Nearly all behavior is also a symptom—a signal of how a person is doing. Abnormal behavior, or deviant behavior as specialists call it, points to suffering, loss, illness.
Fifteen years ago, "difficult" boys and girls often ended up in correction facilities—a hybrid of boarding school and prison.
Around that time, many institutions for children were closed. Suddenly, no one knew what to do with many of them. Different initiatives emerged to welcome these young people, most of them rooted in Christian faith.
In a mid-sized city in northern Italy, one community began something original: placing difficult teenagers in family-based homes. It had profound Christian meaning—and by all measures, it worked. We went to learn about it. They asked us not to publish names or even identify the city. They don't want any of the teenagers staying with them to read this magazine and realize they're part of an organization rather than a family like any other. This commitment to "normalcy" is essential to their whole approach. But before we describe their way of life and teaching method, let's look at the numbers, how it began, and how they work with institutions.
Who Arrives and How
About 110 teenagers have passed through this program, according to the priest who runs it.
They usually arrive between ages thirteen and sixteen—referred by social services, the police, or the juvenile court—abandoned and without resources. They stay with their families until they can stand on their own two feet, which takes six, eight, ten years. Today, half have made it. Five to seven seem stuck with no way forward, but we never close the door on anyone. The rest are still on the journey with us.
It started when a religious community—part of a regular congregation—was running a student boarding house. They faced a problem: teenagers who had nowhere else to go.
The community looked at each other and decided to tighten their belts. After all, welcoming a few teenagers wouldn't really change what they did. Some of them had worked in orphanages anyway.
But they quickly realized they were slipping back toward something institutional—the wrong solution for these kids.
So they asked an elderly woman, then other families, to welcome one of the teenagers. They said yes. More teenagers arrived. More families came to learn about the program and ended up accepting "another son" or daughter—sometimes two.
They created two small reception communities for new arrivals and crisis situations, but always run like a family, with family rhythms and ways. One, where the priest lives, now hosts five teenagers. The other has two.
Working With Institutions
To have official relationships with institutions—the public health agency, the city government, and so on—they had to register as an association. The agencies wanted them to have formal degrees and professional training in social work. But that was impossible for them. Their qualification came down to one thing: willingness to welcome a teenager nobody else wanted, plus years of experience. And their whole approach depends on "normalcy," which can't coexist with an official title like "educator" or "technician." Still, they adapted to what the public system required. The government trusts them and they offer the only real option available for these problems.
They find a mirror in which to see themselves—not the twisted, broken mirrors they've always looked into, mirrors that left them discouraged and ashamed
They find a mirror in which to see themselves—not the twisted, broken mirrors they've always looked into, mirrors that left them discouraged and ashamedThe association is the official front. It includes all the caregivers and has legal responsibility for the teenagers. (By "caregivers," we mean anyone who lives with them and shares their life: parents, priests, volunteers, conscientious objectors.) An elected team meets roughly once a month and includes two experienced caregivers plus a social worker, a child psychiatrist, and a psychologist from the public health agency. This team decides when a teenager needs extra support. In the homes themselves—whether they're traditional families with mother, father, and children (including the teenager), or volunteers and teenagers living together (usually two or three of each)—life is simply family life. They work, go to school, keep house in a normal rented apartment.
The government pays a monthly stipend of up to about 1.5 million lire per teenager through agreements with the health agency or city. Teenagers who work contribute sixty percent of their wages toward household expenses.
The team rarely meets the teenagers themselves. They serve the caregivers, helping with the challenges that come up in daily life and relationships.
The caregivers also gather once a week, usually with the younger ones, for support.
The main instruction they give is simple: do what you can. If it gets too hard, tell us. It's rare for a teenager to return from a home to the reception community because things have fallen apart. It's been over a year since the last one.
Not Teaching, But Being
Their educational approach for these "difficult" teenagers is straightforward: don't try to educate them. Just be normal. Be ordinary, alive, at peace.
Every teenager arrives from a chaotic or depleted world. Some come from homes with too much noise and confusion—they can't impose discipline on themselves. Others came from institutions with too little—they're depressed, uncertain, lifeless.
The teenagers carry deep resentment for what they never had, even if they can't quite name it—they tend to mistake it for things. This is why they're compulsive consumers
The teenagers carry deep resentment for what they never had, even if they can't quite name it—they tend to mistake it for things. This is why they're compulsive consumersOne real block for these teenagers—and honestly, for many others too—is that they can't meet another person as a person. They only see roles, titles, positions. So the caregivers can't approach them wearing a role either. The priests have to shed the cassock, in a way. The Christian formation they offer comes only through how they live. The same goes for the volunteers. They don't try to convince. They don't present themselves as models. The first message the teenagers get is simply: here are people who are positive, who are real.
Without an acceptable family, the teenagers were shaped by media images—never normal ones. They chase the model of the super, the beautiful, the rich, the powerful, the winner. These images plaster their walls. They imitate them. To numb the frustration, they spend money, feed coins into machines.
What stuns the caregivers is how much a normal family, a normal person, matters to these kids. Someone calm. Someone creative. Someone "rich" in confidence, in self-trust, content. To witness that this model can exist—even if it doesn't look like a winner by media standards—this is light in darkness. They finally find a mirror in which to see themselves. Not the twisted, broken mirrors they've always looked into. Not the ones that left them so discouraged.
Another feeling most of them share is being victims of historical injustice. They received nothing while others got everything—though they can't say what. They tend to mistake it for material things, which is why they're such consumers. But the real problem isn't economic poverty. It's emotional imbalance.
We work to restore that emotional balance. And we see it happen when we strip away everything—starting with our role as educators—and become real to them as models. Our own contentment, our sense of well-being, our freedom from being trapped: these become the measure of the human bond growing between us and them. And they lead toward salvation. Toward normalcy.