Youth advocate Derek Peterson discusses importance of "webs of support"

Derek Peterson visited Wrangell on Monday and Tuesday to host a series of workshops to talk about Integrative Youth Development and how it could help the community's children.

According to a flyer announcing his visit to Wrangell, Peterson is an international child and youth advocate. He is the Founder of the Institute for Community and Adolescent Resiliency - Unifying Solutions, as well as Integrative Youth Development. Integrative Youth Development, according to the ICAR-US website, is a series of seven factors that can be used to assess, nurture, and sustain a community's youth.

"IYD presents a framework for the development of individual youth, within the context of their environment," the website reads.

Peterson explained a child's need for a "web of support." He described this web of support as a balloon, being held in the air by a web of yarn. The balloon represents the child, he said, and the web is made up of important people in that child's life and the support they provide. The balloon can vary in size, demonstrating the resilience of the child, and the web can have different sized holes in it, representing shortcomings or a lack of support in certain areas from those around the child.

"This [the web] is nurture, very much shifting, always shifting on kids," Peterson said. "Bigger balloons are more likely to stay on top of thin webs, and those are those kids that are kind of magic to us ... Most kids are normal, which means that a normal size balloon needs a normal size web. Then, of course, there's small balloons that are apt to fall through any web they have. There are kids like that who, there's just something about their innate resilience that they fall through the web."

There are seven factors that influence this web of support, according to Peterson which are: The rule of five: A young person needs at least five caring adults in their lives. Tangible strings: Measurable support from the young person's adults, or anchors, that shape their environment. Intangible strings: Beliefs, values, and behaviors that are being taught to the young person. Growing the balloon: A young person's innate characteristics, talent, and abilities. Scissor cuts: Behaviors or actions that erode the support of those in a young person's web. Caring for carers: Supporting people in one's own web of support. Social norms: The climate and culture of a community that has largely been agreed upon as normal.

"This isn't a program at all, as you can tell," Peterson said during Monday night's workshop at the Nolan Center. "It's a scale, a measurement tool."

Essentially, Peterson said, the five caring adults in a child's life need to give that young person both tangible and intangible support, providing for their physical and mental or spiritual needs. The adults also need to set expectations, instill values, and try to teach the young person to avoid negative behaviors and actions, that coincide with the community's social norms. The adults also need to take care of their own webs of support, Peterson said. Grownups need webs of support just as much as kids do.

One of the important things to remember, he said, is that every person and their web is unique. For a young person to thrive, they need as strong a web as possible, but that web of support can be incredibly varied. For example, the five "anchors" of the web could be parents and siblings for one kid, or grandparents and teachers for another kid. What is important is that the web is in place to help ensure everyone thrives.

"Wrangell will do it differently than Unalakleet, and a family in Wrangell will do it a little differently than another family in Wrangell," Peterson said.