Teens - Relationships with People, Places and Things Workbook and Card Deck

This workbook covers the following teen connections: family/people at home, peers, romantic partners, places, tangible things, intangible things, and self. Each chapter explores essential relationships that shape teens’ lives and offers insights into managing these connections effectively.

Key Features

• My Relationships with Family/People at Home: Ways to deal with secrets, conflict, control, etc., and how to build love, resilience and trust; how teens wish to be treated and their treatment of caregivers; skills to stop power struggles, problem solve and compromise; dynamics in many types of families, bonds that link, in whom to confide, forgiveness, etc.
• My Relationships with Peers: Ways to minimize jealousy and enmeshment, expand social supports and personal development; fear of missing out; cliques; embarrassment; cookie cutter categorizations; inclusion, possible motives of people who exclude, invisible scars left by cruelty, how to leave marks of hope and healing, etc.
• My Relationships with Romantic Partners: Healthy and unhealthy romance, ways to recognize and stop dating violence and other abuse, relationship costs and benefits; how to emerge stronger and wiser after a break up, respectfully initiate a break up, argue agreeably, understand jealousy, decide what love is and isn’t; amusement ride analogies, etc.
• My Relationships with Places: Positive and/or negative effects of one’s most memorable home; places likely to foster optimal development or have detrimental effects; how attitudes toward school affect experiences, ways to work on solutions, not dwell on problems; how one’s place of mind affects peace of mind, etc.
• My Relationships with Tangible Things: Technology’s social, emotional, educational and other uses and abuses; whether money talks (or NOT); prized possessions, whether one owns or is owned by belongings, materialism, and objects with little monetary value but much meaning, etc.
• My Relationships with Intangible Things: How to make the most of time and life, freedoms and responsibilities, when to conform or not; pros and cons of competition and cooperation; the magnitude of small acts of kindness, compassion’s benefits to others and oneself; beliefs, little things that are big, things that are broken, silent things that are loud, etc.
• My Relationship with Myself: Self-image and actualization, ways to support not sabotage oneself, how thoughts affect feelings, how to filter out destructive and consider constructive criticism; ways words can hurt or heal; value of esteem-able actions; mental and physical health, etc.

Additional Information

Teens – Relationships Card Deck: Use the open-ended questions with groups or individuals to kick-start a session. Each question corresponds to a specific page in the book.

Sample Questions:

• Some people treat strangers better than family. In what ways is this true or untrue about you?
• Are you more like a cookie cutter person or someone who does not “fit the mold”? Explain.
• What are the best words you have ever said?