Second Step E-Newsletter
October 2011
Two Birds, One Stone:
Risk and Protective Factors and the Second Step Program
If you think about it, educators have always instinctively known what researchers have just been identifying over the last few decades: there are factors in children’s lives that either help them develop healthily or increase their chances of problem behavior. They are, respectively, protective factors and risk factors.
Addressing Problem Behavior
But first, what exactly is meant by “problem behavior”? Well, substance abuse—as you can imagine—and violence, delinquency, and school failure. So the more risk factors a child has, the more likely he or she will be to drop out of school, use drugs, or fight.
On the other hand, a child with more protective factors will be less likely to engage in problem behaviors and more likely to succeed now and in the future.
Fortunately, the Second Step program is designed to address these factors. The idea is to decrease children’s risk factors while increasing their protective factors, and the great thing is that we can target several problem behaviors at the same time. We can, as the saying goes, get “two birds with one stone.”
Multi-Tasking with SEL
So, for example, if we want to help kids stay away from drugs, we’ll target the risk factors of impulsiveness, early initiation of problem behaviors, and peer rewards for antisocial behavior. We do this by teaching students lessons on impulse control, problem solving, empathy, and emotion management, to name a few. At the same time, we’ll work on the protective factors, like social skills and school connectedness. These can come with lessons on setting positive goals, self-regulation, and making friends, as well as—you guessed it!—empathy, problem solving, and emotion management.
The amazing thing that is only just beginning to come to light is that the skills mentioned above—grouped loosely together under the umbrella of social-emotional learning—have positive effects on a whole raft of issues, from playground climate to academic performance.
So the Second Step program is a great place to start if you’re interested in increasing protective factors and decreasing risk factors to lower children’s likelihood of substance abuse. And the best part is, it does a whole lot more.
Want to learn more? Read the Second Step Summary Review of Research.
