One Day
Post - Conference Training Institutes
Sunday, July 6
8:30 am - 5:30 pm
(New! Teachers, earn .8 hrs CE - see details below.)
Reaching Teens— Love U2 Relationship Smarts PLUS
Marline Pearson, MA
Reaching the next generation to help them build healthy relationships and make wise choices during their teen and young adult years is one of the major challenges of the marriage movement. Teens need to become better informed about the importance of following a sequence, (i.e. education, job, marriage, before babies). They also need to learn about the critical connections between child wellbeing and a healthy marriage. This generation is not only woefully uninformed – they are also woefully misinformed. Despite survey findings that the overwhelming majority of young people place a high value on achieving a successful marriage, the truth is many young people hold beliefs, attitudes and engage in relationship choices and behaviors that will take them away from, not towards, their goals in education, work and family. Many teens are without roadmaps to guide them, or relationship skills to empower them. Savvy approaches that speak to, connect with, and motivate youth are badly needed.
Participants will be able to: This institute will prepare you to teach Relationship Smarts PLUS, the new hybrid edition of the Love U2 series. Participants will gain confidence in teaching teen-adapted PREP© communication skills, and in using activities, stories, real world teen scenarios, sculpting, drawing, games, popular music and film in teaching relationship concepts and skills. Most importantly participants will learn how to use teen-friendly mediums to raise teens’ understanding of the importance of sequence, i.e. education, job, marriage, before babies, and to build a “story” of healthy marriage with youth. Participants will also be trained to engage parents as partners with the Parent/Guardian—Teen Connection activities.
What’s in Relationship Smarts PLUS (RQ+)? RQ+ is a lively, activity-packed 13-lesson curriculum drawn and refined from the best of the Love U2 series. It is currently being used in the 5-year, federally-funded evaluation study conducted by Auburn University with over 5,000 diverse teens. This research-based curriculum includes many hands-on activities used to build skills and knowledge to promote healthy dating relationship, to make wise sexual choices, and to lay a foundation for healthy adult relationships and marriage in the future. Its flexible design lends itself equally well to the school classroom as to all kinds of youth groups, including community and faith based organizations, whether they serve high-risk or mainstream teens. It features activities using teen scenarios written by diverse teens, sculpting, drawing, music and film. It has an engaging Teen Workbook to apply concepts, and many Parent/Guardian—Teen Connection activities to convey content to parents and spark important discussions at home.
Topics include:
• Identity, future orientation and planning—including understanding maturity, values identification, goal setting and defining action steps, dealing with peer pressure situations, and assessing friendships.
• Building relationships: Attractions, infatuation, ingredients and building blocks for healthy relationships, principles for smart relationships/smart love, how true intimacy develops, and a realistic concept of love. Also, how to really get to know someone, how to gauge the health and safety of a relationship, and how to avoid high-cost consequences and attachment to problem people by taking a low-risk “deciding, not sliding” approach.
• Relationship Challenges: Dealing with break-ups and broken hearts—knowing when it’s time, how to do it humanely, and how to move forward. Includes a strong focus on recognizing abusive behaviors. Teens practice proactive skills to prevent and halt disrespectful or abusive behaviors in their relationships.
• Essential communication and conflict management skills: Teens gain a concise package of essential skills for communication and conflict management useful for all kinds of relationships. These communication skills are adapted from the highly acclaimed research and skills-based adult program, PREP® (Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program).
• Learning about the “Success Sequence” and pregnancy prevention: Teens are motivated to make wiser relationship and sexual choices through examining the consequences of early and unwed pregnancy through the eyes of a child. The role of fathers and how healthy relationships and healthy marriage is linked to father involvement are addressed.
• Looking towards the future—Increasing the odds of healthy adult relationships and marriages: Through activities and teen-friendly mediums, research findings on cohabitation, healthy marriage benefits, faulty mate selection, marital success and failure, and couples skills programs are presented to build confidence through a social science knowledge base to help teens make more informed and wiser choices.
Who Should Enroll in this Institute?
Anyone who works with teens or has a possibility of interfacing with or influencing people who do: Anyone with a Community Healthy Marriage Initiative. All HMI grantees, high school teachers, school social work and other support staff; youth leaders, those working in youth programs serving high-risk to mainstream teens; teen programming with faith-based organizations. It has been especially well-received with diverse and at-risk teens.
