This is an interesting social experiment – how do friends, family and society react to a ‘pregnant’ high school senior? (It is a project vs. reality!) This show airs on January 28th. Check out the story here.

I was happy to see this New Zealand paper picked up on some research that shows how teen parents can be helped by society to turn things around as young parents as well as make better future decisions. An interesting statistic “Two-thirds of births to teenagers in New Zealand are to 18 and 19-year-olds” whereas births to younger teens is very rare. Even when pregnancy is not planned or expected, pointing fingers does not make a lot of sense to me. A baby and two young people still need guidance. Read more about it in the full story online.

(Excerpt from: Mentor Me! The Complete Guide for Women who want to Mentor Girls. To be released January 2012)

The benefits of mentoring leak out into the mentee’s home life. Sixty 
percent of mentored children experienced improved relationships with 
adults in their lives (Curtis 1999). When Chelsea was stressing about 
how her dad was impatient or unavailable over the years, as a mentor 
I would sometimes suggest that she schedule a father-daughter date or 
a family meeting to discuss what was on her mind.  She had brought 
these ideas to me before, but sometimes forgot about them and I was 
able to remind her of her own good ideas. More often than not, these 
father-daughter  dates  and  family  meetings  worked  to  resolve  what 
was troubling her.  In addition to improved adult relationships, fifty-
six percent of mentored kids have improved relationships with other 
children and fifty-five percent could express how they were feeling on 
any given day (Curtis 1999). Another study (Tierney 1995) showed that 
mentored kids were one-third less likely to hit someone. Trust me on 
this one: how the other kids were treating her and how she was feeling
were huge topics throughout my mentoring relationship with Chelsea.
Mentors have the power to not only reduce the high school dropout
rate one hundred percent—one child at a time—but their impact touch-
es all aspects and relationships of the child’s life. 

Be like Ghandi – be the change you want to see in the world!
Paula

Seasons Greetings,

Chelsea and I would like to wish you, your family and your mentee a Merry Mentoring Christmas!

Be sure to call your mentee today to say hello and to let her know you are thinking about her today.

Have a MENTORrific Christmas,

Paula & Chelsea