When your child lashes out and becomes hurtful, are you truly seeing his problems, or are you seeing symptoms of deeper issues? You know your child's strength. You know the maturity is within him. But it is buried beneath a spiraling flow of pain and crisis. Punishment doesn't work, and your attempts to help and care are met with anger and emotional indifference.

You're not alone. We can help.

Positive Peer Culture builds powerful, mature individuals. They learn to engage in the process of identifying their own problems, and in actively seeking real and meaningful solutions. By employing the dynamics of peer group problem solving as a primary tool in this process, young people learn to understand how their behaviors impact others.

The constant focus by staff on redirecting and re-labeling negative behavior, so that inappropriate action is viewed as weak or immature, helps young people consciously seek to enhance their self image by engaging in positive, constructive behaviors. The underlying motivation, which results in after-care success, is the fact that this process effectively results in a shift of values within young people. In other words, they seek to become greater individuals because they want to be more than they were, rather than being forced to make external, superficial change.

The core of Positive Peer Culture is care and concern for self and others. This, combined with self and group discipline, produces the desired outcome of value-based recovery. Such recovery enables the young person to find strength within himself to live in accordance with his values, and to see authority figures not as enemies, but as allies.

It is true that within our treatment environment we produce powerful, recovery-focused groups. Yet we don't send our students home with their treatment groups. We send them home alone, having discovered the real power and potential within themselves. With this self-motivated power they are far more likely to succeed than if their symptoms had been clumsily pressed into the traditional, seething box of behavior modification.

Reference materials that may help you comprehend the truly powerful intent and methodology of Positive Peer Culture include:

Movie:
Good Will Hunting, starring Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, and Minnie Driver.
Note: This movie inspired the author of Positive Peer Culture to co-write the book, "Kids Who Outwit Adults." An excerpt from the book's foreword, by Matt Damon, actor and coauthor of Good Will Hunting, states, "John Seita and Larry Brendtro use the story of Good Will Hunting as a springboard for a new approach. They give us a detailed understanding of how we can and should shift efforts to help young people from a model of blame and pessimism to one that embodies hope and a positive belief in others."

Additional Books:
Reclaiming Our Prodigal Sons and Daughters, by Scott Larson, Larry K. Brendtro
Positive Peer Culture, by Harry H. Vorrath, Larry K. Brendtro