In five or six sessions, parents and caregivers learn specific actions that promote healthy development and reduce risky behavior in the teen years. Home practice and weekly family meetings build family connections and help families apply skills in real life. Guiding Good Choices® emphasizes strong family bonds as the key that motivates preteens to follow family guidelines and stay on a course toward better health and educational outcomes as teenagers. The following is a list of the sessions, with a brief description of each session:
- Introductory Session: Building a Learning Community: Parents/caregivers learn about building community while participating in GGC virtually.
- Session 1 Getting Started: How to Promote Health and Wellbeing During the Teen Years: Parents/caregivers learn about the social development strategy, risk and protective factor focused prevention and decide for themselves how they want to prevent problems in their own families.
- Session 2, Setting Guidelines: How to Develop Healthy Beliefs and Clear Standards: Parents/caregivers develop clear family guidelines and expectations for behavior.
- Session 3, Managing Conflict: How to Deal with your Anger in a Positive Way: Parents/caregivers learn how to manage family conflict in a way that maintains and strengthens bonds with their children.
- Session 4, Avoiding Trouble: How to Say No, Keep Your Friends and Still Have Fun: Youth are invited to attend this session with their parents/caregivers. The youth learn skills they can use for staying out of trouble and keeping their friends, while still having fun.
- Session 5, Involving Everyone: How to Strengthen Family Bonds: Parents/caregivers learn ways to strengthen family bonds and increase youth’s involvement in their family throughout the teen years.
Additional Program Resources
- Discover the science behind these programs and why the strategies work.
- Discover the thought process behind the Guiding Good Choices methods and why they work.
- Compare the benefits and the cost of the programs.
- Learn more about the Guiding Good Choices program.
Key Contacts
WSU Key Contacts can facilitate the parent or caregiver sessions, or connect you to trained facilitators in your area. WSU Key Contacts are also Master Trainers who can provide training to certify participants as trained facilitators for the Guiding Good Choices program.