messages about what they should do.
What Asset Building Offers Families (Back to Top)
Parents and other caregivers who have begun using the asset-building approach find that it gives a concrete, sensible perspective for thinking about parenting and family life-beginning at birth and continuing through adolescence. Rather than offering a laundry list of "stuff you should do," it suggests priorities and perspectives to shape the parenting task. The framework offers several key benefits:
A focus for parenting--The asset-building framework reminds parents of the "bottom line" in their child-rearing. Rather than focusing on "getting ahead" or avoiding problems, the assets help parents see that their primary role lies in raising caring, competent, and responsible young people.
Affirmation and motivation--Asset building affirms parents' important role in their children's lives. It reminds them that what they do makes a big difference. Furthermore, it motivates them to stay actively involved in their children's lives throughout childhood and adolescence, rather than assuming that teenagers no longer need their parents when they are becoming independent.
A positive perspective--Many parent educators say they struggle to get parents to come to workshops because parents are afraid of being labeled as having problems with their kids. By emphasizing the positive things all young people need, asset building can break down the barriers and reduce the stigma of seeking support and guidance.
Partners in parenting--Because asset building seeks to nurture a shared responsibility in the community for raising the youngest generation, this approach promises to provide families with a supportive, caring network of partners in raising their children. In short, it begins to recreate the kind of informal community that previous generations of parents depended on for support and guidance.
Asset building doesn't offer a neat set of techniques and tricks for more effective parenting. Rather, it provides parents with some basic principles against which to make decisions and shape family life. There will still be ups and downs. There will still be challenges. And there will still be pain. But asset building can help parents be intentional about their choices, knowing that what they do can have a tremendously positive impact in shaping their children's lives.
Asset Building in Action (Back to Top)
* Source: www.search-institute.org/archives/hchy/6b.htm
5 Things Families Can Do to Build Assets
- Post the list of 40 assets on your refrigerator door. Each day, purposefully nurture at least one asset. Talk to your children about assets and ask them for suggestions of ways to strengthen assets.
- Model-and talk about-the values and priorities you wish to pass on to your children.
- Take time to nurture your own assets by spending time with supportive people, using your time constructively, and reflecting on your own values and commitments.
- Regularly do things with your child, including projects around the house, recreational activities, and service projects.
- Invite caring, trustworthy, principled adults into the lives of your children.
Copyright (c) 1998 by Search Institute. This article may be printed for personal use only. Other uses require prior permission from Search Institute, 800-888-7828. All rights reserved.
* Source: http://www.search-institute.org/archives/hchy/6c.htm
Equipping Organizations to Serve Families (Back to Top)
Search Institute is working nationally to inform parents about asset building and its importance for their families. But the most effective way to engage families in asset building is through organizations in their own communities. Particularly important is equipping organizations to serve families with adolescents. Most family support programs serve substantial proportions of families with adolescents, especially young adolescents. However, most of their services focus on younger children. Rethinking services and opportunities so they are appropriate to families with adolescents is an emerging challenge for family-serving organizations.
Particularly important are:
- Educating parents and other caregivers about the issues and needs of adolescents;
- Providing parents and other caregivers with opportunities to receive support from other parents of adolescents; and
- Encouraging ongoing parental involvement and support in the lives of adolescents.
For more information, see Peter C. Scales, Working with Young Adolescents and Their Families: A National Survey of Family Support Workers (Minneapolis, MN: Search Institute, 1996).
Copyright (c) 1998 by Search Institute. This article may be printed for personal use only. Other uses require prior permission from Search Institute, 800-888-7828. All rights reserved.