Inflection Points

Youth Development "Way stations" along the path to healthy human development provide critical opportunities for reflection, recalibration, and growth. Young people can focus on discovering who they are, enjoying the carefree and seemingly innocuous pursuits of childhood, and developing the types of relationships that will nurture their innate abilities to establish meaningful connections with others - both peers and adults. On one hand, digital media provided positive opportunities, such as taking photos and making slideshows, helping camp staff stay connected to each other, keeping parents of children with special needs updated, and providing technology activities such as coding. [...]Erickson believed that to experience wholeness, young people "must feel continuity" between how they think of themselves and how they perceive others think of them - again a reminder of the powerful role that mentors and role models play in choreographing the dance of development (Erikson, 1968).