Positive Youth Development (PYD)
A Brief History of PYD
Since the late 19th century, caring adults have mobilized to formally support the unique needs of youth. The earliest efforts helped protect youth from forced early adulthood through child labor laws and free public education. Next came camps, youth groups, and clubs that provided social opportunities. Eventually practitioners saw that systematic interventions among youth could ‘keep kids out of trouble’ and prevent bad/risky behavior (e.g., lower rates of drug/alcohol use and teen pregnancy.) To oversimplify, the 20th century was the era of youth development.
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Around the turn of the 21st century, the field of positive youth development (PYD) was born. The tone shifted toward using systematic interventions to generate lasting, beneficial outcomes for the youth (in addition to preventing bad/risky behaviors). The field still has a good way to go as older generations still have the ‘prevention’ mindset, but PYD is steadily taking root. Even as it gains traction, PYD suffers from a key weakness: individualism. There is too much focus on the lofty outcomes of individual youth and not enough on the outcomes of the youth within their communities. Place-based education is the sub-field addressing this weakness.
Definition of PYD
Though many longer-winded definitions exist elsewhere, we use the following:
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The transformation of children into well-adjusted young adults through a system of beneficial experiences, activities, and relationships.
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How do I know if my child’s activity or group is committed to PYD?
Unfortunately, many youth-serving organizations mistakenly think that providing youth a good time is all that is required for PYD. They may even describe themselves with PYD language without actually providing it. So rather than receive a false self-report, here are the three indicators (with examples!) that your child’s organization is actually using a PYD framework:
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1. It fully involves youth throughout the process.
Warning: if you love youth sports, you probably want to walk away right now. In most cases, youth sports fail this indicator. Why? They cut/exclude less skilled youth or allow them to remain on the team but ‘ride the pine’ all season. This may ‘keep kids out of trouble’ (simplistic and outdated 20th century framework!), but it does little to improve their sense of worth, problem-solving skills, social standing, etc. A true PYD activity involves youth throughout the process because that is where the magic happens.
Sticking with the youth sports example, PYD strategies might include equal playing time requirements throughout the regular season, equitably funded alternative/ intramural opportunities, enhanced developmental coaching (i.e., higher adult coach to youth ratio), and so forth. In other domains, finding avenues for increasing youth voice (i.e., participatory decision-making) and leadership opportunities are key strategies.
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2. It is safe and any unavoidable risks are presented transparently in advance.
Youth learn poorly when they are systemically afraid. Ensuring an emotionally safe environment produces the right conditions for youth to learn and thrive. Similarly, when the activity is not physically safe, it likely violates indicator #1. That is, if youth are injured (e.g., concussions, torn ACLs), their participation is reduced and the developmental process comes to a screeching halt. Not so sure? Injuries are the largest predictor for when youth permanently quit/leave an activity.
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If all risk is eliminated from youth activities, the activities will lack the fun and challenge youth need to maintain participation. PYD is not about bubble wrapping today’s youth! Rather, once an appropriate level of risk has been determined and mitigation strategies employed, the remaining known risks should be communicated in advance to participants and their guardians. For example, youth summer camp participants should be informed that the uneven terrain of a camp setting, playing unfamiliar group games, and quick-changing weather conditions all result in enhanced physical risk. In contrast, youth football could not simply inform participants and guardians about the extreme levels of physical and cognitive disability linked to tackle football—they must implement a safer product (e.g., flag football) in order to be PYD. (Though, in fairness, the spread offense is quickly making tackling a lost skill anyway!)
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3. Its focus is on helping youth attain beneficial outcomes, attributes, or skills through systematic and appropriately timed experiences.
One-off events can be interesting and fun, but development takes relationships and time; therefore, PYD is systematic. It incorporates a range of experiences, activities, and relationships to accomplish group or individual goals. It uses human growth and development research to inform activity-level appropriateness and timing. (In most cases, today’s youth serving groups are pressured--by parents--toward the early end of the developmental milestone range. Folks, please stop thinking that young Eldrick 'Tiger' Woods is walking through that door!)
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Does the PYD framework make our youth too soft, coddled, snowflaky?
Haha no, it just transforms the activity’s purpose. Pre-PYD, the focus was often on winning, keeping youth busy, or producing high achievers. Instead, the PYD framework asks coaches, teachers, volunteers, etc. to lead with intention.
Ask: In what ways will this activity help youth develop? Good answers might include social relationship building, skill development, workforce preparation, leadership development, etc.—all of which are more important outcomes than the W-L record. Though failing forward builds character, there has to be a path forward.
