Pontiac Teens Talk About ACES at Conference in Lansing
(Crystal A. Proxmire, July 11, 2024)
Lansing, MI – Being a teenager is tough enough in a perfect environment, but once you add in challenges like abuse, neglect, complicated family situations, poverty, racism, community violence and tragedy it makes the basics of learning and growing all the more difficult.
There are caring adults who dedicate their lives to helping others overcome those challenges and make peace with their pasts and their current circumstances. One such group of people met in Lansing in May for the Michigan ACE Initiative Conference. ACES are Adverse Childhood Experiences which impact mental health and development.
And while the conference is known for sharing information from peers and experts, this year they took that education to a whole new level by inviting teenagers from Pontiac to hear first-hand from young people what some of their experiences have been like, from their point of view.
The students are part of the Clarence E. Ascend Foundation’s TRUTH Youth Coalition, which is rooted in mental health support and substance abuse prevention. In this program, young people find mentorship from adults and friendships with other youth that helps keep them on a healthier path. In the program, older teens often do presentations for younger students, teaching them coping mechanisms and how to avoid using drugs and alcohol. They also made an impression with mental health PSAs filmed in collaboration with Oakland University’s OUPIECE program.
Five young people from the program were selected to go to Lansing, sit in on conference programing, and do their own panel discussion.
J’mari Wiggins has been part of Ascend officially for about three years, though he’s participated in events before then. He’s a graduate of Lak Orion High, now attending Western Michigan studying supply chain management, with dreams of corporate leadership.
He, along with Adriene Thompson, Lauren McNair, Jeremy Parks, and Carley Gracey got a standing ovation for sharing their stories and experiences.
Wiggins urged adults working with young people to be patient. “How do I connect with somebody when there is an age gap?” He said “You have to learn the person. Sometimes a kid isn’t going to open up to you. So you have to use baby steps.”
One thing he’s learned to recognize in other teens, is when there is neglect. “The troublemakers were the ones that when they went home there wasn’t a lot to do, and no way to express what they wanted,” he said. “But in school it was like they had an audience, so they’d act up.”
Sports and after school activities are a way to help kids stay positive and focused, while developing friendships and learning to work with others. “A lot of people do sports and other things, so they’re not just home alone. They’re doing something and staying busy.”
When talking with younger kids, Carley Gracey who is heading into her junior year at Avondale, she tries to find out what they like to do, and encourage them. “Find something that makes you happy,” Gracey tells them. For her it’s activities like baking, singing, ad making art.
For the adults, she said young people want people who will listen to them and be there for them. “You have to go back to when you were a kid, and think about what would you want from your mom.”
One thing that the teens have observed is that it isn’t just the young people who need help and support. Seeing adults struggling to deal with stress and make good choices impacts them too. But they also can understand it.
“I see that even though you are an adult, if you had trauma, you could still be dealing with it,” Gracey said.
Jeremy Parks, who attends Michigan State in a pre-nursing program, recalled “When I was in retail I could notice when people were childish and it was hard to deal with,” he said. “We’re lucky that we have a really healthy environment to grow in. You can tell sometimes when someone didn’t.”
Parks explained that too many people have experienced trauma. “ACES are a set of experiences a child will go through that cause trauma, like divorce, or having someone in your family that’s incarcerated, or if you’re abused.”
Ascend gives students from second grade through 12th, and even on into college, a group of peers and adults to help as they navigate the challenges of growing up. There is a core group of about 75 regular students, and a network of over 350 that take part more casually with the older group. The younger group has about another 50 kids that show up regularly and about 90 more casually.
In addition to mentorship and peer support, Ascend leadership has access to a number of resources should a young person need more in terms of mental health, healthcare, substance use counseling, and sometimes even advocacy if they are in harmful environments.
But it’s often the students who know how to reach the other students. “It takes adults a lot longer to get through those walls,” said Kaino Phillips, Director of the Foundation. “Especially if someone doesn’t have good relationships with the adults in their homes, there’s a big trust factor.”
Helping students embrace their potential is also part of the program. For most of the five speakers, this was the first conference they’d ever attended.
“We were at another of the sessions, and there was a lady in back. She was so dead set that she didn’t want any children to be a therapist to. Her why was something related to her own experiences,” Gracey said.
Gracey added “I admired her for explaining her why, because it opened up to different things that adults experience. Maybe parents don’t want to deal with their childhood. It made me think deeper about how my parents do things.”
Coco Mouldser, Co-Convenor of OUPIECE said of the experience, “It was a pleasure to take young people to Lansing for this year’s conference; in particular students who participate in the Ascend Foundation’s Youth Coalition. OUPIECE (Oakland University Pontiac Initiative for Early Childhood Education) met these young people during an ACE awareness training where they were being introduced to the impact that adverse childhood experiences could have on their lives while navigating high school, peer pressures and of course all the other vices they were being geared up to impact in their peer groups.
“One of our missions is to bring this awareness to children as young as 5 into young adulthood before they become so resigned with the experiences of life. What we have discovered is that when we train them young, they get it and can articulate it sometimes better than any adult.
“I had no idea that this training would be a catalyst for their creation of such powerful messages in their videos following the tragic incident that occurred in Oxford. Such dynamic young people were able to help push a narrative to their peer groups to realize and understand that they were only going to be okay if they leaned on one another.
“So, of course in the planning cycles for the MIACE conference it was a no-brainer to offer up the youth’s voice because without their voices we could not continue to bring the awareness of how they understand adversity to the adults in this work. We know that without young people like Kaino’s Ascend Foundation; kids from Pontiac we cannot move the needle without their help.”
The Michigan ACE Initiative includes parents, counselors, teachers, therapists and others from across the state who want to find ways to reduce ACES. The conference was hosted by Michigan Department of Health and Human Services through the Community Mental Health Association of Michigan.
Learn more about the Michigan ACE initiative at https://miace.org/
Learn more about the Ascend Foundation at https://www.theascendfoundation.org/clarence-e-phillips
Learn more about OUPIECE at https://sites.google.com/oakland.edu/oupiece/home
