Kids These Days

I’ve just finished reading Kids These Days by Will Dobud and Nevin Harper and keep finding myself thinking about it and going back to reread sections that really landed.

Will Dobud and Nevin Harper are both experts in their fields, counsellors, researchers, and respected voices in adventure therapy, outdoor education and child and youth practice. You can really feel both the practical experience and genuine care for young people throughout the book.

The book explores the so-called “youth mental health crisis”, but instead of blaming young people, it challenges adults and systems to look at how we are responding to children and adolescents. A huge theme throughout is moving away from trying to “fix” young people and instead supporting them as co-adventurers in their own development and journeys.

One of the lines that really stood out to me was: “Young people are not broken.” That fits so strongly with what we see every day at My Summit ABTS. So often, when the environment changes, when connection comes first, when young people are given space, movement, autonomy and genuine relationships, things shift.

The book also pushes back on compliance-focused approaches and reframes behaviour as something to understand, not control. Another line that really landed was the idea that we need to “focus less on compliance and more on connection.”

There’s also a strong focus on how much context and environment matter. The authors discuss how young people often thrive when they are outside traditional clinical or classroom environments. We see this constantly. Put a young person in nature, walking, kayaking, swimming, sitting around a campfire or exploring, and conversations happen that you would never get sitting across from each other in a room.

What I really appreciated is that the book is practical and grounded. It’s not theory-heavy for the sake of it. It feels relatable, usable and genuinely helpful for anyone who works with or cares about young people.

Kids These days is super practical and grounded- it’s for people actually working with young people. It’s real, usable, and relatable. I would (and have) recommended it to teachers, parents and anyone that has a young person in their life.

Definitely worth a read if you’re working with young people or just trying to understand them better. I read this book as a shout out to the adults in the room- it’s on all of us to do better and be better for the kids these days, and not just play the blame game.