When I think back to when my little brother was hanging out with me, with all my friends who were high school seniors, it was my friends, who were children themselves, who were more instrumental in railroading bullies when they tried to terrorize my brother. The adults were so worried about being politically correcting, and handling issues with kid gloves that I never thought that bullies got the message. Children naturally push back against authority. Unless you’re me, who grew up in a military household that left little room for rebellious acts, you will most likely spend your entire adolescence trying to twist and bend the rules in your favour. So it never made sense to me that an adult would effective in curbing bullying.

The school yard is much like an African plain. There are hunters and there is prey. Its survival of the fittest. Whether you’re just trying to fit in with the right clique, or trying to impress others, or trying to keep from being repeatedly attacked by those that are bigger and stronger than you, there is hierarchy that children seem to unknowingly follow. There is always a leader, and there are a number of followers. And though the same can be said for the adult world, children are not emotionally equipped to deal with cruelty the same way that adults are. They mimic adult behaviour they may be exposed to at home, and then bring it to the school yard. Children are not born bullies, they are shaped by their environment. There are of course factors that can contribute to violence in children, like certain brain dysfunctions, but nurturing a child is the best way to ensure they don’t become a terror on the playground and in the classroom.

So how to we prepare our children for bullies? Well first, you enlist the help of older children. You don’t have to go all Lord of the Flies and expect them to govern themselves, but I think that making them aware that they have a certain responsibility as fellow human beings to help those who are in need. Educate your older children about why children get bullied. Point out to them that just because someone cries, or feels sensitive about certain things, does not mean that it’s okay for them to be picked on. In fact, it’s just plain unacceptable. Celebrate differences with your children, and ensure they don’t focus on them. A different skin color, different type of clothing, or different religion is never a reason to push someone around. In fact, it’s the perfect time to alliance yourself with them. Being ignorant isn’t cool!

Enlist your children to take on the buddy system. It’s as old as time, but just as effective. If your child sees someone that’s repeatedly getting picked, ask your child to help create a safe environment for that bullied kid. Everyone deserves to be happy and safe!

I had a pretty unique upbringing. Both of my parents had the coolest jobs! My mother worked in forensic science, and my father was a soldier in the Canadian infantry. Because I was too young to go traipsing around a forensic lab, my parents both decided that spending the day with Dad on the army base, was where I would get my first work experience. Because our family actually lived on the military base, dad’s office was a short walk from our friend door. I set out with my lunch bag in hand, and GI Joe backpack, strapped to my back, and my notebook in hand. I was excited.

We arrived at the gates of the my dad’s work, at 8:00am sharp. My dad spoke briefly with the gatekeeper, a young man who’s shoes were so shiny, I could see my face in them. Over the course of the day, I watched my dad lead a platoon of young soldiers around the parade square, teach several classes to new recruits about life in the military, and the importance of civic responsibility, and most importantly, the role that the Canadian military plays in the international community. Some of it was a little over my head, being ten and all, but what I did understand, was that my dad spent his days teaching other people how important it was to treat other’s with respect and dignity, and that the Canadian people were dedicated to spreading peace around the world.

My dad’s job was a pretty noble one, and it sounds all glamourous, but anyone who grew up in a military family understands, that it’s anything but glamourous. Missed birthdays, missed graduations, missed births, and missed holidays are all part of living in a dynamic where one parent serves their country. I gained a deep appreciation for what my father did, and I grew not only admiring his work ethic, but adopting it. I doesn’t matter if a you’re a soldier in the military or a receptionist at a hair salon, if it’s possible, bringing your child to work can be one of the most invaluable experience you can ever provide them with. And who knows, they might even have fun!

How Flexible is Your Volunteer Program for Youth?

A teen’s schedule can be hectic, and in the real world, if they were an adult, they would need a handful of personal assistants to manage them. In the teen world, they have Mom! If you want youth to be a part of your organization, you need to be able to offer opportunities that work around their schedule. After-school volunteer opportunities, activities that incorporate their various social activities.

