Developmental Assets

Welcome back to the Drug Prevention Power Hour. I’m your host, Jake White. And today we’re going to dive into the 40 developmental assets. Now, this research has been going on for over 30 years by the Search Institute, and they’ve looked at students around the world to see what builds resilient, positive students that become successful. And as prevention professionals, I love this model for us because it incorporates everything that we’re trying to do in positive prevention strategies. Again, we’re not using scare tactics. We’re not oversimplifying the problem by saying, just say no. We’re building strong, resilient, successful students. And these 40 assets are key in understanding how do we do this using the time, energy, and resources that we have going for us. So I’m actually just working off of the searchinstitute.org website. And they have a great overview. And I’m just skimming the surface of this. So this episode could really be just an introduction to the developmental assets framework and how it fits into our work. If you wanna do more research on this, please do. I’m just opening this.

This past week I’ve been studying it and I found it so helpful that I just can help but share it with you. So first, let’s just go through how the assets are set up and then we’ll dive into each one and I’ll provide a couple examples. So off the bat, developmental assets, what are they? They’re external assets and they’re internal assets.

And the external ones are the supports, opportunities, and relationships that young people need across all aspects of their life. So again, simplifying that, it’s supports, opportunities, and relationships. Because if young people don’t have the external supports, then they’re having to reinvent or to figure out life on their own. If they don’t have opportunities, then again, they’re on their own. If they don’t have relationships, they’re on their own.

So just looking at this from an outside perspective and being fairly new to this, I can already understand that yes, these external assets, these supports are really important so that students don’t have to go through life alone. And that’s an oversimplification because in external assets, there’s actually four categories. There’s support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, and constructive use of time. So four external things that we can concentrate on helping young people with that are gonna make a big difference. So external assets is the first category along with those four, I guess, subcategories. Then you have internal assets, right? The things that students can develop. And it’s defined on the website as this, internal assets are, the personal skills, commitments, and values they need to make good choices, take responsibility for their own lives, and be independent and fulfilled. Man, isn’t that our dream for all our young people to make good choices, take responsibility, be independent and fulfilled? That’s written really, really well. And that’s prevention, right? A student who has that going for them is not going to participate in risky behaviors because they have so much going on for themselves. So let’s break this down. I’m not gonna spend a ton of time on this. Again, if you love this, take some time, study it. I actually, behind the scenes, I just recorded a 51 minute thing where I went through all of them. It was exhausting. I was like, no one’s gonna listen to this. So this is the sampler platter version. like, let’s go through this one.

So starting with the external assets of support. What does it look like? What are these assets, developmental assets that we can build around students to make this happen? It’s family support, positive family communication, other adult relationships, a caring neighborhood, a caring school climate, and parent involvement in schooling.

Yeah, parent involvement in schooling. So all of these, one, two, three, four, five, six are under the support category. And basically what it’s encompassing is that a student and let’s say family relationship can’t fulfill all the needs. Students have a life outside of the family. They’re spending a ton of time in school. They’re spending time on weekends and evenings in their neighborhood.

And this is a big one, is that other adult relationships are important. As a parent, your role is extremely important, but we’re also seeing that there should be some other adult relationships. And this one struck me because I’ve heard this thrown out there a lot is that, hey, having just one caring adult is an amazing protective factor. And that’s true. And this model, of the developmental assets framework recommends that young people have support from three or more non-parent adults, three or more. so coaches, club advisors, maybe it’s the theater teacher, maybe it’s somebody outside of your immediate family, that uncle or aunt or grandparent, whatever that might be.

I, this last week, I was just at beach camp. We took some of our students from church, to spend a week out at a university, volunteering, spending time on the beach, having messages and small groups and peer support, all these things. And what hit me because I’d been studying this is not only that we got to spend extra time with students, but it was so impactful because there was eight adults that they knew that they could trust and they could have these relationships, ask vulnerable questions, be honest and open with. And the amount of growth that happened in one week was incredible. I mean, we didn’t even talk about prevention and we had students saying, I’ve been smoking, I’ve been using marijuana, I’ve been vaping and they gave us their products. They’re like, I don’t wanna do this anymore. People deciding to do it because of other aspects that were around them, positive prevention, right? It was incredible. And so first of all, I just want to say thank you to everyone listening to the show. You are one of these caring adults. You are one of these other adult relationships that fall into this category of support. So the second subcategory under external assets, it’s empowerment. And under empowerment, have community, a community that values youth, youth being viewed as resources, service to others, and safety. So I’ll say this again, empowerment categories are the community values youth. They see youth as resources, youth are a service to others, and they feel a sense of safety at home, at school, and in the neighborhood.

