I've been editing Connect for Kids for five-plus years now, coming from jobs in tv news and newspapers. When I first started out, I undertook a battle against some of the words and phrases that are commonly used by those who work with and advocate for children, but that sound strange to the rest of the world.

One of my pet peeves has been the overuse of the word "youth" as a singular noun referring to a person, instead of its first meaning, "the period between childhood and maturity." It's not that it's wrong -- it just isn't the way real people speak. When's the last time you heard someone say, "Hey, youth, have you done your homework?" or, "Isn't he a nice youth?" However, over time, the drip-drip-drip of constantly encountering the word used in this way has worn me down, and while I still take it out more often than I leave it in, sometimes I just let it go. I've learned to live with youth.

However, I'm going to draw the line right now on another little quirk, and that is the overuse of the tired, misleading, and to my mind positively toxic phrase "at risk," often irritatingly hyphenated to "at-risk" as in "Is your Teen At-Risk?" (the title of a brochure for parents at the end of their rope with their defiant, disobedient or otherwise troublesome teen).

In my early days with CFK, I honestly didn't get it. What was it supposed to mean? At risk of what, exactly? "At risk" doesn't make sense by itself. It needs some follow-up.

Eventually I figured out it was sort of a wink-wink, nudge-nudge verbal shorthand that could often be translated to something like: "at risk of winding up in juvie", "at risk of getting pregnant at 13", "at risk of flunking out", "at risk of getting hooked on drugs." Sometimes it meant something less concretely connected to some bad future outcome, but still ominous, like, "poor, urban, minority" or "in foster care."

And here at CFK, we also lean on the at-risk crutch. Youth At Risk is a major topic area in the taxonomy of our site, where we gather information on academic achievement gaps, teen pregnancy, service learning, substance abuse and some other stuff...a list that in itself says a lot about what a lame catch-all at risk has become.

Interestingly, though "at risk" has always bothered me, I only recently really put my finger on why. I was listening to Prof. Carol D. Lee of Northwestern University talk about what she and other researchers refer to as the "deficit discourse" that is so often the lens for looking at issues like black student achievement, the causes of the achievement gap, etc. Lee said that when educators start out believing that certain aspects of a child's experience are negatives that must be overcome (poverty, race, living in an urban setting)they simply cannot even perceive the strengths that might come from that experience. (Lee was speaking at a forum about a new book attempting to set a research agenda for the study of black education.)

It seems to me that when we label a kid "at risk" because he or she is in foster care, or is the child of a single low-wage working parent, or lives in a bad neighborhood, it darkens the lens through which we see that kid. At risk is just a short step from risky, and perhaps even dangerous. It's another example of the "deficit discourse" Lee was talking about, and stops us from seeing the light that shines from so many kids.

So, it's back to the barricades for me, and I will try even harder to reduce our reliance on this sneaky shorthand.