Nice Assets

Nice Assets. Seriously. There’s nothing hotter than a nice tight asset.

I’m all about the asset. I have been since I first got exposed to the whole good asset thing.

A good asset’s gonna get you a long way in life, right?

And actually, it just might.

Of all the stories I’ve done on teens and how to help them do well and stay out of trouble, the thing that’s made the most sense to me was the idea of building assets in their lives.

Assets, simply put, are all the good things kids need to “get raised up right,” as one teen I recently interviewed put it. It’s a term used by the Search Institute of Minneapolis. Researchers there have interviewed 2.2 million kids...that’s a lot of input...and come up with a super specific list of what kids need. Forget all the academic stuff, right? Just tell me what to do. I love a list. And better yet, they break the list down by age. What do second graders need. How about kids in high school? This is as close to a recipe as you’re going to get.

The beauty of the assets approach is that it puts the responsibility for raising kids up right on all of us. Good thing, because there are 40 things on the list. For example, one of the assets is a caring neighborhood. The Search Institute’s website even gives you ideas of how to play this out, like, let the kids in your hood play basketball in your driveway or don’t be afraid to bust them when you catch them doing something bad. Or don’t get pissed when a neighbor busts your kids. How about be grateful instead?

The truth is I used to be afraid of teenagers. Especially the boys. Big. Noisy. All attitude and up in your face. When years back a couple of them moved in across the street I thought, crap, loud cars, loud parties, a there goes the neighborhood kind of thing. But it wasn’t long before I got to love having those guys and their friends hanging around outside. If I needed help lifting something heavy there was always someone bigger and stronger who was eager to run over and help. And there was something reassuring about hearing their young voices murmuring in the yard across the way as I fell asleep on a Friday or Saturday night. I began to see them as our neighborhood’s late night sentries...the keepers of the cul de sac. Nobody was getting into our neighborhood without passing them first.

Now I’ve got a couple of teenagers. Big. Noisy. But with surprisingly good attitudes. We’ve tried to “raise ‘em up right.” We’ve been pretty intentional about giving them assets. I have made plenty of blunders along the way. Last night’s dust up over my son’s lit essay comes to mind. But, hey we’re supposed to have high expectations for him, right? (Asset #16). And, besides, if he gets too fed up with me, there are other adults in his life he can turn to for support (asset #3).

If you want to see the entire list of developmental assets click here. Find the list that applies to the age of your child or children. Once you get there be sure to click on “show me how to take action.”