This just shows us that empowerment comes from being really useful. Giving students a carefree life, like where they have no responsibility and no expectations or any of these things, ⁓ that’s not building strong, resilient kids. Instead, it’s that they’re seen as valuable, they’re given useful roles in the community, and they’re serving. They’re being a service to others and they feel safe. So empowerment is a big one.

And we might call it in prevention, self-efficacy. We’re building self-efficacy and you can’t just tell somebody that they’re incredible and they can change the world. They need to see it and experience it for themselves. giving them chores, roles, responsibilities is really important.

So the next one in the external assets category, our subcategory, we have boundaries and expectations. I remember there was a student that was in one of our clubs and he said he felt really cared for because his parents gave him a curfew. And I asked him more about it. I’m like, what do mean? He’s like, well, I mean, some of my friends, their parents don’t really check in on them that much and they let them stay out as late as they want. And it doesn’t seem like they care very much. And it broke my heart to think about it that way because I was like, dang, that’s kind of true. And I hope that the students don’t feel that way. But here’s a student saying that they did, you know, they felt safe because their parents did set boundaries and expectations. And there were so many examples of students that didn’t get that. So boundaries and expectations, the the assets that are under this our family boundaries, school boundaries, neighborhood boundaries, adult role models, positive peer influence, and high expectations.

The same once more, the boundaries are in family, school, neighborhood, adult role models, positive peer influences, and high expectations. And most of these just come from being very clear and consistent with the boundaries, knowing that if these boundaries are crossed, there is some sort of consequence or education that needs to happen to get them back within the boundaries. And again, that’s for the family unit, the school unit, the neighborhood, the organization that’s setting it, that’s up to them. And the other thing to really take this to the next level is realizing that your students should be a part of the process in creating boundaries, in creating expectations. Your students need to be a part of that. And not to say that they get to do whatever they want.

As the adult or the organizer, you’re responsible for some boundaries because you have that developed brain and you’re looking out for safety and all those things. But for expectations that the students come up with and these young people can be a part of, it’s not only teaching them that their voice matters and they’re being empowered, but two, it’s increased accountability and it means that you’re not the bad person for enforcing the rules.

They got to decide what makes this family unit strong or these values that they’re living out. Like they get to set it. And then if something goes wrong or they cross it, it’s not your fault. It’s just us getting back on the right track. So you can maintain accountability in a sense that’s very loving instead of very punitive or like it’s us against them. It’s like, it’s me and you together we’re creating a good life together and here are the boundaries and expectations in order to create that. So yeah, I love this one. I think it’s very, very useful and I can see why it’s an external asset within these developmental assets.

The fourth one under external, this is the last one under external, is constructive use of time. And the four under this category are creative activities, youth programs, religious community, and time at home. And I’ll explain a little bit more about that one because it’s not exactly what you think. So having constructive use of time. Creative activity is recommended that a young person spends three or more hours per week in lessons or practice. And that could be any type of creative activity, art, music, theater, whatever that might be. And they’re consistently working at that. And it’s flexing that different part of the brain. And I remember there’s a story that comes to my mind when I actually realized this was a big asset is when I was in college.

I got this job leading tours of campus. So students in high school would come check out the school and they’d have a student leader give the tours. And I was one of them. And there was one time I was with my boss and she’s kind of shadowing me doing a tour. And she said, Jake, are you a musician? And like, wasn’t drumming on anything, you know, like at the moment, like I normally do. I just said, yeah, why do you ask if I’m musician? And she said, well, you were having a conversation with a student and at the same time, I could see something that was about to take your attention from the group and you were able to address it quickly while pivoting the tour. And I can’t remember if it was like a building was closed and I had to reroute us or something, but she’s like, usually people who practice music or they’re part of a creative group.