What’s in it for Them?

Let’s not kid ourselves, we’d all like to think that teens volunteer out of the goodness of their hearts, but that just isn’t reality in most cases! Does your organization offer incentive programs for success? For example, if someone meets or exceeds a fundraising target, do you give them a gift, or reward of some sort? There’s nothing wrong with creating a little competition, in fact, competition can bring out the best in all of us. Give them something to work towards, and watch them shine!

Do You Provide a Variety of Opportunities to get Youth Involved?

In order to make your organization attractive to the younger generation, it’s important to understand how to hold their interest. Assigning them mundane tasks that repeat over and over is the fastest way to lose credibility. If you are putting on a community event, give your youth volunteers several different tasks. It’s also beneficial to reward those volunteers who have taken initiative and stood out.

Are You Providing Valuable Skills a Youth Can Carry With Them?

Volunteering with an organization is an excellent way for a young person to start building a resume. Since at the tender age of 12 or 13, they are too young to legally get a paying job, so volunteering with an organization should not only teach them the importance of charity and selflessness, but it should also provide them with an arsenal of valuable skills to enter into the working world with.

Habitat for Humanity has four main youth age groups that it operates. In the first age group, Habitat focusses on using games and learning tools to help introduce them to other children from other international communities. In the next two age groups, the Habitat Street Team and the T2′s, have a far more physical presence within the organization. Youth are encouraged to advocated for Habitat, help fundraise, participate in youth conferences around the world and act as ambassadors.
In my own city, there are about 4000 people living on the streets. And sadly, of those 4000 people, and estimated 80% of those indiv

iduals are fighting some sort of substance abuse and addiction, which naturally makes it far more difficult to get individuals off the street. The incidence of child poverty and homelessness in the United States is the highest it’s ever been since the countries inception. With the increase of natural disasters (Hurricane 

Katrina) and an ongoing mortgage crisis, homelessness in America is becoming everyone’s issue, and if we begin teaching our children at a young age to recognized the importance of having a safe secure roof over their head, they’ll be the catalysts for change in the future. 

When I was in college, a good friend of mine, a child psychologist, did her masters thesis on the effects of mentoring at risk children, versus none, and her findings were not only astounding, they were frightening. Those who didn’t have guidance fell prey to drugs, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, the list goes on. And those who spend a few afternoons a week with someone they could share their day with, were not only given a fighting chance, more often than not, they succeeded at school, were more likely to participate in sports and were more likely to say no to drugs and alcohol at an early age.

If you have always felt the need to help, why not invest your time with the most impressionable and important little resources that we have, children? It is not a responsibility to be taken lightly, but it is one that we should all consider if we have any hope of solving our youth problems.

There are any number of programs out there that provide adults the opportunity to mentor children and youth. Big Brother and Big Sister is an excellent program who’s vision is to “provide children facing adversity with strong and enduring, professionally supported one-to-one relationships that change their lives for the better, forever.” The application process is rigorous, but when you’re dealing with children, it needs to be! And once you’ve passed the initial test of being a mentor, the real work begins.

Building trust with your child or youth, will take a significant amount of time. So you have to be patient. This child might have experienced some sort of loss in their life. They may have been abandoned by a parent, or abused, or maybe they just have a really hard time making friends, whatever the reason they are in the program, they need to be able to trust you. Everything else will come with time.

Carve some time out of your busy week to do some good. Mentoring a child is not only a fulfilling experience, but you will be responsible for changing the face of a generation.

Teenagers are an inherently selfish and self-absorbed species of human. Everything small thing that doesn’t go their way is often magnified by unstable emotions and hormone-fed theatrics. And though parents may pull their hair out at their teens inability to look past their own nose, realistically, it’s the only time in life we’re really allowed to be consciously selfish. Once we hit adulthood, we have a myriad of responsibilities that require more of us than obsessing over the reflection in the mirror. A great way to teach your teen or young adult that being selfish does little more than serve short-sighted goals, is through volunteering, where the lessons are so invaluable you couldn’t possibly put a price on the outcome.

