This book is an educator s survival guide for working with hostile and resistant youth. It contains strength-based interventions that have benefited thousands of youths in trouble including author John Seita himself. In 1967, Seita was an abandoned, abused youth court-ordered to Starr Commonwealth, a private residential facility. Author Larry Brendtro, a psychologist, was president of Starr. Today they work together to train hundreds of professionals each year in the cutting-edge techniques of positive youth development. In Kids Who Outwit Adults, the authors disclose the private logic behind kids violent and defiant acts. They weave together an effective, rewarding approach based on successful and proven resilience models, insights from their years of experience, and youths own heart wrenching accounts. They illuminate the internal strengths and external supports kids need in order to break out of negative behavior patterns. Seita and Brendtro are your guides through the deeper world of youth scare tactics and coping mechanisms. With the penetrating wisdom found in this book, readers will: · Get beyond the bravado to build a solid trust connection · Uncover each youth s unique potentials · Build on strengths instead of dwelling on deficit and deviance · Remain positive in the face of hostility · Gain greater understanding of protective strategies, including fight/flight/fool, conceal and confuse, and sabotage · Avoid the pitfalls of the 10 myths of detachment · Calmly navigate antagonistic encounters, control contests, and manipulation games · Work positively with all kids even those whose behavior is depressed/hopeless/suicidal, oppositional defiant, or hypervigilant This book is one of two titles that NES acquired from Sopris West (2001). The cover of the book has been revised significantly (the Sopris cover had graffiti in the background with a gang of youth in the foreground); however, the text has not changed (the line endings and page endi
Dr. John Seita is the author of four books and multiple articles on foster care. He holds a doctorate from Western Michigan University. He is on the faculty of the School of Social Work at Michigan State University where he also has appointments with MSU Extension/4-H and with the Michigan Agricultural Experimental Station.
Dr. Seita is a former youth at risk who beat the odds. He was removed from his mother's home at the age of eight and spent the remainder of his childhood and adolescence in multiple foster homes, detention facilities, group care settings and on the streets. Abused and neglected as a child, his journey though children's institutions and countless foster homes was a litany of degradation and humiliation.
Today Dr. Seita is a much sought after consultant and keynote speaker who has traveled internationally. He may be contacted at his website: http://www.johnseita.com/