They can think and do things in the moment, but also see a couple steps ahead. And I was like, dang, that’s just from being in music growing up. Like that’s really, really cool. It’s kind of this muscle that you flex within your brain that allows you to maybe perform better at, I guess, more strategic tasks or I don’t know what the cool word is, right? I don’t know if it’s multitask or something like that, but you can operate on a couple of different levels at once. And so it was really, really cool. And I think the creative activities is one that we often overlook. no, they’re not really interested in art. They’re only about sports. They just like gaming or whatever. But if you have a family that says, we’re going to be really consistent on what we do and we’re going to invest in these parts of our development. The arts can be one. And it’s only asking for three hours a week at minimum. So creative activities. The other one, youth programs, sports, clubs or organizations in the community. That’s wonderful. And that’s where we live, right? And the prevention coalitions and prevention work is focusing on a mission that they have, something important to them and allowing them to be involved in that group. And it’s a very constructive use of their time. Then we have religious communities and time at home.

I mean, for me, if you listen to my podcast, you know that, I mean, Jesus is the priority. And it’s something that not only is a value, but it helps create boundaries. It creates empowerment. It helps like with to have different supports around students and even myself as an adult. So yeah, I could talk about this all day, but I won’t. Let’s move to time at home. This one was notable to me. It says the young person should be out with friends or sorry, no. The young person is out with friends, but they have nothing to do, only two nights a week. So meaning, I guess, bored time with friends. Only let that happen two nights a week.

And that’s at least the way I’m reading it on the site. I’m on searchinstitute.org. I definitely want to dive in more understanding this, but it sounds like you’re saying, hey, don’t leave time for students to think, huh, there’s nothing to do, let’s experiment. There’s nothing to do, let’s get into trouble. Like when those ideas start to happen, when they’re at the most unconstructive use of their time.

So definitely filling it up, filling up the week with creative activities, youth programs, religious community, game nights with family, things like that that strengthen their use of time. So that’s all four. The external assets, support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, constructive use of time. Now, before we dive into the internal assets, I would love to update you on a couple of things that are going on with Vive 18. You probably heard about our prevention crews. If you follow us online, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, wherever, you know that in April, 2026, we are going with a bunch of prevention educators and professionals. And that’s you. You have the option to go with us from Boston to Bermuda on a cruise ship and get your CEU credits.

We’re gonna be having a ton of fun together. And my favorite part, there’s just so much time built in for us to share meals together, to play mini golf, to go swimming in the hot tub, whatever it might be, and do the best thing that we do at conferences, sharing ideas with each other, sharing challenges and solutions and events, ideas, strategies, all this stuff. That time’s gonna be built into the conference.

And because I’m a lover of saving money, this costs half of what you’re used to paying when you go to a conference. So if that sounds cool to you, go to preventioncruise.net and check it out. Again, that’s preventioncruise.net. We’d love to have you join us. There are limited spots, so make sure to grab your tickets early if you want to guarantee a spot with our conference on that cruise ship.

The other thing is we do have our youth conference in December. It’s gonna be here before we know it. So that first weekend in December, we’re doing it again and we’ll be in Phoenix, Arizona. If you’re interested in that, just go to vive18.com and click on the conference tab or just go to vive18.com slash conference. The other thing though is that we have some online courses available now.

And this is fairly new. We just did a great run with the student sessions that are on. So if you lead a student-led prevention club, we have online modules for them to learn event planning. We have one for student-led media, so creating those PSAs and social media content. And then we also have one for recruitment and how they can get their friends involved in prevention. And we also have one for advisors.

So if you’re looking at creating your own prevention club or just growing and getting more systems to make your prevention club run smoother and get more student buy-in so that they’re operating more of the club instead of you, I know that’s a dream, but it’s possible, I guarantee you it. We have one called Everything Youth Engagement for Coalitions. That’s the name of the course.

So if you’re interested in any of those, it’s actually Trainer Central is the name of the portal. And so if you wanted to find it, you would go to vive18.trainercentral.com. So if you’re interested in that, you can go check those out.

Exploring Internal Assets

With that said, let’s keep it moving. Let’s talk about the internal assets. So external assets are the supports, opportunities, and relationships that young people need. The internal assets are the skills, commitments, and values they need to make good choices. So skills, commitments, and values. You can see how they’re called the internal ones. The four categories under this are commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity. Positive identity. Let’s start with commitment to learning. And this is so cool. I knew that school was important, but I think growing up we just think students either like school or they don’t. But in reality, our environment helps shape whether students like school or not. How we talk and model our school and jobs might teach students to like the idea of school or to say, got to deal with this. Like I have to go to school instead of I get to go to school. So here are the ones that are under commitment to learning. The first one is called achievement motivation. And that’s just basically the young person is motivated to do well in school. They’re motivated to do well not us parents, right, or us adults motivated for them, but are they motivated to do well in school and to achieve? The next one is school engagement. They’re actively engaged in their learning and their school environment. And I mean, this could be the other things we talked about, right? Clubs, art, theater, sports, band, going to watch the games, these can all enhance that experience. The other one, the third one is homework.

