Prepare, Enrich, Inspire

If you believe media messages about the pursuit of happiness, you may be led to believe that the answer would be something like success, wealth, or good looks. However according to research, most people report close relationships as their main source of happiness.¹ The happiest people pursue meaningful connection and intimacy with others.² We all have innate needs and desires to live in relationship with others, but the skills to successfully manage these relationships need to be learned. How we learn to navigate these relationships influence the trajectory in our lives, and often determine how successful we are in life. It is from a desire to help meet these needs that we have developed Prepare/Enrich/Inspire for Teens. Based on decades of Prepare/Enrich research, PEI for Teens explores how relationships impact quality of life and teaches the skills necessary for teens to create healthy relationships (now and in the future). The overall goal of this curriculum is to help youth develop their personal and relationship skills which they can use in all of their relationships throughout life. As children enter the age of adolescents, the need for relationships continues. But being an adolescent can be tough. Adolescence is a time of rapid change. Teens are striving to fit in to a world of relationships with friends, family, and romantic partners. Teens are working on developing independence from their families in order to forge their own identity. The focus in relationships comes more about learning how to make decisions about relationships with their friends, family, and girlfriends or boyfriends. What they learn in this stage, will affect relationships throughout their lifetime, in terms of both habits and from consequences of decisions made during this time. But teens can’t do this alone. They need adults — parents, teachers, coaches, and others — to help them understand, model, and choose healthy, respectful relationships.

Why We ALL Need to Teach Teens Healthy Relationship Skills?

1. Life is Relational. The quality of one’s life is often connected to the quality of one’s relationships, often more so with teens. Is it any secret what is on the minds of your adolescent students? Boyfriends, girlfriends, friendships, parents, siblings – relationships top the list! Relationships form a GREAT platform for teaching students interpersonal relationship skills because it is where their focus and interest lie. Consider that more than half of high school teens report having a special romantic relationship within the past 18 months ⁵ and teens say they interact more frequently with their romantic partners than they do they with parents, siblings, or friends.⁶ Thus, it makes sense to use dating relationships as a reference point for teens. However, these skills are not just for dating and family life. Research shows that 15% of the reason you get a job, keep a job, and move ahead in that job is determined by your technical skills and knowledge…regardless of your profession. The other 85% has to do with your people skills and people knowledge.  Another finding is that 72% of employees lose their jobs due to inadequate interpersonal relationship skills. Thus, the skills teens learn can help them to be successful in their work life and in building their futures.
2. Life and relationships are changing and becoming more complex. In recent years, the mass media – TV, radio, Internet, movies, newspapers, and magazines – has amplified its influence on relationships and family. Unfortunately, the picture painted by the media usually bears little resemblance to most relationships and families. The families we see in the media are sexier, chattier, more violent, more problem-prone, richer or poorer, and, in general, lead much more dramatic lives than the average family. The same could be said for the different relationships portrayed. According to a recent study, kids between the ages of 8 to 18 spend most of their waking moments-except for the time in school-with some kind of electronic device (computer, television, smart phone, etc.). Children spend more than seven and a half hours per day with media devices, plus an additional hour and a half texting and half hour on their cellphones.⁷ These technologies are most frequently used for interpersonal communication, but there are some debates as to whether or not technology actually improves the way we communicate with one another or if it actually interferes with good communication and healthy relationships.
3. Teens lack relationship knowledge. If you are a teen, you have no doubt been told about the health risks of sexual activity and how to avoid these risks. According to research, by age 18, most teens will have received some information about contraception, refusal skills, and abstinence in regards to sexual activity.⁸ However, the context of the relationship is often neglected and a majority of first time sexual encounters occur within a dating relationship. One of the missing relational pieces is how feelings of attraction and love interfere with rational thinking and can easily affect decisions. Another important educational piece is to examine how sexual activity can affect both their current and future relationships. These are two simple examples of how having accurate knowledge demystifies the experience of attraction and love so that when these experiences enter their own lives they have some objective insight to apply to their personal experiences. PEI is experiential and skill-based but always invites teens to reflect on the nature of their own experiences as it relates to each topic.
4. There is still a strong desire for future marriage. Despite all the changes in the trends of marriage, marriage still remains the most popular voluntary institution in our society with about 85% of the population marrying at least once. Even among teens, marriage is considered a popular and worthwhile goal, as most teens (80%) indicate that they want to get married one day (15% are undecided).⁹ Unfortunately, these teens indicate that while having a good marriage and family is very important to them, between 70-80% are pessimistic as to their chances of success.¹⁰ This belief creates an urgency to teach teens skills and knowledge that can help them to be successful if they do choose marriage in their future. Research shows that once young people learn that relationships are skill-based and that these skills can be learned their confidence greatly increases.
5. There is much evidence that relationships play a fundamental role in the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. Good relationships and marriages have been linked to longer lives, better physical health, and increased psychological and personal well-being. For children and communities, children of unhappy couples experience more violence, theft, poor self-esteem and social and emotional disturbances. Marital distress increases depression, substance abuse and domestic violence for adults. These findings are just a few that support how healthy relationships benefit individuals, children, families and communities.
6. Relationship education is effective , Premarital education has been shown to reduce divorce by 30% and yet 70% of all couples who marry do not receive any premarital education. ¹¹ What would the future of relationships/marriage look like if relationship education became the norm before premarital education? Consider the following findings that are the result of teaching teens healthy romantic relationships and skills.
   1. a reduction in teen dating violence and increase in youth’s assets.
   2. A significant delay of the onset of sexual activity.
   3. The improvement of a students’ ability to resist sexual pressure and decrease negative behaviors at home and at school.
   4. A decrease in peer to peer physical violence and improve communication with parents.
   5. A reverse harmful behavior and equip future parents. ¹²

#1David G Myers The Pursuit of Happiness 1992.#2 University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman, author of the new book, Authentic Happiness. #3 Zeanah, C.H. and Doyle-Zeanah, P. (2001). Towards a definition of infant mental health. Zero to Three, 22(1), 13-20.#4 Greenough, W., Emde, R.N., Gunnar, M. Massinga, R., and Shonkoff, J.P. (2001) The Impact of the caregiving environment on young children’s development. Zero to Three, 21(5), 16-23.#5 Carver, Joyner, & Udry, 2003#6Laursen & Williams 1997#7 Kaiser Family Foundation#8 Making a Love Connection – Blanket Resource#9 B. Whitehead and D. Popenoe, Changes in Teen Attitudes toward Marriage, Cohabitation, and Children 1975-1995. National Marriage Project (2000).#10 (National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy)#11(Why Marriage Matters, Research from the CA marriage initiative)#12 Fact sheet from The Dibble Institute