Behavioral Mentoring

For children or teens in San Diego who have behavioral challenges, XciteSteps has structured a program that helps modify behaviors through positive communication, incentives and positive interactions with a mentor. Once a participant meets one of our fun, youthful mentors they are excited to hang out and do fun activities with them. Our behavioral mentors use this excitement and their fun “big brother/sister” role to encourage good behaviors and modify behaviors that are challenging. Our mentors are experienced at recognizing triggers, using positive communication and redirections to avoid a “breakdown”.

Measuring Success

When a child or teen enters our program, our director will meet with the parents and if desired any other professionals working with the child to set up an XciteSteps Achievement Plan. This plan details information about the participant, struggles, triggers, goals and objectives we will be working on during involvement in our programs. It will also outline a plan of action put together by our social coaches or mentors who will be working directly with the child or teen.

The Natural Opportunity Model

During our one on one mentoring or social group activities, our social coaches/mentors have these goals in mind when interacting with your child or teen. Since all our San Diego programs and services are activity and interaction based, natural opportunities for teaching arise. Our mentors and social coaches look for these teaching opportunities and take advantage of the natural situation to coach, role model or modify behaviors. After each session the mentors document important interactions, improvements, and challenges for each child and this data gets highlighted in our performance tracking sheets for parents to view.

POSTED: Tuesday, October 5, 2010