Materials you’ll receive:
Love U2 - Relationship Smarts PLUS ($325 value) which includes:
1. Instructor’s Guide with 13 lesson plans
2. Student Workbook
3. Five posters
4. All activity resources and ready-to-use activity cards
5. CD with PowerPoint slides arranged by lesson to help visually reinforce key concepts.
Stories from The Art of Loving Well are woven into the lesson as optional. The anthology is available for purchase ($24.95 plus s/h). The book is not necessary for the training institute. Click to order Art of Loving Well: http://www.dibblefund.org/ALW_index.htm
WHAT THE EXPERTS AND TEENS SAY ABOUT LOVEU2:
"In a society filled with media images that hurry kids toward intimacy, and examples everywhere of relationships gone awry, Marline Pearson fills a huge gap in our children's education -- how to think about and establish meaningful, respectful relationships in a highly sexual society. Caring educators everywhere will want to share Pearson's astute and thoughtful messages with their youth to help them develop relationship smarts that will last a lifetime. What a quality gift to our children!"
Lynda Madison, PhD, Director, Family Support & Psychological Services
Children's Hospital, Omaha
Associate Professor in Pediatrics and Psychiatry, Creighton University Medical School
Author of: The Feelings Book: The Care and Keeping of Your Emotions (Pleasant Company, 2002); Keep Talking: A Mother-Daughter Guide to the Preteen Years (Andrews McMeel, 1999); co-author of What I Wish You Knew: Letters from our Daughters' Lives and Expert Advice on Staying Connected (Pleasant Company, 2001
"This curriculum is a welcome addition that begins to fill a real gap. It talks not just about what's safe but also what's right; it discusses relationships, values, and long term plans, not just avoiding specific problems. And, it artfully transcends the tiresome 'abstinence versus contraception' debate."
Sarah Brown, Director, National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy
“THANK YOU for Love U2. As a physician of 20 years, I have seen dramatic changes in the rise of sexually transmitted diseases, depression and hurt in our teens associated with sexual activity. Your teens need this program and they need you to help them make it work in their lives. No other program that I have seen challenges teens to confront their feelings, their decisions and their behaviors as thoroughly as Love U2®.”
Meg Meeker, MD
Author, “Epidemic: How Teen Sex Is Killing Our Kids”
and “Restoring the Teenage Soul”
“. . . a new and exciting frontier in sex education has been embodied in efforts such as the Love U2® curriculum. These efforts tend to teach young people about healthy relationships at the same time they teach them about avoiding risky sexual behavior and the value of waiting. In short, these efforts are focused squarely on trying to help young people understand how to achieve responsible and respectful relationships.”
Isabel Sawhill
Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
Before the Ways and Means Committee
Income Security and Family Support Subcommittee
United States House of Representatives
“Solutions to Poverty”
April 26, 2007
“Marline Pearson’s Love U2 series is brilliantly designed to address the deepest desires of teen hearts, while helping them grow their minds in ways that they can more successfully navigate the challenges of their lives….Her approach is wise and compassionate in a way that avoids the kinds of divisions among liberals and conservatives that sometimes paralyze attempts to help teens…Pearson has selected the most essential aspects of our approach (PREP) and modified them to be usable and relevant for teens….the strategies here address the most basic needs we have in relationships: the need to talk without fighting, the need to speak and be understood, the need to hear what is in the heart of another, and the need to handle conflicts without damaging relationships….
Scott Stanley, PhD
University of Denver
PREP Educational Products, Inc.
Sample comments from students about what they liked about Relationship Smarts+
• "I liked learning how to communicate in your relationship and the things you needed to keep your relationship together."
• "It will help dating teenagers avoid abusive relationships."
• "I liked that it taught me some things about dating and being in a relationship that I didn't know before."
• "I liked how in depth the program was - it was really informative about dating and what should and shouldn't happen."
• "I thought I knew everything, but as it turns out, I've learned a lot about relationships and love.”
• "Relationship Smarts gave me useful information about relationships and helped me learn new ideas about how to maintain my relationships now, as well as in the future."
Sample examples of how the adolescents said they are using skills learned from RS+
• “I tried avoiding negative starts – discussion did not turn into an argument.”
• “I used my notebook to improve my relationship by getting my boyfriend to read it.”
• “I used some of the communication skills we learned—being aware of voice tone, prevented arguments.”
• “I stopped changing for others.”
• “I used my knowledge of conditional vs. unconditional love for examining my current relationships.”
• “I shared the information on family of origin patterns and how they affect me with my family.”
Read Marline Pearson's Smart Marriages Keynote address "Sex Ed: The Missing Link"
Contact Marline Pearson, Author: m.e.p.50@sbcglobal.net
For more information on the program:
www.dibblefund.org/love_u2.htm
1-800-695-7975
The Dibble Institte will provide participants
with a signed certificate of completion at the end of the Institute.
Participants will mail the certificates to California
State University Sacramento (CSUS) with a fee of $50.
CSUS will send the participant their certificate of
credit for Teachers. Note: you can also earn 1.6 hrs Teaching CE
by attending the two-day pre-conference Institute #115. This institute is part of the week-long Smart Marriages conference.
Register for the Institute and the Conference: Click for Information on Conference Details, to download a conference brochure, REGISTER ONLINE, hotel & travel information & discounts, etc.