Have you ever wondered…

• How to answer the question: “Mom, dad, did you drink or use drugs when you were younger?”
• What is known about teenage development now that is vital for parents and teens to know?
• How to set and enforce rules around drug and alcohol use that reflect your family’s belief system?
• How to manage conflict?
• How to get household help from teens and why its more important than ever for today’s teens to have this experience?
• How do you monitor and respect privacy. Can you have both?
• How to teach your tween or teen refusal skills that really work and lets them keep their friends?

We answer these questions and more in our workshops series. It’s what good parents learn… to make themselves great!

Studies show that first time use of alcohol, tobacco and marijuana most often occurs in 7th and 8th grade. The likelihood of your youth knowing somebody who uses drugs, increases by the time they reach eighth grade, to one out of every four kids.

If your kids aren’t talking to you, you can be sure they’re getting their information somewhere. Make sure they’re getting reliable, accurate facts from the biggest influence in their life: You.

Guiding Good Choices is an interactive workshop that will give you and your family the skills to work together and take action now, to prevent drug and alcohol use in the future. We give research based tools, and families who learn our tools have kids that are less likely to use drugs and alcohol.

Parents who’ve attended this series raise kids with lower rates of drug and alcohol use, teen pregnancy, violence, and dropping out of school. In addition, these parents better understand and deal with changes and behaviors that arise during the middle school years – helping parents and teens stay connected.

What you will learn:

• What creates risk for teens and how we can better protect them.
• Realistic refusal skills for your preteen that helps keep them stay out of trouble and lets them keep the friends they have.
• How to manage conflict and why conflict can increase during adolescence.
• How to create opportunities to get kids involved in the family and why they need to be involved.
• How to communicate clear rules on drugs, alcohol and other issues.
• Monitoring methods that maintain family bonds.

Guiding Good Choices® is grounded in the research of Dr. Hawkins and Dr. Catalano of the University of Washington. For the past 25 years, they have been studying what puts young people at risk for health and behavior difficulties. They also have been studying what protects young people from those risks.

GGC is a five week (two hours per week) research-based workshop that brings parents together to learn and practice skills for improving communication and building stronger bonds with their teens.