At-risk youth program pairs teens with toddlers

By Staff Writer

In recent months, many school districts have come up with unique ways to prevent at-risk teens from engaging in destructive behavior. For example, in England, a program called Teens and Toddlers sets up aggressive high school students with kindergarten learners in order to "soften them up," according to the Guardian.

Gordon Phillips, the social inclusion manager at Queen's Park community school, said that teenagers who engage in violent confrontations with peers are rarely aggressive with younger children, according to the news source.

The concept of connecting toddlers with high school students came from the U.S. more than nine years ago. Laura Huxley - self-help author and widow of the writer Aldous Huxley - created the first Teens and Toddlers project based on her ideas about human potential and pregnancy prevention, the media outlet reports.

The program is designed to give help for troubled teens by offering them a realistic view of how much work raising a child can be, as well as boosting their self-confidence by giving them responsibility.

According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, violence prevention programs for younger adolescents should include efforts to reduce troublesome behavior in school and poor academic performance.