Mentoring, Giving and Consumer Culture

 “Give whatever you give with love. Then even the tiniest pebble you offer will have great meaning. Its fruit will come back to you a thousand fold, because it is not the pebble that you give, it is love.”
 

From the book: “Resonate with Stillness” by Gurumayi

Mentors often ask us for guidelines on appropriate gifting for their mentees. The following advice may be helpful for uncles, aunts, teachers, coaches, and others as well. Sometimes in our desire to serve and to be giving we end up promoting this culture of consumerism and devaluing what we really have to offer our youth. So, here are some guidelines to accompany the thoughtful gesture of “giving”.

It is certainly okay to give your mentee a modest gift for the holidays, or for his/her birthday. However, please keep in mind that when you give of yourself (your time, energy and caring) you offer the greatest gift of all.

For material gifting, here are some things to consider:
 

• Keep it simple and inexpensive. When your gift is too extravagant you risk being seen as a source for material goods, which changes the nature of the relationship.
• Gifts that say, “I’m thinking of you” or “I really value this relationship” are the best. Some examples would be a framed photo of you and your mentee at an activity; or something relevant to what you’ve been discussing together, such as a book on careers, or a sports book, or something simple related to your culture. 
• A good alternative to a material gift would be to take your mentee someplace special.
• Do not give your mentee a gift that his/her family could not afford.
• Never give your mentee a gift in the presence of other mentor/mentee pairs. Some students may receive gifts and others might not, which creates problems at school and resentful students. This may also put other mentors in a difficult position.
• If you are part of a work-site mentoring program your company may decide to give a gift to each of the students participating in the program. That’s okay, because it is seen as coming from the organization, and doesn’t impinge on your individual relationship. It is still recommended that the gifts be modest.
• If you know that your mentee has a real need for something you can provide, but doesn’t fit into the parameters above, you may want to find a creative way for the mentee to earn it or ‘win’ it from the program. This challenges you to examine your motives, because you don’t get to be the generous ‘Santa’. It is the program that is giving the gift and not you. We believe that in the long run this will serve you, your mentee, and her family better.

Again, we want our youth to understand that the purpose of having a mentor is not to receive cool gifts, but to develop a friendship with a caring adult.

Examine your motives and then give with love.

Peace and blessings,

Tony

Building the capacity to dream...

...in the face of a passive attitude towards life.

After a recent session a mentor wrote to me:

Hi Tony,
Last night's meeting was a true learning experience.
As a long time teacher I often thought that many of the youth have a passive attitude towards life- a sense of futility.
Last night when I asked one of the mentees what subjects he's interested in and what goals he has for the future, he really couldn't answer. He didn't know.
Finally he said: Whatever life brings me. This stunned me into silence. But I did reply:
"It's good to think in terms of -What can I bring to life?"
How should we deal with students who display this passive attitude of helplesness toward life?
Sincerely, Elsa

My response:
Thanks Elsa,
It is sometimes true that young people have been so wounded that they seem to have already given up on life at a tender age. However, it is more often true that they simply have never been asked what they want out of life and are dumbfounded by the question. Combine that with their natural resistance to our queries and distrust that we actually mean it, and you get the typical youth answers like, “whatever” or “I don’t know”. We call it the “youth Miranda rule”. They have learned that anything they say to an adult can and will be used against them at some later date. So, they say as little as possible.

So, what should we do? Let's send an invitation to their dreams.  We can look at this as our opportunity to show them something different. I love your question: “what can I bring to life?” But how can they answer that question if they have never been shown that they have something to offer? We need to slowly develop their ability to answer the question. We do it by continuing to show up for them so that they can first develop trust. Then we look for ways to validate them when they finally trust enough to give us a glimpse of the gifts they hold. This takes full commitment on our part as often the way they demonstrate their gift is by acting out. If you continue to show up and demonstrate what we call “unconditional positive regard” they will get the message that you mean it and that you see something in them that they may not even see. If you can take it a step further by seeing “their gift” (some call it the genius) within the behavior you really start to get them thinking. For example, the kid who cracks a joke at the wrong moment and makes everyone laugh should be helped to understand that his/her timing was not good, but can also be told how clever the joke was. I might find myself saying something like “That was funny, and when someone is as smart as you are, you should be careful about your timing because you have the power to disrupt everything.”   I noticed that you did this as a teacher when you write in your book about admiring the artistry in their graffiti writing skills.
On the other hand, if life, especially as it relates to their relationship with adults, continually brings them judgment and blame, they will not be in a position to offer anything back to their own life, let alone life in general.
Finally, we need to suspend expectations and trust that the process will work at whatever pace each young person needs. Some are more severely wounded than others and will take longer to respond.
More than anything else, the presence of a caring mentor can inspire a young person to see himself as someone who matters enough to have a dream.

You are building the capacity to dream!

sincerely,
Tony

Tony LoRe
Founder/CEO
Youth Mentoring Connection/Urban Oasis
Founder
Boarding House Mentors

Tony's Two Minute Mentor Tips

Mentor Tip: Something to think about...

A mentor writes: I am so frustrated because I see the struggles that my mentee is going through to try to become a man and I don’t know how to make it easier or less painful for him.

For this guy, and all of our mentors, here’s something to think about...

We can be here for our mentees; to confide; to advise; to support. But we’re not here to take away their pain… solve their problems…force their growth…

TRUST THE PROCESS. Life is a process by which we are molded. The pain and conflict in a kid’s life, indeed even in the mentoring process is the stuff that creates the necessary pressure for growth to occur. Consider the following story:

A man found a cocoon of an emperor moth. He took it

home so that he could watch the moth come out of the

cocoon. On the day a small opening appeared, he sat

and watched the moth for several hours as the moth

struggled to force the body through that little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared

as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go

no farther. It just seemed to be stuck. Then the man,

in his kindness, decided to help the moth, so he took a

pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of

the cocoon. The moth then emerged easily. But it had a

swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man

continued to watch the moth because he expected that,

at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be

able to support the body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened! In fact, the little moth spent the

rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body

and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not

understand was that the restricting cocoon and the

struggle required for the moth to get through the tiny

opening was the way of forcing fluid from the body of

the moth into its wings so that it would be ready for

flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Freedom and flight would only come after the struggle.

By depriving the moth of a struggle, he deprived the

moth of health.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our

life. If we were to go through our life without any

obstacles, we would be crippled. We would not be as

strong as what we could have been.

Just know that without you, your mentee would still be going through the same struggles. With you they have someone to talk to, someone to encourage, and someone to believe in them. Don’t underestimate the value in that.

Tony LoRe