They do at least one hour of homework every school day. I could see how that would help develop a really responsible student. Bonding to the school, bonding to the school is another one, is they care about their school and their school environment. That one, I think of a school we worked with out in Tennessee. We went to speak there and they started a club. And the way we do it is, we always want to get them involved in a coalition if possible. And if they don’t have one, help them or encourage them to create one. And then, you know, we can help train them and things like that. And you as the advisors. And this one they wanted to do, they basically wanted to create a student council, but they didn’t have one. And they wanted to call it 518. And that was like, that was cute. You know, that was really fun for us to have a student club who wants to use our branding. So of course, like you can.

But you can also just brand it your own way, what you want to do. Cause that’s part of the fun for the students too. But they did it. And what was really cool is they had this sense of basically asking the question, how can we improve our school environment to be a place where more people actually show up to school because there was a lot of truancy and skipping. So that was their big challenge they wanted to do. And they knew that it would make a difference in all these other areas, right?

Develop a more caring place. They would spend more time with mentors and teachers and positive people. And it was incredible to see all the things that they did as this new club. And honestly, they started it and they’re doing all the things that coalitions do, youth coalitions. So it was really, really awesome to see things like that when they happen. So they’re bonding to their school. And the final one, I did not expect to see this.

The final one after achievement motivation, school engagement, homework, and bonding to school is reading for pleasure. Reading for pleasure. And it recommends that this happens three or more hours per week. And I’m thinking like, why is reading for pleasure an internal asset that helps avoid risky decisions and yeah, making good choices?

But I don’t know, in my mind, I still have that question. So if anybody knows, please let me know. If you see me at CADCA, we’ll be there, anything. Give me a call, write me an email, jake at Vive18.com. Why do you think reading for pleasure is an asset like that? And I’ll do some digging too, but honestly, we learn such great things from books. There’s so much value. Maybe that’s a part of it, I don’t know.

All right, category number two under internal is positive values. These positive values are caring, equality and social justice, integrity, honesty, responsibility and restraint.

Once again, they’re caring, equality and social justice, integrity, honesty, responsibility and restraint. And I think the one that maybe we’re used to talking about is restraint because we know that the frontal lobe isn’t fully developed until our mid-twenties and that I want it now for a young person is a powerful impulse instead of well, here’s what I really want and what I want for my future and here’s the risk. So we have to help them practice restraint. And I don’t know if y’all have seen this video. It’s really cute and it’s got a powerful message though to teach the idea of doing what’s right right now so that you can have more of what you want later. That idea and there’s a group of kids in this lab and they give them a marshmallow and say, hey, you can have one marshmallow if you eat it now. Or if you wait, I’ll give you three marshmallows, but you have to wait two minutes and not eat this one. And it’s so funny because you watch the kids kind of squirm in their seat trying to not eat this marshmallow and some of them end up eating them and some of them don’t.

And at the end, they basically have these kids telling them why they chose which one. And it’s this highlight of delayed gratification. Delayed gratification, it’s such a positive value. Again, in this category, positive values, delayed gratification is one that we need to help them practice, because it’s not intuitive, right? At least not right away. So those are really, really big.

After positive values, we have social competencies. And this one, if you study social emotional learning or SEL, things like that, this is one that’s gonna feel really in line with that too. So the categories under social competencies are planning and decision-making, interpersonal competence, cultural competence, resistance skills, and peaceful conflict resolution.

