I have been involved in the lives of at-risk teens (white ones, brown ones, and in recent years, black ones) for a long time and over the years I have learned that there are certain things that they need to hear and certain things they don’t need to hear.  There are things that will bring them down and hold them back and there are things that will give them hope and set them free.

Kids that are in danger of failing out, dropping out, joining a gang, choosing a life of crime, or giving up on themselves and even life in general, don’t need a someone giving them or nurturing in them a victim mentality or a sense of fatalism.  They don’t need someone teaching them that the world is against them, that the problems in their life are because of some nebulous group of people that is against them, or that negative outcomes are a foregone conclusion.  At-risk kids don’t need help developing indifference, defeatism, or resentment.

What they do need is hope and a sense of agency.  They need to believe that they can make a difference in their lives and in the lives of their families.  They need to believe that the choices they make matter.  They need to believe that the only ones who are going to hold them back in life are themselves.  They need someone to help them see a path to a better day and help them believe that they can walk it.

Here are five things you can tell an at-risk teen that I know will put a light in their eyes:

According to the Brookings Institute if teens will do these three things, they won’t be poor:

1. Finish high school
2. Get a full-time job and keep it for at least a year
3. Wait till you’re married to have children (and wait till age 21 to do that)

According to their research, if people do these three things, they have only a two percent chance of being poor.  Tell this to a kid who is still in school and doesn’t have any kids yet and watch their eyes light up.  They’re almost two thirds of the way to “making it!”

Number four is from the US Census Bureau

4. If they have a kid and stick with the other parent, their child is five hundred percent less likely to be poor.

This is huge because there are some great young dads out there that leave their girlfriends (their “baby-mama”) because they feel discouraged about their ability to provide for their family.  They feel bad and inadequate and not good enough as fathers, so they leave.  When good ones hear this statistic their eyes light up and they say, “Really, I just got to stick with her and it makes that big of a difference?  I can do that.”  All of a sudden he sees that it doesn’t matter that he is only making eight dollars an hour at a fast food restaurant, what matters is that he sticks around and that they stick together.

This last one has to do with the fear of incarceration and just comes from personal experience (HERE is something good to read on it though).  A lot of poor kids, especially poor black boys, feel like it is almost inevitable that they are going to end up in prison.  They don’t need to have their fears validated by people telling them that the world is out to get them and they should just prepare themselves for the inevitable (spending time in prison).  Here is what they need to hear:

5. You have an enormous amount of control in this. If you don’t do drugs or commit a crime and don’t hang out with people who do, your odds of going to prison drop to zero (percentage-wise).  Some of your friends might think you’re being judgmental and self-righteous for making this choice, but it’s not their life, it’s yours.

So there are the five things that you can tell an at-risk teen to put a light in their eyes and take the stoop out of their shoulders.  Tell them the truth, give them hope and a sense of power over their lives, and watch what they do and become.  You won’t be sorry.