"HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS"
(Is this a scary theme or what?) led by John Scardina; Friends Counseling Service counselor, member of Westtown Meeting school psychologist, therapist, musician, sailor, a grandparent who humbly strives to exemplify and achieve the peace and serenity our planet sorely needs and general all round good guy!

If you believe (as many people do) that conflict is necessary for growth, then it is

probably true that most parent/teen relationships present many opportunities for growth. How do we survive this period in our lives, living and talking with our parents? How do we deal with our parents' issues (marriage, divorce, remarriage, affairs, addictions, dishonesty) as well as our own (sexuality, honesty, trust, identity formation, drugs, and alcohol)? How do we establish trust and mutual respect with our parents? Can we encourage and challenge one another to grow, together and apart?

The goal here is to work with parents, within our family systems, so that positive, life-long relationships can be established. I heard one person suggest that we spend our 20's and 30's undoing what happened to us in the first 20 years of our lives. Can we get a head start?

Come prepared to share - about yourself and about your family. Spend some time looking at your family - how do we work together? Play together? Communicate? Grow? Worship? Parents and teens can work things out, and hopefully we'll come up with some ways to help each of us!

Free time: During the late afternoon Saturday, Young Friends usually have 2 1/2 hours unstructured free time. Many Young Friends go out into the town of Burlington. Young Friends often go to the park by the river to play or to walk the half-mile river walk, or stop by Ummm's Ice Cream Parlor. Please contact Cookie Caldwell if you need additional information, have particular concerns or further questions.

Registration Cost: $75.00 This gathering is limited to 80 Young Friends. Send your registration and payment pronto!

DO NOT STAY AWAY FOR LACK OF MONEY! Scholarship aid is available from the Sergei Thomas & Haley Yarmark Memorial Fund. Please pay what you can and indicate on the registration form how much aid you need.

Saturday night: it's the Young Friends Halloween Dance. Bring a Costume!

Car Pooling Lists, Car-Pooling Lists, program updates a map to Burlington and detailed directions will be about 10 days before the gathering so that you have time to arrange your car pool rides. 

Here are Driving and Public Transportation Directions to the Burlington Meeting House along with a map.

Friendly Adult Presences

(Chaperones) needed!

Help!   Friendly Adult Presences/ Chaperones are needed for the Young Friends gatherings

Friendly Adult Presence materials and the FAP forms can be downloaded from the Young Friends Adult Volunteers page.

We need Friendly Adult Presences for the Young Friends Gatherings. We need both men and women. If you are able to volunteer please let me know as soon as possible. If you could help recruit appropriate adults from your meeting that would be a great help.  Thanks to you and other Friends like yourself, we are able to plan and carry out wonderful events that create opportunities for our young teenagers to explore their own ideas, feelings and understandings of themselves and our constantly-changing world These programs are especially effective in supporting the personal and spiritual journeys of Young Friends, because they take place in the context of a safe, Quaker community of age peers. Ensuring this sense of safety is our highest priority, and thanks to your generous volunteering, we have been able to maintain it.

Who can be a Friendly Adult Presence? You must be over age 21. You must be known in your Monthly Meeting community, or Yearly Meeting, or Quarterly Meeting, or a Friends School for a minimum of six months. We and the Insurance Carrier are leery of adults who drop in out of nowhere and want to work with our kids.

Criminal Back Ground Checks: Our Insurance Carrier is requiring that we do criminal back ground checks on all staff and Volunteer Friendly Adult Presences involved in over night programs. They have found a way of doing this through a private company that is able to do the back ground checks on line in minutes. We do the on line criminal back ground check. Once you are cleared you are ready to be a Friendly Adult Presence at any Young Friends or Middle School Friends or PYM gathering. This Criminal Back Ground Check needs to be redone every five years.

Here is how it is done. Fill out and sign the "Friendly Adult Presence Form" with references and the "Background Investigation Consent for Volunteer Chaperones." Mail both forms to me, yes, it must be snail mailed, we need an original signature on the consent form. We will then go on line to get the clearance. This information will be kept confidential. Only those who need to see the results will have access.