Getting to Know Teen-Aid

The Second Decade

Teen-Aid, Inc. was founded in 1981 by a group of concerned parents and professionals in eastern Washington. Teen-Aid was created to address the crisis affecting teens nationally. With epidemic numbers of pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases among teens, and with the threat of AIDS, the founders believed that another approach to sex education was needed. The answer to these complex issues was more than contraceptive information and availability.

Teen-Aid has developed sex education materials that seek to place human sexuality in the context of commitment, responsibility and family. We challenge the common assumption that all teens are sexually active. Teens can wait to have sex when they are trained in the necessary skills to do so.

Freedom to Become …

Teen-Aid curricula present more than a “just say no” message. The materials clearly convey the advantages of a teen lifestyle free from sexual involvement. Abstinence brings freedom from adverse consequences, but is equally a freedom to become. This concept of freedom, even for those who have been sexually involved, is a very attractive concept.

More than Mechanics

Teens really want to know more than the mechanics of sex. Teen-Aid programs help students explore what really makes friendships and relationships work.

Building Life Skills

The program materials present mini-courses in communication, assertiveness, handling peer pressure, decision-making, good health, and others.

Talking Things Over:  Why using Parent – Teen Communication Tools is Effective

Parents and teens alike express the desire for better communication. The curricula facilitate such dialogue through Parent Grams and Parent/Teen Communicators (see curricula below). Students take home handouts, which cover that day’s lesson and suggest topics for discussion (e.g. dating standards). Parents are given material to help them discuss their own family values.

Prior to 1982 there were NO parent participation tools in sex education programs. Teen-Aid invented them. Every program that Teen-Aid produces and carries in its catalogue contains a parent component.

Granted Family Planning Perspectives refused to print research about Teen-Aid studies, but they finally got the concept. To read Effects of a Parent-Child Communications Intervention on Young Adolescents' Risk for Early Onset of Sexual Intercourse click on: www.agi-usa.org/pubs/journals/3305201.html.

Curricula

Maturing in Body and Character

Maturing in Body and Character, our newest curriculum, introduces an in-depth program for upper elementary students that develop character skills as it presents a moderation message for eating and a prevention messages for smoking and drugs. Parents are given resources for discussing puberty information and skills for developing character in their children.

Me, My World, My Future

Me, My World, My Future helps the junior high student tie the many facets of a healthy lifestyle together, avoiding negative consequences and achieving positive results.

Sexuality, Commitment & Family

Sexuality, Commitment & Family is a senior high sex education program with emphasis on the societal context: parenting, marriage, and responsibility.

HIV: You Can Live Without It!

HIV: You Can Live Without It! is being revised. The experiential lessons present prevention and compassion while teaching the no-risk message of abstinence until marriage. Parents are given resources for developing skills and compassion in their children.

Research

The Teen-Aid junior high program, through a grant study from the Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Programs since 1987, has been able to shift attitudes and intentions to be sexually active between 5 and 15% by using the three-week program. The data indicated that the program had statistically significant effects on a number of areas associated with teen sexual involvement.

A Shift in Attitudes

After the students completed the Teen-Aid curriculum, they were more likely to affirm that abstinence was the best way to avoid pregnancy and STD’s, that premarital sex was against their values and standards, and that it was important to them not to have premarital sex. They were also more likely to reject permissive notions of sex being okay if their partner wants it, if they are in love, or if they just use birth control. This pattern was equally strong for both girls and boys.

Profile of the Teen Most Helped

The profile of the teen most helped by the Teen-Aid program is: female (only a slightly higher rate than the male cohort), lives with other than natural mother and father, father did not go to college and mother works outside the home on a full-time basis, and church attendance is less than once a month. This is also the profile of a potentially pregnant teen.