We are all unique, yet we all come into this world with basic physical and emotional needs.  Physical needs such as the need for shelter, sustenance, warmth and safety and emotional needs including love, autonomy, meaning & purpose, belonging and status & security. We will try and get these needs met anywhere we can. In order to make sure these needs are met for our young people just as it is our responsibility to meet their physical needs as parents and carers, so we should also be striving to ensure our young peoples emotional needs are met in balance

To remind us of these emotional needs I have created the following acronym : LAMBSS

Love – self worth, family, friends, community, respect, honesty, consistency
Autonomy - Control-particularly important for adolescents Being heard!
Meaning & purpose - Purpose in life, aspirations, goals, challenges
Belonging - Community, gang , group, school, home , club
Status - Sense of value and importance Who am I? Where do I fit in?
Security - Consistency, stability, home, school

If we send our young people out without trying to get these needs met in balance it will be like sending the lambs to the slaughter. If you’re a young person out on your own searching to get these needs met perhaps you would consider getting pregnant that could fill a lot of these cups at least in the short term. Or maybe you will get your sense of belonging from the group of drug takers or local gang. Perhaps the only place you can feel secure is in prison or some other institution. Food for thought !
Luckily nature gave us some resources to go about getting these needs met including:  imagination, problem solving abilities, memory, self-awareness and a range of thinking styles to use in various different situations.  To enable us to use these resources however, we need to follow good role models or indeed be taught how to make these wonderful resources work for us or they can work against us.
Feel free to let me know what you think
Deborah