Young People and the Curse of Ordinariness
Nick Luxmoore
Paperback: £14.99 / $22.95
2010, 234mm x 156mm / 9.25in x 6in, 144pp
ISBN: 978-1-84905-185-9, BIC 2: JNH
Again and again, young people return to the question, "Am I the same as other people or am I different?" It's a difficult question to answer. Everyone knows that they're the same as other people in lots of ways yet they suspect that they might also be different. Or they want to be different... Or they accuse other people of being different... Or they get beaten up for being different...
This book is about young people trying to find answers, or at least trying to live more comfortably with the question. Using dozens of recognisable vignettes, Luxmoore explores young people's anxieties about ordinariness and extraordinariness, anxieties that affect everything: their behaviour, choices, relationships, happiness. He describes ways of working supportively and imaginatively with young people so that they can begin to find a better balance, enjoying their lives and achieving all sorts of things without losing sight of the fact that - underneath everything and like everyone else - they're ordinary, and there's nothing wrong with that.
This original and thought-provoking book will enable professionals in counselling, teaching, youth work and youth justice to support young people struggling with these anxieties and the eternal question, "Am I normal?"
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Video: JKP author Nick Luxmoore on ‘Young People and the Curse of Ordinariness’
20 January 2011
"My goal in counselling young people around issues of ordinariness, I suppose, is to help them begin to feel that the way they are is fine. They're not going to be as good as they always longed to be, but nor are they going to be as dreadful as they always feared they might be... That's not to say that they won't achieve massively, but that they don't have to be striving for it to such an extent that they then start behaving strangely or self-destructively or being destructive at other people's expense in order to get recognised, and in order to be different."
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