The Case for Starting Mentorship Young

Mentoring is often misconstrued as perfect advice at the perfect time. Real life mentoring is a little slower, and in a lot of neighborhoods, it is often missing entirely. A national survey found that roughly one in three young people grew up without any mentor at all, about 16 million youth, including 9 million considered “at-risk.” The gap is widest where time, means of transportation, and adult bandwidth are thinnest. 

The case for starting a mentoring relationship young is simple: trust and habits take time. In middle school, mentoring does not look like two people sitting on a bench; it looks more like coaching and teaching with a purpose. Short and simple cues, small interactions, and quick feedback, so a boy has something to hold on to before he enters a space on his own. As the mentoring relationship grows, prompting will fade and he will start doing more of the thinking for himself. Classic mentoring research describes a healthy arc of mentorship as: initiation → cultivation → separation → redefinition. Beginning earlier gives each phase room to do its work instead of skipping straight to providing advice without a relationship. 

There is also a cultural headwind. In recent years, childhood has shed much of the live, face-to-face “scrimmages” and “pickup games”, where opportunities to learn, fail, and take risks present themselves. As a result, emotions and traits such as anxiety, avoidance, and overreaction tend to show up more often. In communities with fewer steady-presence adults, those missing repetitions add up fast. This is where a mentor’s presence is not a luxury; it is how you put the body back into learning mode. Real timing, real people, real consequences a child can feel, and also be presented a path to try again tomorrow.

Can a steady adult presence change outcomes? The evidence points to “yes”; if the relationship is real and lasts. A comprehensive meta-analysis of mentoring for youth at risk found meaningful reductions in delinquency and aggression and improvements in academics - effects that are modest per child but matter at scale, especially when programs are well run. In Chicago, evaluations of the school-day, Becoming A Man (BAM) program reported about a 45–50% drop in violent-crime arrests during the program year and a ~19% increase in on-time high-school graduation. 

Here is a working hypothesis that guides our practice at the Midtown Achievement Center: if a boy begins the mentoring relationship early enough, he will not just make better decisions in middle or high school; he will also understand what a real mentor is. By the time he matures, he will know what to look for, how to show up as a good mentee, and how to keep the relationship healthy. That does not happen by accident. Kids do not turn eighteen and magically know how to pick the right adult, ask for help, set expectations, or accept corrections without becoming defensive or losing confidence. Like any other habit worth having, those skills are coached and demonstrated, first with more structure, later with more independence and freedom. 

In day-to-day terms, that looks like staying close while a young man learns to choose well, then giving more room as he proves he can carry more responsibility on his own. Early on, an adult often “loans” their calmness and clarity, helping the mentee aim at a specific goal, weighing real options, thinking one step ahead, and owning what follows. Over time, the young person runs the same steps without prompting. By high school, the young men who had healthy mentoring early can recognize the difference between a true mentor and a loud influence. They know what steadiness feels like. 

All of this is especially urgent in underserved neighborhoods. Millions of kids grow up without a mentor; the inequity is sharper for lower-income families. Starting early builds the muscle to find and keep the right guides: how to trust the right people without handing away your agency, how to ask better questions, how to take correction and come back the next day without drama. It also builds a map of the relationship itself, how it starts, what healthy growth looks like, and how it shifts when the mentee is ready for more room. When the map is familiar, the next mentor is easier to find and easier to keep. 

The point is not that mentoring is magic. It is that mentoring relationships begun early, especially where other supports are thin, that allows time for trust to form and habits to stack up. It lets the relationship move through its phases and teaches the young person not just how to decide, but how to relate. How to find, keep, and eventually become the kind of mentee who makes steady judgment possible. You do not stumble into that in adulthood. Like any craft, choosing good individuals to form relationships with and making good judgments are learned, with repetition, in the right environment, and with time.

Micheil Pruni is the Center Director at the Midtown Achievement Center for boys, in Chicago, IL. His work focuses on the character formation and individual mentorship of boys from low-income, minority neighborhoods, working in close partnership with families.

References: 

MENTOR. (2014). The Mentoring Effect: Young People’s Perspectives on the Outcomes and Availability of Mentoring (Executive Summary). One-in-three youth without a mentor; access gaps. 

MENTOR. (2014). The Mentoring Effect (Full Report). Longer relationships → stronger outcomes; duration matters. 

MENTOR. (2023). Who Mentored You? Unmet mentoring need higher among BIPOC and lower-income youth. 

MENTOR. (2024). Why is the Mentoring Gap Widening? Update on persistent access inequities. 

Tolan, P. H., Henry, D., Schoeny, M., Lovegrove, P., & Nichols, E. (2013). Mentoring Interventions to Affect Juvenile Delinquency and Associated Problems: A Systematic Review. Campbell Systematic Reviews. Effects on delinquency, aggression, and academics. 

Tolan, P. H., et al. (2013/2014). Mentoring interventions for youth at risk (meta-analysis; accessible PDFs). Summary evidence base for behavior and school outcomes. 

Heller, S. B., Pollack, H., Ander, R., & Ludwig, J. (2017). Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago. Quarterly Journal of Economics. RCTs of BAM: −45–50% violent-crime arrests; ↑ graduation. 

University of Chicago Crime Lab. Becoming A Man (BAM) project page, multi-year RCT summaries and results. 

Kram, K. E. (1985). Mentoring at Work: Developmental Relationships in Organizational Life (overview of initiation → cultivation → separation → redefinition). Open summaries/secondary sources: 

Annie E. Casey Foundation. (2024). Spotlight on Youth Mentoring, income-based disparities in access (NSCH indicators).