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Who contributes to PYD? [each icon is clickable]
Why is PYD important?
For generations, youth were incorrectly thought of as miniature adults. They are not; they have unique developmental needs. On average, youth develop through the age of 25 at which point they can appropriately be described as adults. Before that, they are youth. Period. In contrast to adults, youth have six unique attributes that make a PYD framework essential to their well-rounded development. The mini PYD case studies below describe these unique attributes and their relationship to PYD.
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1. Emotional roller coaster
Michelle is boy crazy. She joined DECA this year because it helped her meet more (well dressed!) boys from neighboring schools. The business teacher who leads her local DECA chapter is a nice guy but can’t really give the chapter much time other than practicing for the contests. As a result, he doesn’t notice that the sleepy, disengaged Michelle in class is different from the social butterfly Michelle during DECA practices and events. He does notice she often suffers from telltale hangover symptoms on Monday mornings, but just chalks it up to ‘teens being teens.’
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In private, Michelle’s life is empty. She doesn’t have much of a home life, so partying and boys keep her going. Other than her afterschool DECA practices (which she rates based on whether or not she got to practice with Jack her secret heartthrob!), she basically lives for the weekends. Partying is such a great escape from reality! And then every Monday is the crash back to earth of mundane. Rinse. Repeat.
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Every youth endures the emotional roller coaster of the teen and young adult years. The ‘next fun thing’ drives behavior and life satisfaction. From a PYD perspective, the role of caring adults is to ‘tune in’ to each of their youth to help flatten the highs and lows. In Michelle’s case, she needs the DECA coach to mobilize a ‘village’ of other caring adults who find substantive, meaningful activities to help fill the void at home. Soon, the diversity of her activities will reduce the need for mountaintop weekends and she’ll have several caring mentors to fill the true love gap she’s finding in all the wrong places at the moment.
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2. Impulsive decision-making
Jin and Aaron have been friends since grade school. Worried about his immortal soul (and hoping to have a guy friend to go to teen church camp with) Jin invites Aaron to start attending his youth group. Aaron loves it. This new group of quality friends becomes Aaron’s favored social circle and sustains him throughout the early high school years. At this point in the story, Jin has been an ideal PYD peer influence.
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Things start to change when Jin turns 16 and gets his driver’s license. He is a bad driver. Two speeding tickets and a minor parking lot accident convince Jin’s parents to take away his car for a month. As his best friend, Aaron steps up to become Jin’s ride to youth group on Wednesday nights. Though a conservative driver himself, Aaron gets amped up with Jin in the car. One beautiful spring evening, Jin challenges Aaron to get from his house to the church in less than 5 minutes. Aaron takes the challenge but isn’t equipped to handle advanced speeds. Three minutes later their SUV is upside down in a ditch, but thankfully, both are all right.
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Hormones and peer pressure touch the lives of every teen, even the good ones like Jin and Aaron. From a PYD perspective, Jin was a great pre-16 friend and Jin’s parents made the right choice to suspend his license. The final lesson in this case study is for the youth himself (Aaron). Friendships often change during the teen years. Do your best to remain mindful of the influence friends are having. No friendship is perfect, so pay attention to influences that are lower than your standards.
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3. Passionately focused
Hakim comes from a strong 4-H family. The family farms grain and feeds dairy cattle. Hakim enjoys the consist rhythm of the farm and takes the dairy project throughout his 10 years in 4-H. By the time he reaches high school, he spends most of his time working the farm or traveling throughout the region to show his prized Ayrshire heifers, winning several awards along the way.
On the surface, Hakim is a success story. He is a good kid! Below the surface, his journey never launched. He started with dairy and graduated with dairy. He is a hard worker, an average student, and relatively shy in group settings. Approaching young adulthood, Hakim is drifting in the wind trying to figure out how to translate his passion for the dairy farm into a viable adulting plan.
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Because Hakim has some quality attributes and experienced mastery in a subject matter, he will be fine. However, if he had been surrounded by a PYD framework from the beginning, caring adults would have used the dairy interest as a spark toward more well-rounded development. He would have been encouraged to try some modest leadership opportunities in his 4-H club to build confidence and reduce fear of group settings. As he aged, he might have been shepherded towards some local job shadowing experiences so he could test out a few quality options for necessary off-the-farm income in adulthood. There is no shame is specialized interest, but too often it limits PYD rather than fostering the comprehensive skill-sets needed for successful adulting.