Encouraging our youth to volunteer and engage their local community, has several benefits for both the youth and those they help. Volunteering with an organization helps a youth feel useful, and their contributions will serve them to feel confident and self-assured. If your youth is working in a situation where those being helped are less fortunate, it gives the youth a health dose of perspective, and helps them to appreciate what, instead of continuing to focus on what they don’t have. It also teaches them how to be patient, cooperative and how to be a part of a team, all invaluable lessons that are too often learned far too late in life. For at risk youth, being involved in an organization that gives back can be a matter of saving their life, rather than sending them out onto the street to fend for themselves. Working in a homeless shelter, a helping individuals who’ve lost everything due to a drug habit, is a surefire way to show an at risk youth that their life needs to head in another direction, and fast!

I was a good teen, in fact, when I look at youth today, in the eyes of most parents, I was the exception and not the rule. I was quiet, respectable, did my homework (for the most part), and never touched drugs or alcohol. That isn’t to say that the temptation wasn’t there. Navigating adolescence was a bit of a minefield. The girls were having sex before the seventh grade, the guys were binge drinking in the eighth grade, and by the twelfth grade cocaine, ecstasy, and mushrooms were making their around my history class. I didn’t grow up in Compton, I grew up in a upper middle class, suburban neighborhood, and my school was considered one of the best in the city, yet still, these were some of the toxic disasters that I was exposed to as a young woman. Luckily I had a set of attentive parents, and coupled with my stubborn resolve and unwillingness to fall prey to the will of the mob, I survived relatively unscathed. Not all teens are so lucky. Many are lost to drugs, lost to booze, drop out of school, or start making babies before they’re able to read at an eighth grade reading level.

My parents divorced when I was 10, and they became concerned that as I inched toward adolescence, there was a possibility that I would act out on my despair by getting into trouble. They catapulted themselves into an exhaustive hunt to find a series of activities that would keep me so preoccupied, I wouldn’t have time to even think about getting into trouble. They both settled on one program, the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. My father was a peacekeeper in the Canadian Armed Forces, and my mother had worked for the military when I was little, so naturally, this was an appropriate suggestion for me, but I wasn’t so sure. I was 11 years old when I went to my first parade (the standard entry age is 12, but my squadron was desperate for numbers). I was the youngest, the shortest, and the only girl, amidst a squadron of boys and young men. I was one of the most intimidating moments of my life, but little did I know that this Squadron was going to become my brotherhood of sorts, and I was going to have to most incredible experiences of my young life.

From the time I was 11 until I was 17 years old, my summers were spent romping around in the Canadian wilderness, learning survival skills; learning to fly ultralights and small aircraft; attending leadership conferences and learning how to become a better citizen. Whenever I would return to school in the fall, and in homeroom the teacher would ask us what we did for the summer, I would nonchalantly mention that I spent the summer inside the air traffic control tower at Pearson Airport, jaws would drop. Popping a bunch of pills and getting wasted at a house party just didn’t seem as exciting as chatting with a real-live F-18 pilot. The best part of it all, it didn’t cost my parents a dime! The Air, Army and Sea Cadets are all government sponsored programs, and they provide the funding for camps, training sessions and weekly meetings, even your uniform is free! If you really excel at being a cadet, there are a series of scholarships for college students. Being an Air Cadet provided me with a sense of pride, boosted my self confidence and kept me so preoccupied, that the angst of being teenager had a silver lining.

Buy a lot of photo frames and put pictures of your family and friends in them. Dot them all around your room. If you can’t afford photo frames, or just don’t want one, then you can just stick photos to the wall with blu-tack.

Buy some candles. The have a good ambiance and also heat a room up very quickly. You can buy scented candles too. That way your room will smell and look great.

Keep it de-cluttered. There is a difference between personalization and distracting clutter. You need to be able to concentrate when you are studying and relax too.

