With a Little Help From Their Friends...

Today's Parent ©Jennifer Crump

Conventional wisdom has been that we should encourage kids to seek out adults when they're facing a problem. But it doesn't always work that way.

When our eleven-year-old neighbour, Megan, comes to our door, I'm as thrilled to see her as my daughters are. Megan brings me time to do some chores, and she brings my five daughters, ages three to nine, an adventure. With Megan, my youngest girls built their first camp in the bush. On hot summer nights, Megan takes my eldest girls out looking for toads to add to her enviable collection of amphibians. At the moment, she's teaching them how to play one-on-one basketball. They think she's cool. I think she's an awesome role model.

Megan is a mentor - one of countless Canadian kids who volunteer as soccer coaches and playground monitors, or simply take younger children under their wing. What's so special about Megan and kids like her? Well, for one thing, she is older. She knows stuff. But she's not so old that she has forgotten how to have fun. Besides keeping my girls occupied, Megan gives them something they can't get from me: the support and interest of someone who does things with them simply because she wants to.

Watch what can happen when it's the young leading the young!

"Our kids expect us to be proud of them, but when an older child praises them or is interested in them, it's so much more special," says Donna Lavoie, mother of three girls aged four, eight and nine, from Smooth Rock Falls, Ontario. Last winter, her eldest daughter, Amy, performed well in an intense figure-skating competition, but didn't win a medal and was terribly disappointed. Lavoie and her husband, Rene, told Amy she had done well and that they were proud of her. But their words didn't help. "One of the older skaters took Amy aside and told her that she had skated well and she knew just how she felt because she had gone through the same thing," says Lavoie. "It was much better than anything we could have said because it wasn't expected."

Conventional wisdom has been that we should encourage kids to seek out adults when they're facing a problem. But it doesn't always work that way. Teachers, coaches and other professionals who work with children realize that kids often reject adults and prefer to talk out their troubles with other kids. Recognizing this, more and more schools are launching formal mentoring programs that make the most of the natural rapport between older and younger children, while supporting the setup with training and adult supervision.

The peer assistance program at Ross Road Elementary School in Vancouver involves almost all of the school's 500 students as either big buddies or little buddies. The school runs volunteer tutor, peer mediation and buddy programs that require a large commitment of time and resources not only from the kids, but from adults, too.

Every day after recess, a teacher debriefs the 20 grade-six students who serve as peer mediators in the primary play ground. They discuss the problems that arose, how they dealt with them and what they might do differently. "The older kids know when they need to get an adult involved," says principal Bill Reid.

After several days of training, volunteer tutors in grades six and seven work (with adult supervision) in Ross Roadís peer learning centre. The centre has helped kids who have trouble with math, reading and spelling. These programs can have a lasting impact on academic performance for both the students being tutored and for the tutors themselves. And it isnít just the high achievers who make good peer tutors. In a 1998 summary of peer tutoring studies, Harvey Mandel, psychologist and the director of the Institute on Achievement and Motivation at York University, found that kids who have struggled in a particular subject can make great tutors - they have a deeper understanding because they've "been there."

One of Ross Road's best tutors was a grade-six girl with dyslexia who struggled with both reading and spelling. "She was very attentive to anything that might help her protÈgÈes learn to read," says Penny McPherson, coordinator of the peer-tutoring program. "She knew what it was like when everyone around you seems to be learning something so quickly and you just donít get it." McPherson admits she tries to capitalize on the natural hero worship that goes on. "When I can get a grade-seven boy to tutor and pay some attention to a grade-two boy, suddenly reading is a cool subject."

The skills picked up often extend beyond the classroom. Having an older advocate can really help children who are struggling socially. They learn to get along with older kids, and that may translate into improved relationships with children their own age. My nine- year-old daughter, Laura, who knows what it is like to be on the outside looking in, last year invited a shy kindergarten girl to sit with her at lunch, included her in the games the older kids played at recess, and introduced her to some friendly kids her own age. Laura shrugs her efforts off. "Someone did it for me," she says.

Marie France Briand, 12, and her friends Karla Gallagher and Katrina Larstone, both 11, are experienced peer mentors in Smooth Rock Falls. They volunteer as junior figure-skating coaches and in a playground-monitoring program at school. They are also friends with several younger girls. "It's fun," says Karla. "They are always so excited to see us."

The girls take their responsibility seriously. As I am speaking to them, a little girl runs up to tell them an excited but largely unintelligible story. All three girls listen attentively and smile at just the right moments. "We're role models for them, so we have to watch what we say and do," says Marie France gravely.

Six-year-old Connor Lamothe has a12-year-old friend with whom he shares a special relationship, one primarily built around a mutual love of hockey. "Iíve seen Connor hug Michael, something he never does with his older brothers, says his Mom, Tammy, says. Right after one of his first out-of-town games ended, Connor was on the phone telling Michael about the goals he scored. The two cheer for different NHL teams and will call during a game to rib one another over a goal or penalty. When they play street hockey together, Michael will take the time to teach Connor some of the trickier moves. "Connor looks up to him and respects him. He wants to be just like him," says Lamothe. She says the friendship has its downsides, too, though - Connor knows how to spell the bad words his brothers didn't even know how to say at that age.

Other drawbacks can be more serious. While relationships like Connor and Michael's are informal, in-school programs require a fairly intense commitment that not all student mentors are willing to make. And sometimes even the most carefully scrutinized partnerships just don't work out because of personality or other conflicts.

Marc Bevan, a grade-three student at Ross Road, was a mentor last year to a girl in kindergarten. "It was boring. She wouldn't listen. She would say she could do it and then she would screw it up."

Marc is now paired with a different kindergartner and it's a much better fit. As he works with his young protégé he has fond memories of his own mentor who helped him out with crafts. "He was fun and good at stuff," Marc says. What matters more to kids than that?

Jennifer Crump is a freelance writer from Ontario.