Yeah, I will just say for this one, oftentimes for planning and decision-making, we tend to just do this as adults and then tell kids, but let them be a part of that process. Let them learn from how you think so they can practice these skills. For interpersonal competence is how can we help them practice empathy, sensitivity, and even friendship skills, right, how to be a good friend and be there for someone, how to listen, the impact of our words. All these things are part of interpersonal competence. Cultural competence, it’s not always like that you don’t have to go across the world to see and understand cultural competence. Oftentimes there’s people living in our neighborhoods that are from different countries or backgrounds and having these interactions with them about their culture, their values, their traditions, sometimes even simple things like their food and things like their language or different traditions they have can open up a new understanding for this. We also have resistance skills, right? Resisting that negative peer pressure and risky situations, practicing those things, role-playing those things, because if we left it up to chance in the moment, we’ll probably just do what’s easy, but if we practice the thing that’s worthwhile, you know, 50 times, then when they get down in that situation, they’ve already got it down. It’s more likely that they’re going to protect those boundaries and values that they have set. That all good stuff. And then finally, peaceful conflict resolution. And this one is written down as young people seek to resolve conflict nonviolently. And I think that makes a lot of sense. And it takes that self-control.

And that competence to understand how you’re feeling and what’s going to make it right. And the last one, here we are. The last category in internal assets is positive identity. These four are personal power, self-esteem, sense of purpose, and positive view of personal future. Personal power means that they feel like they have control over things that happen to them.

And if you’ve heard of I-18 presentation, you know that we talk about how life isn’t made by chance, it’s made by choice. And yes, there are things that happen to us that are by chance and we can’t control. There are choices, which are the only thing in life that we’re in control over. So we can focus on those things. And that’s part of that personal power, that empowerment aspect, that we can have control over our lives and impact the outcomes that happen.

And that’s good news. Let’s lean into those things to make sure that the decisions we make are taking us somewhere we actually want to go. The self-esteem one, I think that’s pretty self-explaining. But if you have that high esteem of yourself, then you don’t need the approval of others, right? You can get put into risky situations and you’re like, well, I don’t need to please you. I don’t need to do what you think I should do. I already know who I am.

I know what I want, my values, like I’m good. That sense of purpose is the third one. If we’re on a mission to do something great, then we’re not going to risk those things, right? This is too important. We’re on a mission. We have a purpose. And then finally, a positive view of their future.

I remember there was a presentation that a student came up afterwards and was asking me about some details of the presentation. And as the conversation went on, I could felt they wanted to really say something they weren’t saying. So I just invited them, hey, tell me what you really think, like something’s on your mind. And they’re like, Jake, I use, you know, I smoke and I do this and.

I think it’s fine because my life’s not gonna really amount to anything anyway. Like my family’s addicted, some are in prison, some have died. Like my family doesn’t really go places and we don’t do things. We’re not that way. And they didn’t have a view of their future that was positive. And it was allowing him to make this choice. And so we spent some time together talking more about it and honestly doing, I didn’t know about motivational interviewing, but I started using some of the motivational interviewing strategies, just wanting to help him discover why his future could be great. And that he didn’t have to repeat these same things that had happened before. And that this one decision of being drug-free could be something that changes entire generations so that his grandkids won’t be having the same conversation decades later. And I left it at that, right? I knew that you know, a speaker, a presenter, a trainer in your community for a day. It’s it can maybe change a life. can maybe plant a seed or water that that idea in their mind. But. I did what I had to do. I’m a mandatory reporter, so I talked to the principal before we left and I asked him to stay in touch, you know, add us on Instagram, send us a message whenever. We stayed in touch and about a month later messaged saying, I’m I’m done with THC. It’s not my thing. I’m not smoking. Thank you. I’m ready to rewrite my lineage and end this problem. And it was so cool because I knew that I wasn’t the one that did it. It was these developmental assets. were people around to reinforce these ideas and develop a strong, resilient kid who could bounce back from adversity. And as we wrap up, like that’s the last one, as we wrap up this conversation on the 40 developmental assets, I just want you to know that you are doing life-saving work. If you’re involved in a coalition or a school or a church community or whatever you’re involved in, the Rotary Club, QAnus, you have stakeholders from all these different aspects of human, like human development.

Check out these assets and see where they fall in line with what you’re developing. And if you’re saying, hey, we’re this arts program and we’re doing prevention through the arts, that’s great. You’re leaning into youth programs, creative activities, things like that, maybe even incorporating things that are about empowerment and self-efficacy and all these other areas, then your students who are in your organization, you can encourage them and even work with the community to say, how are we getting these other assets developed? What other partners do we need at the table to make sure that our kids are growing up with the best chance of success? So keep doing the amazing work that you’re doing. Thank you for listening to another episode. We will see you next Monday and we’ll catch you on the drug prevention power hour. Talk to you later.