From hooking up, to living together, to bearing children prior to clarity about having a future together, relationship and family development has changed. New paradigms have important implications for how we understand the romantic and sexual relationships of young adults. Ambiguity is a preferred condition of relationships for many, which makes it easier to finesse intentions and hide asymmetrical commitment. However, this new relationship paradigm can lead to a person losing life options before making a clear choice about what they want the most. In this webinar, Scott Stanley, Ph.D. will explain the ways motivated ambiguity intersects with types of commitment (e.g., constraint and dedication) to impact mate selection and lasting love. Some themes include the role of commitment in securing attachment, asymmetrical commitment, and research on how common types of relationship transitions can impact long-term outcomes. Objectives: Webinar participants will be able to: Understand how teen and early adulthood…
Sex Ed
In these challenging times, many youth are dealing with isolation, anxiety, and depression and relationship challenges. Everyone is looking for a way to connect. Many wonder, how do we do this safely and in a healthy way? We know that when we are unaware of what is happening with our bodies and brains, then we are more likely to make risky decisions. Providing information that youth will hear and use starts with providing mindfulness skills that help them to calm their brains, be in touch with what is going on in their bodies, and build resilience. These mindfulness skills are relevant, empowering, and easy to make a part of everyday life. When implemented, people find they are more likely to grow in social and emotional regulation, make more informed decisions, and see brighter futures. Join Dixie Zittlow as we discuss how healthy decision-making is achievable by bringing awareness to what…
More than Conquerors, Inc. (MTCI) is nonprofit social service provider in Conyers, Georgia, with a long history of delivering relationship education to high school students. With funding from the Office of Family Assistance at the Administration for Children and Families, MTCI is currently partnering with staff from Mathematica Policy Research and Public Strategies to deliver and evaluate the Relationship Smarts PLUS curriculum in two Atlanta-area high schools. In this webinar, Phillippia and Brian will discuss emerging lessons from the evaluation and MTCI’s long history of serving youth. The lessons include MTCI’s process for hiring, training, and supporting facilitators to achieve optimal student engagement and impact. They will also include general tips for selecting a curriculum, engaging youth, and making the content relevant for students. Specifically, webinar attendees will learn: The steps and characteristics prioritized when hiring facilitators. How to select the right curriculum for your population. How to engage youth in…
Years of research show that robust healthy relationship education can pull many levers in a young person’s life. One sphere it can impact is child sexual abuse prevention. Erin’s Law, passed in 35 states, requires that all public schools implement a prevention-oriented child sexual abuse program.The Mary Black Foundation in South Carolina has used Love Notes to help classrooms meet that requirement. Learn from Anita Barbee, Ph.D. from the University of Louisville, the research underpinnings that make Love Notes such an effective sexual abuse prevention intervention. Then hear from Polly Edwards-Padgett how the Mary Black Foundation selected Love Notes, gained access to the schools, their implementation approach, including funding, and how you can explore doing the same in your state. Objectives: Identify how Love Notes helps in the prevention of sexual abuse. Exam Erin’s Law to see how it has expanded the opportunities for Sexual Abuse Prevention education in the classroom. Hear…
For the past five years, programs across the United States have been teaching healthy relationship skills to thousands of young people through Relationship Smarts PLUS 3.0 and Love Notes 2.1. Now, The Dibble Institute is excited to announce that both of these evidence-based programs have been updatedwith brand new information crucial to supporting teens and young adults in today’s world! They respond to changing conversations and conditions spurred on by #metoo, #timesup, smart phones, and social media. Relationship Smarts Plus 4.0 and Love Notes 3.0 both feature brand-new, age-appropriate content on: Sexual consent Online pornography Sexting Sexual assault Drugs and alcohol – and their impact on relationships Cyberbullying Relationship Smarts PLUS 4.0 is ideal for younger teens, and Love Notes 3.0 is ideal for older teens and young adults who are at risk of seeing their personal goals derailed by troubled relationships, unplanned pregnancy, and single parenting. Presenter: Marline E. Pearson. M.A., Author, Love Notes and…
Dr. Temple will discuss sexting (a combination of the words sex and texting), the practice of electronically sending sexually explicit images or messages from one person to another. Sexting has received an abundance of attention in the popular press. Much of this attention has been limited to (1) legal cases in which teens who create, send, receive, store, and/or disseminate nude pictures of themselves or another teen face criminal charges including child pornography, and (2) cases in which teens are harassed and bullied as a result of the nude picture being distributed beyond the intended audience. Although media reports often cite various examples of sexting leading to bullying, cyber-bullying, and even suicide, we understand very little about the public health importance of sexting. Using data from his ongoing longitudinal study of adolescent health, as well as a recent meta-analysis, Dr. Temple will examine the prevalence of sexting behaviors as well…