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4. Status defined by social group
Marena loves basketball. She has never been a top player in her grade but always enjoyed the teamwork, camaraderie, and the feeling of making a good play. Through junior high she received modest playing time but at the end of her freshman year the coach told her it was probably time to give it up. Looking back, she wonders if she should have listed to that coach. Now a senior, she has only received a few ‘garbage time’ minutes over the past three seasons and despite being a member of the team, the good athletes do not invite her to their social gatherings. She has continued to put in the work but lately has really started to loathe basketball. She often wonders to herself, “Why did I waste all of that time?”
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Marena’s story is all too common in the American youth sports scene. Despite the fact that her parents are taxpayers and she enjoys the sport of basketball, the publicly funded high school determined that by age 15 she was no longer worth their time. If the school operated within a PYD framework, all basketball-loving girls would have a viable opportunity to play. This would not only maintain her affinity for the sport but also strengthen important social bonds amongst peers through the critical teen years.
Side note for high school athletic directors: you may have noticed that the era of the community rallying around the local sports teams died a generation ago. Just about the only remaining attendees are the small student section and family of the team. If you want to boost your flagging attendance, keep all the interested youth involved on the team with reasonable playing time. Need proof? Just go to a 4th grade sports event sometime—the crowd is usually double that of the typical varsity sports contest!
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5. Physically blooming
Max is gangly and uncoordinated, but this is not what really bothers him at the moment. It’s the acne. None of the other 7th graders seem to have it like he does! His mom has bought like 10 different types of cream but nothing seems to work. A recent visit to the doctor suggested this was ‘normal’ and it would run its course in a few years. A few years! Seriously?!
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Youth bodies change rapidly. Seemingly overnight, they go from showering weekly to twice a day (20 minutes each!). The stink of BO is replaced by the negligibly better stink of Axe. Their clodhopper feet trudge around purely to allow their knees and elbows more chances to bump into everything in sight. Liquids start escaping their bodies in uncontrollable ways. They develop a love-hate relationship with food that vacillates by the number of zits threatening to edge out from behind their noses. They grow inches in a month and plateau for infinity in between (when will I ever grow again mom?!). It is a trying time.
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The key for PYD-minded adults is to remember this flux and body ‘change range’ when leading activities. Don’t favor the early physical bloomers in sports; keep working with all the youth. When they ask for a rare or 'monthly' day off, give it to them without inquiry or penalty. Ensure a bully free experience, especially if changing clothes is a requirement for your activity. Listen with intent when they need a comforting ear. And for the love of all things holy, can we please offer something other than (zit inducing!) pizza at our youth events?!
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6. Handling intensely felt pressure for the first time
Raven Eyes has it all. As the soon-to-be Salutatorian of her tribal school, she’s been a model for other students. Active in NHS, FFA, soccer, and show choir, she keeps busy while still maintaining a 3.98 GPA (stupid calculus!). With her strength in science classes, she is thinking about majoring in pre-med in college. Though she’ll be a first generation student, she knows she has what it takes to succeed.
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That is, if it weren’t for the stupid ACT placement score. She’s tried study groups, online tutoring, and chugged peppermint candy on testing mornings, but her score wouldn’t budge above a 29. Every top-tier university denied her application and she knows it’s because her test score needed to be at least a 32. Tomorrow is her final crack at the test and if she doesn’t perform her dream of practicing medicine goes down the drain.
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Parents play a key role in PYD. In the case of Raven Eyes, her parents are thrilled to have a high achieving daughter but she hides her fears from them. As the first to excel toward college, she doesn’t want to let them down. Parents of high achievers should default into the assumption that their youth face enormous pressure. Many low and medium achievers also feel this intense pressure toward the transition to college, but from a different perspective. Finding little pressure release valves and helping to maintain life balance (without belittling or shrugging it off) are important roles parents can play to aid PYD at this critical juncture.
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I get the PYD piece, but how does place-based education fit in?
Ask yourself these questions:
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Is the youth well connected to two or more groups within the community?
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Has she found a niche that allows her to contribute meaningfully?
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Would she consider living in this community as an adult?
Answering “yes” to these questions is a good indicator the youth experienced place-based education.
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Place-based education champions systems and activities that foster 'rootedness' in young people. It uses modern PYD principles while remaining sensitive to local history, culture, and interests. It is successful when most young adults choose--with a spirit of joy and contentment--to live in the community long-term.
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PYD Resources
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