The 2012 Socialization Skills Program is off to one great start at the Detroit Impact Center

Hello everyone.  Yesterday was the official kickoff for my 2012 Socialization Skills program at the Detroit Impact Center.  I must admit that walking into a crowd of youngsters ranging from the ages of 14-19 gave me the butterflies just a little bit.  Normally, I service 10 youngsters per hour.  Yesterday, I serviced all 22 pupils within a two-hour time frame.

The first thing we addressed was fear and how it often keeps us all from reaching our fullest potential.  I started it off by letting the group know how servicing everyone at the same time resulted to me allowing  fear to set in  however, I refuse to let it get in the way of me providing the weekly social dynamic.  After providing my demonstration, all  22 students had an opportunity to share what their  personal biggest fear in life was. Within one hour of the session a major break through took place.

Directly afterwards, we discussed our first social dynamic for the week.  The “Big A”  also known as abandonment impacts many youngsters today in so many ways. After defining what it meant, I started off the session by asking everyone had they ever experienced it before.  Two pupils raised their hands to indicate yes. I read several monologues pertaining to abandonment from my first book, The Everyday Living of Children and Teens Monologues.  Together as a group we did some dialogue on those monologues.  It was one amazing session.  The question was  posed again at the end of the session.  This time at least 18 youngsters put their hands up.

What makes this 2012 group different from any other group I’ve had is that they have courage.  From what I see so far, facing the truth will not be a  difficult task for them at all.