MISCELLANY 

EndNotes

“What we want to achieve in our work with young people is to find and strengthen the positive and healthy elements, no matter how deeply they are hidden.”

                                                     — Karl Wilker, 1920

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LUCIAN COMAN

Whispers of an inmate

    My soul is in a twist.
Captivated in time.
    Is there joy in the mist?
Show me a sign.

    Headaches and heartbreaks,
I’m tired of this game.
    Learning from mistakes,
Cause things will never remain.

    Wanting to be at ease,
But it’s not my time to rest.
    Consequences bring me to my knees.
But I shall strive and try my best.

— Keola Y. (18) Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility
          in Reaching Today’s Youth 3(4)

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“The long discussions and painful arguments of adolescence and the fierce loyalties to teachers, heroes, and gurus during the teenage years are simply our children’s struggles to ensure that the lifestyles and values they adopt are worthy of their allegiance.”

— Neil Kurshan in  Raising Your Child to Be a Mensch

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TODAY’S MULTI-TASKING YOUTH

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(And we remember Erma Bombeck’s words:
 “Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.”)

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Negotiating the adolescent stage is neither quick nor easy ... I have often said to parents, “If it isn’t illegal, immoral, or fattening, give it your blessing.” We do much better ... if we find and support all the places we can appropriately say yes, and say only the no’s that really matter.

— Virginia Satir

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Last June my parents got divorced. So now I see my dad on weekends. My best Friend. My good angel. So anyhow, He lives with his girlfriend, and I’m his weekend guest. It works out ’cause I love her and her three Boys. But my mom says I can’t go there Weekdays ’cause my grades will slip. Really. But she’s got rights, and I don’t have a prayer. Why is it parents have the right to split When they have kids? Why don’t they have to wait? Why are they so free to choose, while it Becomes our job to learn to bear our fate? Right now right through my heart there runs a wall That I did not erect, as I recall.                                                        — Nicholas Gordon

ELENA PLATONOVA

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