Love U2®, by Marline Pearson
Curriculum Rationale and Unit Outlines

Relationship Smarts PLUS

Overview
 This newest unit of the Love U2® series, Relationship Smarts PLUS, contains all the core relationship concepts of Increasing Your Relationship Smarts(2004), and much more. It is a research-based curriculum that includes many hands-on activities used to build skills and knowledge necessary for making wise relationship choices and promoting healthy dating relationships now and in the future.

Relationship Smarts Plus is the curriculum currently in use in the large-scale, five-year federally-funded evaluation in the state of Alabama conducted by researchers Jennifer Kerpelman, PhD and Francesca Adler-Baeder, PhD at Auburn University.

New content in this edition includes communication and conflict management skills, dating violence prevention, identity and future orientation, and a unique approach to pregnancy prevention that educates about the needs of children and the importance of “sequence”, i.e. education, job, marriage before babies.

A new feature of Relationship Smarts Plus is an engaging workbook that gives teens the opportunity to review, to reflect, and to apply what they have learned to their own lives. Another new feature is the “Parent/Guardian-Teen Connection” –  activities which convey core content to parents or guardians and serve as catalysts for critical teen-parent conversations. Most invite parents to add their words of wisdom. Research emerging from the Adolescent Health Study, the SEARCH Institute and others clearly documents the power of parental influence. In fact “parent-teen connectedness” has been found to be the strongest protective factor for adolescents beyond class, race and family structure. Parents are the first and most important teachers even as parents continue to underestimate the influence they have on important teen decisions, like sex. Parents are generally hungry for conversation starters and talking points around issues of teen relationships. These parent/guardian-teen activities help educators, community or faith-based organizations partner with parents to help teens navigate the choppy waters of teen and young adult romantic relationships.

Relationship Smarts PLUS is designed to work well with diverse youth. It is written in a style that is easy for teens to understand and includes “common” teen language. The curriculum is chock-full of activities that employ real-world scenarios created with the help of scores of diverse young people as well as stories from the anthology, The Art of Loving Well.

Lessons:

1. Who Am I and Where Am I Going? Identity & Possible Selves; Friends & Pressure Situations  
2. Maturity Issues and What I Value
3. Attractions and Infatuation.
4. Love and Intimacy
5. Principles of  Smart Relationships 
6. Low-risk Approach to Relationships: Decide, Don’t Slide!
7. Is It A Healthy Relationship?
8. Breaking Up and Dating Abuse
9. Foundation for Good Communication
10. Communication Challenges and Skills
11. Through the Eyes of a Child—Parent’s Relationships Matter
12. Increasing the Odds of Healthy Relationships/Healthy Marriage
13. Follow Your North Star

Becoming Sex Smart

Overview
This unit highlights the social and emotional aspects of sexuality without ignoring issues of health and risk. A starting point is the paradox revealed by surveys and interviews with teens: “more sex, less joy.” That is, in surveys the majority of teens report regrets with early sexual involvement. The unit attempts to shed some light on this paradox by drawing on research regarding sexual satisfaction as well as drawing from the actual experiences of teens and young adults themselves. These lessons aim to build an understanding of true intimacy—it’s a lot more than a physical connection--and a sense of how intimacy is developed. Alongside that we explore the steps of physical intimacy and the escalation of sexual arousal. Teens are engaged in thinking through what each progressive step of physical intimacy might mean. In this context we examine the risks for each step to the heart and to health, and work on defining personal boundaries. The benefits and pleasures of moving slowly through the early steps in a relationship are emphasized. Physiological and hormonal gender differences that factor into the differing ways in which teen boys and girls generally approach relationships and sexuality is frankly addressed. One goal of this unit is to help teens identify what they want in relationships and explore the reasons why “sex-too-soon” is likely not to deliver. The freedoms offered by postponing sex are explored. Teens are encouraged to establish personal boundaries and personal policies on sex and then offered practice in concrete skills and strategies needed to stay true to those boundaries. Content on STDs, risks and protection will be included. The implications of alcohol, drugs, and cultural messages are also addressed. Overall, this unit aims to attend to the heart, soul, and relational issues of sexuality that are too often ignored in sexuality discussions with teens.

Lessons
Lesson 1. Confronting the Paradox: More Sex, Less Joy; Teen Regrets; Who’s Really Doing What? Why Teens Become Sexually Active.
Lesson 2. Is Experience Always the Best Teacher? Challenges of Coming of Age; Unmet Needs and Sexual Involvement.
Lesson 3. Understanding the Paradox: Who’s Having the Best Sex and Why? Six Parts of Sexuality—It’s More Than Physical; Sex-too-Soon and Relationship Development.
Lesson 4. Male-Female Differences: Understanding Each Other; Gender and Sexual Arousal Patterns; Tips for Guys; Tips for Girls.
Lesson 5. The 17 Steps of Physical Intimacy and Defining Your Boundaries; Increasing Steps & Escalation of Desire; Risks to Heart and Risks to Health; How Far Should We Go? Enjoying the Early Steps.
Lesson 6. Pressure Situations and Decision-Making; Real Situations Brought to Life from My So-Called Life.
Lesson 7. STD Facts and Information That Teens Need to Know.
Lesson 8. Skills and Strategies to Adhere to Your Boundaries; Risky Situations, Pressure Lines, Refusal Skills; Mixed Messages & Faulty Assumptions.
Lesson 9. Changing Course & Designing My Personal Policy; Words and Expectations: Get On the Same Page; Gender Specific Growth Challenges.
Lesson 10. Hearing From Older Teens and Young Adults; Some Who’ve “Been There, Done That,” and Those Who Haven’t.
Lesson 11. Culture Pressures: Who’s Pulling Your Strings? Advertising and Media.

