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Lori and Kris had been to a training course on Monday that was run by the city and was about the support networks that are needed to get a young person through from childhood to adulthood. The speaker's contention was that whereas it was often held to take a village to get a young person through, the actual number of adults needed was five. Leave the barn raising to the villagers.

Five significant adults that a youth can turn to, five people she or he can trust. It seems impossible that there might be any child who doesn't have five people they can go to to ask questions of, to go to with problems. But just going round the table when we were discussing this, it was surprising how few adults people remembered trusting from their own childhood and teenage years.

Many children don't have that kind of relationship with their own parents, although with the prevalence of step-families, there are more possibilities. The speaker talked of the importance of teachers in this and of course in Britain we had a highly developed pastoral system. Church members can be important, but round the table, two who were brought up as Catholics claimed the opposite was true.
Clubs were talked about, and this seemed to be significant. When I was at school I was a Wildlife Ranger. There were all kinds of clubs and groups, led by adults, that met in the lunch hour or after school, Christian Union, Guides, Brownies, Rangers. In no school that I have worked in has there been any of these, although of course both Guides and Scouts still exist.

But the main thrust of the training was to make adults who dealt with young people in the course of their work, think about how they influence them. Do we make ourselves available as part of that support network that they need? And it can be as seemingly insignificant as being a neighbour that speaks rather than one who doesn't.

It was a thought provoking discussion.

Another thought provoking thing was an offhand comment by Lori when we were out on the trails. We met another Brit, and he and I talked about this and that. When he'd gone, Lori said,
'I love listening to two Brits talk to each other. You kind of debate things. It's like you have opinions but don't get emotionally attached to them, you say something and the other one might say something different and then when the discussion is over you both go off as if it hadn't happened.'
I guess it would be fair to say that I at least was taught debating at school, and I know this is part of the curriculum in many British schools, but not all by any means. I'm going to have to give this one more thought.

The last thing that had me thinking just before I left work, I read in the Vancouver newspaper that two writers from what I would claim is Canada's funniest and most brilliant comedy, Corner Gas, are moving to Little Mosque on the Prairie. So, it can get even better then. I hope Corner Gas doesn't suffer.