To tell the truth challenging children and those who are not challenging are not that different. Both these groups need the same necessities and some may need a greater extent. However, here are 5 tips that I have discovered work time and time again.

Genuine care: young people don’t do political correctness or fakeness well. And professionals who are well meaning but don’t exhibit authentic care get sniffed out and not allowed to pass go.

“I don’t care how much you know, until I know how much you care” is a saying I cam across and is very accurate when it comes to getting into the head of challenging students.

Care does not mean being soft or being a walk over as many times care is tough and unreasonable when needed. They just need to know your there for the long haul.

Relationship: In mentoring, relationship is the name of the game. If you are going to get a mentee to do what they “don’t” want to do, to get what they “do” want to get, you must have a pretty good relationship to leverage with.

This is where youth engagement mentoring is different from say career or sports mentoring because the subject is external (i.e. a career or sport) when mentoring challenging young people the person would most definitely be the subject or at least they will be overly sensitive to the possibility that they are!

So building a solid, professional but interpersonal relationship is invaluable to both of your progress if you are to achieve success.

Confrontation: However rock solid the mentee may seem to be, they do have a heart, it is just about finding it. Behind all that pain, hurt, disappointment and feeling of lowness etc. sometimes hide what is real going on. It is a lot to get through but are you ready to journey with them?

Confrontation is a skill in of itself! Because if you are too assertive and the student is not ready, they will shut the door in your face! And if you are not assertive enough you may get past their hard exterior (the mask). But if you confront the mentee with the right tone, force, tact and consideration you may just get in and be given permission to challenge their attitudes and inconsistencies. So getting this one right is vital and the key to building deeper foundations.

Strategy: What is your achievement strategy? Where do you desire to accompany your mentee? That’s right accompany walk along with but not carry.
One of the worse things you can do is… do it for them! You know the whole give a man a fish and you feed him for a day and if you teach him he will be able to feed himself for a lifetime. This is the same thing. So even though they may not be willing to do it for themselves at first, you must have a strategy that encourages forging past the resistance. They will love you for it after.

The Why: The why must cast a shadow over the how or some just won’t engage. Most challenging students they have been let down, judged, stigmatised or hard done by in some way and this challenging behaviour is just how they deal with not dealing with their issues, a lot like us adults!

The why is the big picture, the possibilities, the aspiration and what could be blardy blar… now to some of them it will be unbelievable and so not convincing but if you can make them get a glimpse at the why and why they should engage and how it could make things different if they just… then there is a chance in their minds eye the why is much bigger than their how.

Conclusion
I hope this helps and is broad stroke as I find mentoring is consultative as every mentee is different and they don’t come in batches. However some principles are still applicable.
There is nothing to it but to do it, so go and test out some of these tips and tell me if they work.

Happy mentoring

Image: telegraph.co.uk