But there’s far more to it than just ups and downs, and it’s not something which is unpredictable either. At Risky Kids we’ve made it our mission to understand exactly how to help a young person to reach their full potential, and so we spend a lot of time studying and researching this journey.

This is the first in our series of articles on the Stages Of Becoming, an exploration of the process a young mind goes through when it’s learning something new, including when they’re joining Risky Kids! Each of the articles after this one will explore one of the stages in depth, including its challenges and its opportunities.

By knowing these stages and preparing ourselves, or our young Risky Kids, for them we can be forewarned and forearmed against the challenges ahead.

If we forget this, then when those challenges do emerge we can often feel that it’s not a planned part of the journey. For example, as a Risky Kid progresses through the early stages, motivation can be at its lowest as learning is at its hardest. This is a very necessary part of learning though, and if we don’t see this then we might believe instead that their loss of motivation is a bad or unexpected thing.

When we guide our young people through these moments though, they’ll learn from each step. They’ll develop resilience, self confidence and a host of other healthy and powerful skills and mindsets. That’s all on top of the skill they’re learning as well!

Of course that can often be scary as well and we can feel anxious, but often we settle in quickly.

When we’re first learning, while we need a lot of help we often feel like we’re growing very quickly! We make large improvements quickly, because we’re mastering the basics. It takes a lot of concentration, but we’re interested and engaged in this new pursuit of learning. Also, we don’t really know what the difference is between us and an expert, and we might even feel it’s not going to be that hard to reach quickly!

The challenges that we often face in the Novelty stage are related to fixed mindsets or anxiety. If we’re not confident in ourselves and our ability to grow, then we might feel like there’s not a lot of hope or chance for us to develop. Just the same, if we’ve experienced a lot of new hobbies, programs or pursuits then we might find ourselves becoming attracted to novelty, and confuse newness with goodness.

The adversity faced at this stage makes complete sense, but it’s crucial to overcome to reach the later stages.  It happens after we’ve mastered the basics and we’ve got a lot of the pieces, but before we know how they all go together.

When we’re at the Grasp Stage, our learning is often at its slowest, with small, infrequent improvements. Worse, we often have a lot of difficulty identifying our errors because we don’t know enough yet. We still need to focus really hard to succeed, and often as we try and take bigger steps, we fail at the basics which we thought we’d mastered!

This is an awkward time for learners, where they can find it difficult to apply feedback, their experience of failure is magnified and they begin to realise just how far from being an expert they are. Learners at this stage can feel embarrassed, impatient, frustrated and fatigued just to try and move the needle forwards a little bit.

It’s filled with excitement and growing pride and self esteem! It’s known as the Associative stage, because at this point we start to connect all of the pieces together and the pathway to success begins to emerge.

When a Learner begins to move through the Associative stage, they start to experience moments of clarity and success, “Aha” moments where things just start to click. This isn’t a coincidence though, they’ve been putting in the hard work and the time to make it happen! We’re becoming more confident, tougher and better at our chosen skill, and our self image begins to improve.

This can also be part of the challenge at this stage. In order to keep up momentum, we’re going to have to start to LET our self image be connected to this new skill. Lots of learners plateau at this stage, because to break past those plateaus means they have to let themselves be vulnerable. If we’ve done our work though, they can do that and even if they fail, they’ll be resilient enough to persist.

This often takes years of training and persistence and hard work. We need to know heaps about our chosen skill, and not just know it but be able to use it automatically.

Our Masters have a great deal of confidence, and the experience to back it up. They can anticipate and visualise challenges, they navigate both physical and emotional challenges automatically and their responses are highly effective.

There is a chance though that our masters become complacent, or rigid! This is why continuous training and exploration is crucial, no matter the skill level. Even the youngest of our Risky Kids knows that Practice Makes Possible. If you don’t keep using your skills, you’ll lose them.

The answer is that what we’re doing now, we truly, deeply believe is not only important, but amazingly powerful because we’ve designed it to be for that very purpose.

Not only does our team have the skills to help young people navigate the Stages of Becoming, but to help them have fun and have an experience filled with awesome memories at the same time.

Each of these stages has its own challenges, but by working with our team and learning to understand each step you can navigate quitting and avoidance behaviour towards deep, lasting resilience and health.

Read on to learn about each of the stages in depth, both what to expect and what to do when you get there!