Buy some nice cushions. Some bright, comfy cushions dotted around the room will add a lot. Practical and pretty.

Buy a map. Maps are great and educational. Have one up on your wall and dream of all of the places you want to go.

Plants are great. Though if you have a tendency to kill plants you may want to skip this one. Your windowsill would be a great place to have a plant. Or put books on your windowsill instead.

You could also buy some great lamps. Pretty functional. Get one in a bright color.

You will, of course, have your own duvet cover and pillow cases. Get it in your favorite color. If you are feeling flush, get some nice curtains too. Remember to keep the old ones so you can replace them when you leave.

Other things you can buy are a radio. Studying while listening to the radio is much more fun.

Make your own privacy screen.

This blog has lots of great DIY projects for your dorm room. Including some great tips you will really love if you are training for a forensic psychology career.

Have fun!

When you move into your college room, whether it be a house share or student digs, you are probably going to have a problem with space, where to put things? It is your first time away from home so you may not have the low-down on home improvement, I know I didn’t. So, you are going to need somewhere to put all the stuff you accumulate, right? Here is the answer: cheap storage.

You can buy very cheap storage, keep things in shoe boxes, put up shelves, have hanging racks.

Putting up shelves is relatively easy when you get the hang of it. This article shows you how to put up shelves. You can stack shelves for extra room. The first time I put up shelves I felt amazing afterwards.

Storage drawers can be really handy. They are good to be put in a hanging rack, but even taken out can be put on top of wardrobes or under the bed.

Under the bed is a storage solution you should take advantage of. You can buy great stuff from Ikea that only cost a few pounds, or that great place for bargains; Ebay. Don’t just shove things under the bed. You are not ten anymore. It will look awful and ruin your stuff.

Boxes that stack up on top of each other are a brilliant idea too. Do what property developers are having to do because they are running out of land: build upwards.

Hanging racks are good for clothes when you can’t afford a wardrobe, or if you just don’t have the room. You can get hanging shoe racks too.

You can also keep your shoes in their boxes and take a polaroid of the shoes that are inside for easy access.

Don’t leave anything empty if you are really having a problem with storage. Fill suitcases up and anything else you can think of. Make sure everything has it’s place. It will be easier to get things done if you are not drowning in clutter. You could also put on your biggest smile and ask your parents to keep some stuff in their attic or your old bedroom.

Another option is renting storage. Storage places are huge now so you should be able to get one for a reasonable price due to the competition.

Last night I was laying in bed, and 3am rolls around and I am still not sleeping. I mean, you can only toss and turn for so many hours before you completely give up and get up. For me, I come up with the best ideas when I am laying down, reading to fall asleep. Maybe that’s why I always have such a problem falling to sleep. It’s like my body is trying to shut down, but my creative side is just waking up. This happens every. single. time.

Sorry, I am tired. Go figure.

After eating carrots and dip in bed with my puppy, I tried to fall asleep again. FAIL. After my head came up with a new book idea, fashion brand and “to do” list, I decided to revamp my room. Yes, at 4am in the morning, I decided to revamp my room. Who does this, I know! I DO!

Of course, at 4am, what stores are open, right? I think even Walmart is closed by this time. I’m pretty sure the whole continent is sleeping… except for me. However, with my creative juices flowing as they do every late hour, I decided that I didn’t need anything new to revamp a space.

All you have to do is move the furniture around. Sounds simply, right? Simply when your room mate isn’t fast asleep in the room beside you maybe. I moved my bed, desk, book shelves and a bunch of other stuff all by myself, and as quiet as a mouse if I must say so myself.

AND I LOVE MY NEW SPACE. It’s like a brand new room. It’s crazy how just moving a few things from here to there and turning this and angling that can really change a look.

As soon as I was finished, I fell right asleep. It’s almost like my subconscious was like, ‘YOU NEED A CHANGE!’

and now I have it!

Try it for yourself. You don’t have to move EVERYTHING, but even just changing the angle of your bed, or the wall that it is on can make a great difference.