The adult roleSession 7: 120 minutes

Youth Alive Training 1

• Goal– Assist adult facilitators in

becoming comfortable and confident

• Needs– Power point slides– Private place for adults to meet

while youth staff exposed to FG activities

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Overview of adult role

• Without them the Youth Alive conference and local club will not survive

• Presence of the adult is the Key to a successful program Youth Alive Training 3

Adults must be…

• Christ committed• Willing to coach, not impose

authority• Flexible-Think like youth think• Young at heart• Able to draw lessons from

experiences• Appreciative of youth activity• A listener rather than a talker

Youth Alive Training 4

Adult readiness

• Provide Warm Fuzzy papers to adult facilitators• Give them opportunity to write 10-11 general Warm

Fuzzies for his/her own Friendship Group (without names)• Insert FG members’ names after 1st session• Conference participant should get minimum of 2 Warm

Fuzzies throughout Youth Alive conference from the adult and youth co-facilitator of their FG

• The more Warm Fuzzies-the more connected they are to their FG

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Overview of the need for the adult role

• What has changed in our youth today?

• Why are sexual urges different?

• What appears to be promising in the area of preventing harm and danger amongst our youth?

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Contributing factors to changes in today’s youth

Women

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Declining Age of Menarche

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Sweden

Change of first menstrual period

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• Young women start to feel sexual urges after first menstrual period

• During the 18th century we see girls had their first period around 16 or 17 years of age

• During this stage of development called “late adolescence” where cognitive maturity takes place, with the ability to make critical sexual decisions

• Marriage age was around 18 or 19 years old

• Only two or three years before marriage

Age of first period has decreased

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• Today, first period is around 12.8 years

• Early adolescence, there is no cognitive maturity

• Girls enter middle adolescence - risk taking behaviors

• Have little concept of cause and effect

Changes in marriage age

Today young women get married on or around

• 23rd or 24th birthday

• After struggling with sexual urges through periods of development when not thinking of consequences of their acts, or the impact on future life

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Physical activities & diet

• Young women who are physically active …have their first menstrual periods later than average

• Vegetarian girls have menarche later

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Contributing factors tochanges in today’s youth

Women & Men

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Working parents

• Both parents work • Children having fewer

hours a day spent with a parent

• Children rely more on their peers in decision making

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Home environment

• Some kids come from awful home situations

• Impossible for teachers to make up for poor parenting

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Single working parent

• Struggling to generate sufficient income• Children are often unattended after school (high risk time)

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Typical American home

• Average TV watching is 7 hours and 13 minutes per day• One-third of Americans

talk to their children about sex

• TV talks about sex constantly (14,000 times per year)

• By 18 years, youth have watched 22,000 hours of TV (spent a total of 12,000 hours in high school)

• TV is the primary sex educator of the youthYouth Alive Training 17

Impact of school changes(less physical education)

• Less exertion• Youth not kept busy• Less exposure to adult

authority and supervision• In gymnastics after

regular school hours• Students have more time

to be home alone before parents get off work

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Latchkey kids

• This refers to students who go to an empty home after school

• Resulting in more adolescents getting pregnant between 3:00pm and 6:00 pm in their own home

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Review of contributing factors to changes in today’s youth

• Working parents• Home environment• Single parent struggling

to generate sufficient income

• TV influence• School changes

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Research findings on low level physical activityin high school students is associated with:

• Cigarette smoking• Marijuana use• Lower fruit & vegetable consumption• Greater TV-watching• Failure to wear seat belt• Lower academic performance

(compared to highly active students)

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Reason for using/trading drugs

• People wake up feeling depressed, defeated, in need of some substance to make them feel good

• As transportation improved, drugs were on the move

• Passion for money, associated with drug trading

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Impact of drugs

Alcohol and other drugs (AOD) are major contributors to:

• Rising medical costs• Transmission of AIDS virus• Violence in school and home• Child abuse• Automobile fatalities• Sexually transmitted infections• Unemployment• Reduced work productivity• Antisocial behavior

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Focus of drug prevention• Law enforcement to get

drugs off the streets is not successful

• Efforts to stop drug distribution should be terminated

• Focus of drug prevention should be on the underlying cause of drug use Youth Alive Training 24

Promising information in preventingdangerous behaviors

• The global society and educators implementing programs to inform the danger of drug usage is not effective!

• Recent drug research revealed that prevention programs need the values component

• Students who had a religious affiliation and who embraced spiritual values were much less likely to use drugs

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Underlying causes ofdrug use

• Hopelessness• Depression• Worthlessness• Feeling of separation

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Coming into the arms of the Lord and promoting Christian values are great places to start!

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