How to Be a Mentor to a Troubled Child

There are thousands of children across the country that need mentors. Mentoring a child in foster care or from a bad home situation is a positive way to impact their lives and give them a good role model to communicate with. People often avoid being a mentor because of the uncertainty of how to be a good mentor. Here are some tips for mentoring a troubled child.

1. Be a friend. Your job as a mentor is not to be a surrogate parent or an authority figure, but to be a friendly face for the child to communicate with. Spending all of your time together lecturing them or trying to teach them right from wrong will only alienate them and make them feel like you are just another adult who can't relate to them.

2. Relate if you can. It will help the child you are mentoring to feel that you understand them if you share similar experiences that you have had in your own life. It doesn't have to be a huge revelation to be helpful; agreeing with them that little sisters are annoying and sharing a story or two about your younger siblings will help them feel closer to you and make it easier for them to talk to you.

3. Remember that honesty is the best policy. Children from troubled backgrounds tend to be very good at detecting dishonesty or lies because there is a good chance that they've been lied to before. Be honest with the child you are mentoring. If they are experiencing something you don't know about or can't relate to, it is better to tell them and just let them explain how it feels than to lie and try to tell them that you've been there when you haven't. Lying to them will only make it harder for them to trust you.

4. Listen if they need you to. One of the most important things you can give to a child you are mentoring is the feeling that someone cares about what they have to say and is willing to listen to their problems. If your mentored child needs to talk, let them. You don't necessarily have to have a knowledgeable or funny response. Sometimes a child just needs to be heard in order to feel better; if you have the opportunity to be a sympathetic ear, be that for them.

5. Have fun. No matter what kind of background the child you are mentoring comes from, he or she is still a child, so having fun is still going to be important to them. Giving them the chance to forget their problems and act their age is one of the best things you can do as a mentor. Let them be a kid and have fun for a while. It will help them relax and feel like they can open up around you and trust you.