WEBINAR: Working Together: Developing & Implementing a Sustainable Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program
In October 2016, Dr. Michelle Toews and her colleagues at Kansas State University received a grant to develop, implement, and evaluate the #RELATIONSHIPGOALS program, a sexual risk avoidance education intervention with seventh- and ninth-grade students from a local school district. The goal of program is to empower youth to make healthy decisions by teaching them the benefits associated with self-regulation, healthy relationships and goal setting, while also teaching them how to resist sexual coercion, dating violence and other risky behaviors. The curriculum used in the intervention is Relationship Smarts PLUS, Sexual Risk Avoidance Adaptation. Preliminary results suggest the program is reaching its goal. Specifically, students report that they love the program and share that one of the most important things they learn is how to identify healthy and unhealthy relationships. They also say the program teaches them skills they need to develop healthy relationships, particularly effective communication skills, which they…
A record 55 percent of Millennial parents (ages 28-34) have put childbearing before marriage, according to a new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistic’s Panel data by the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies. The rise of nontraditional routes into parenthood among Millennials is one indicator that today’s young adults are taking increasingly divergent paths toward adulthood, including family formation. New research by Dr. Wilcox and others shows that the success sequence works even for young adults today. In fact, 86% of Millennials who follow the sequence have now moved into the middle class and only 3% of Millennials who follow the sequence are poor today. Given the importance of education, work, and marriage—even for a generation that has taken increasingly circuitous routes into adulthood—Dr. Wilcox challenges policymakers, business leaders, and civic leaders to advance public policies and cultural changes to make his sequence both more attainable…
Many adults—especially parents—often fret about youth and the “hook-up culture.” But research suggests that far fewer young people are “hooking up” than we are commonly led to believe. This focus on the hook-up culture also obscures two much bigger issues that many young people appear to be struggling with: forming and maintaining healthy romantic relationships and dealing with widespread misogyny and sexual harassment. What’s more, it appears that parents and other key adults in young people’s lives often fail to address these two problems. Making Caring Common’s new report, The Talk: How Adults Can Promote Young People’s Healthy Relationships and Prevent Misogyny and Sexual Harassment, explores these issues and offers insights into how adults can begin to have meaningful and constructive conversations about them with the young people in their lives. Making Caring Common (MCC), a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, helps educators, parents, and communities raise children…
In this webinar, Clay Olsen, will discuss the latest findings from the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and the medical field on the impact that Internet porn is having on the developing brains of young people. Clay presents the topic as a public health issue, rather than as a moral, political or religious argument. In this webinar you will Understand why the Internet porn of today is having such a drastically different impact on the brains of young people than old school pornography did. Understand how Internet porn is impacting relationships for young people. Learn more from research about the negative outcomes that are associated with Internet porn. Learn what you can do to help young people who have decided that they want help with overcoming the addiction to Internet porn. Presenter: Clay Olsen, CEO of Fight the New Drug Resources: Teens and Pornography
Adolescence now lasts longer than ever, and the adolescent brain is surprisingly malleable. These new discoveries make this time of life crucial in determining a person’s ultimate success and happiness. From Dr. Steinberg’s book, “Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence,” he will present: The teenage brain’s potential for change, The elongation of adolescence as a developmental stage, The implications of each for how we parent, educate, and understand young people. Presenter: Distinguished Psychology Professor Laurence Steinberg, PhD, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.
In this webinar attendees will: Learn how the healthy relationship skills program, Healthy Choices, Healthy Relationships, (HCHR) meets National Health and Sex Education Standards from author and educator, Charlene Kamper. Learn how Kathy Schleier, from Dalton, GA, connected with Health teachers by meeting their needs and frameworks and is teaching HCHR in high school Health classes. Guest Presenters: Charlene Kamper, MA, CFLE, author of Healthy Choices, Healthy Relationships and Kathy Schleier, PNP currently teaching HCHR in Health classes in Rome, GA.
We often teach young people how to protect their bodies, but we seldom help them protect their hearts.Young people can learn low-risk dating strategies that help them avoid the pitfalls of spontaneous romantic encounters. Learn the relationship skills that encourage self-regulation and maturity, strategies for exciting precarious situations, and approaches others are using to help young people be more cautious and protect their hearts. Guest presenter: Nancy Lenk, Outreach Educator, The Dibble Institute