Level 01 — Be Known
Learn the name. Hold one detail. Bring it back next time. That is the entire trick, and almost nobody does it.
The Course
Four levels, in order. Each one asks more of you than the last, and every one of them can be done by an ordinary adult with no training, no title and no qualifications. Start at Level 01 — it takes about thirty seconds and no relationship at all.
Level 02 — Name the Strength
Level One made you visible. This one hands the kid something they can carry: a true, specific sentence about who they are, said out loud by an adult who had no reason to say it. Robert Brooks has spent forty years arguing that most adults are looking at children the wrong way round. He was...
Level 03 — Stay
This is the level that costs something. The first two can be done in a good week. This one can only be done by doing it again. “The resilient youngsters in our study all had at least one person in their lives who accepted them unconditionally, regardless of temperamental idiosyncrasies, physical attractiveness, or intelligence.” —...
Level 04 — Open Doors
The first three levels happen inside the space you already share. This one uses something the young person does not have and cannot get on their own: your address book, your sense of how things actually work, and your willingness to make a phone call. Michael Rutter, trying to describe how protection against adversity actually...