No Prevention in America
Stephenson started working in California with so-called incorrigible kids in the late 1980s, where he says his eyes were opened wide and clear about some of the inadequacies of the American youth social system, and the subsequent rampant homelessness it creates.
“In America, we don't do much of the prevention and then we end up spending more money, incarcerating and locking people up… I learned that we were never going to solve the homeless problem until we learned what caused it… Prevention has always been better than treatment so most of my life I’ve been trying to convince people to prevent,” he explained during a recent meeting at a local coffee shop.
“I'm not a fan of the system. The government is good at keeping the roads clear but is completely inept when it comes to people and I think you've seen in Reno it’s just ridiculous how bad we are as far as dealing with the homeless. When you go to Europe and see some of the social systems there, they are embarrassed when somebody is homeless because it means that they've failed. There is just a totally different mindset here.”
His first book can be found here on Amazon. "From Boys to Men is about the loss of initiation and rites of passage for modern boys," Stephenson said. "Men are just forms of uninitiated boys and the problem we are having right now such as the increase of deadbeat dads is that none of us has been initiated. America turns you from a boy into an adult with a birthday at 21. And you get all the rights and privileges of a society."
Focussing on Young Males
Stephenson's own work, research and books have focused specifically on males.
“Statistically boys are in more trouble than girls. Boys play harder and make riskier decisions. The social services field is also filled with women. My most common denominator in 30 years has been fatherless boys with single mothers,” he said. “That’s really my specialty. In my first book (From Boys to Men), it’s all about the loss of initiation in rites of passage. I've worked with teenagers from more than 100 countries. The model we see in America is not the mode of adolescence that we see in various places around the world. We have the most lockups, violence, drugs, gangs, we have a damaged sense of the adolescent which has been my goal to fix.”
Stephenson has worked over a decade with the Minden-based Rite of Passage organization. Their website can be found here.
Heartbreak, Loss and Turnarounds
Stephenson's own interactions have been filled with heartbreak and loss.
“I've known too many kids that got killed in the streets and I can't keep track of how many kids went to prison and jail. Mostly I tried to keep them from destroying what’s left in their lives. The thing with boys ... they are kind of mythologically driven to be the hero. So mostly it was behavior management to keep them from getting into trouble. Trying to convince anybody to change is tricky and I think I’m pretty tricky and manipulative and that helped me…”
Fatherless boys, he says, they can lack a lot of what he calls ‘guy skills’. “Like how to use a hammer and a tape measure. It’s really common for them to have a skewed view about manhood because when a father is a jerk then the deductive logic sometimes is the boy becomes a jerk too.”
Each situation is different but there are many common traits to the most dangerous journeys for troubled boys and young men. He says success is hard to define, but turnarounds do happen.
“Some had issues with their parents and the rebelliousness and the gang culture took them to the streets. Some kids were on the streets trying to avoid juvenile detention or probation…. Success is hard to tell. I run into children who are like 27 and right now they have a family. (They are) totally changed from who they used to be. So, it’s kind of nice sometimes ... we just have to grow up.”
Above a screengrab from his own website. For a while, Stephenson, a father of one daughter now in her 20s, himself lived out of his truck, which has given him extra empathy for his work. “I was camping at the back of my truck and that was because I was in debt. I had some medical bills that I hadn't paid and so my wife and I decided I was going to put everything in storage and we lived in the back of a truck”
Fatherless Boys
Fatherless boys, he says, can lack a lot of what he calls ‘guy skills’. “Like how to use a hammer and a tape measure. It’s really common for them to have a skewed view about manhood because when a father is a jerk then the deductive logic sometimes is the boy becomes a jerk too.”
Each situation is different but there are many common traits to the most dangerous journeys for troubled boys and young men. He says success is hard to define, but turnarounds do happen.
“Some had issues with their parents and the rebelliousness and the gang culture took them to the streets. Some kids were on the streets trying to avoid juvenile detention or probation…. Success is hard to tell. I run into children who are like 27 and right now they have a family. (They are) totally changed from who they used to be. So, it’s kind of nice sometimes ... we just have to grow up.”
"The second book I wrote is called The Undercurrents of Adolescence and I was trying to figure out how we got so much delinquency. So, I was figuring out how did we go from no teen problems to leading the world in five generations. So, I broke it down by decades societally what’s going on and then to make it fun, every decade I used a movie to explain the changes in society and technology in the U.S."
Advice for Parents and Organizations
He says parents should pay close attention to their child's adolescent years and their behavior during this time.
“Try and understand what these changes mean. Talk straight but don't talk down to the kids and so many parents don't do that. As baby boomers, we were crazy in the 60's and 70's and then you grow up and you are like ‘I don’t want my kid to do anything I ever did’. I don’t want my daughter to date me when I was 19, so they’ve got to keep that open mind, They’ve got to remember what it was like and not just say ‘no don't do that’. For the kids: ‘don’t get all your info from your friends. Look for someone who can give you good advice.’”
As far as organizations working with troubled youths, he also has advice. “I want to beg people to open their minds on how we work with teenagers. Children of any kind should never be a business,” he said. “People and communities have got to demand that we bring a rite of passage especially for our teenagers.”
"The third book I wrote is more of a philosophical one. It looks at modern adolescent discontent and America's shallow approach to teens." It can be found here on Amazon.
Don't Disconnect the Youth from Elders Either
Even though he is dealing with extremely troublesome back issues right now, Stephenson said he will never ‘retire’ from helping troubled youths. “I don't agree with the concept of retirement,” he said. “It’s really damaging because it takes elders and removes them from the youth.”
He also doesn't mind if people reach out to him, either via his website https://www.adolescentmind.com/ or via email: bret@adolescentmind.com