Communication Smarts For All Relationships

Overview
This unit is a teen adaptation of the communications part of PREP ® (Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program), one of the leading skills-based programs for adult couples. Twenty years of empirical research on marriage has resulted in a more precise understanding of the patterns that damage relationships, on the one hand, and the patterns that protect and preserve them on the other hand. Equipped with this understanding, researchers have been able to develop intervention programs to teach skills. Indeed, evaluation studies of PREP ® are very promising. Five years after taking PREP ®, couples maintained higher levels of satisfaction with their relationship and experienced one-third to one-half as many break-ups and only one quarter the incidence of physical aggression.

This unit focuses exclusively on the communications parts of PREP ®, which have been adapted especially for use with teens. It offers perhaps the most concise and coherent package of communication and conflict management skills available today. The lessons make teens aware of the patterns that can wreck relationships and then teach a set of skills for reducing, stopping, and exiting from those negative patterns. Teens practice ways to exit escalating arguments, learn how to raise complaints more effectively, and how to counter the “filters” that get in the way of clear communication. They learn a simple “Speaker-Listener” technique to repair their relationships after a fight or to use when talking about difficult or sensitive issues. Also offered are insights and tips for dealing with the issues that tend to “push their buttons.” Finally, a powerful but simple model for problem solving is practiced. The beauty of this skills package is that it is not only research-based, but also transferable to all kinds of relationships—that is, with peers, family, and classmates.

Lessons
Lesson 1. Destructive Patterns in Relationships— Four Danger Signs.
Lesson 2. Skills to Counter Negative Patterns. Time-Outs: A Path Back to Your Smart Brain; Complaints and Gripes—Being Heard, Not Ignored.
Lesson 3. Filters –“I Did Not Say That!” Personality Style and Creative Use of Differences.
Lesson 4. “I Don’t Want To Talk About It” and the Speaker-Listener Technique.
Lesson 5. Issues and Events: What Pushes Your Buttons?
Lesson 6. Clarifying Expectations—Family, Peers, Girl/Boyfriend.
Lesson 7. Problem Solving and Taking Care of Friendship.

Baby Smarts: From the Eyes of a Child

Overview
This unit explores many issues related to pregnancy. Beginning with predictable topics—myths and facts about getting pregnant and the material realities of unplanned pregnancy for the girl and the guy—it expands into a deeper look at the emotional and social impact not only on the teen, but also on the child.

Baby Smarts represents a unique approach to pregnancy prevention in that it attempts to “switch focus” by putting the child’s needs at center stage. In this unit, teens are challenged to consider what being born to young, unwed, and unprepared parents means to a child and that child’s future—in short, to see the consequences from the child’s point of view. And this knowledge has never been more important. A third of babies today are born outside of marriage, and many of those children are not only born disadvantaged, but will carry those disadvantages throughout their childhood and on into adulthood.

The assumption behind Baby Smarts is that greater awareness of what babies need and desire may hold promise in motivating teens to avoid unwed childbearing as well as early sexual involvement. Young people have many misconceptions about the responsibilities of parenting and what it takes to raise children successfully. This unit presents, in activity-based style, what early brain research has confirmed: how nurturing in the first few years of life is critical for physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development. These early experiences can set a child off on a positive path or into a downward spiral.

Within Baby Smarts, teens get a crash course on the developmental needs of children, beginning with the pre-natal period and continuing with attachment, emotional attunement and its impact on early brain development, and on to parenting practices and early socialization. The hope is that this information, conveyed through activities, stories, and structured discussions, will give a greater seriousness to sexual decision-making.

This unit also helps teens explore how and why a parent’s relationship really matters to a child. Why is this important? Go into any high school today and ask kids if teen pregnancy is a bad idea. Some will not think it’s a bad idea, but the majority who do think it is, will say it is a bad idea because the parent is too young, or may not finish school, or may not get good pre-natal care. Rarely will you hear a teen say it’s a bad idea because you’re not older and married.

The growing “disconnect” between marriage and childbearing is not only producing unequal outcomes for children, but it is leading to greater gender, racial, and economic inequality. Not everyone has to get married, but teens need better information to inform their decisions. Young people today are poorly equipped to make wise decisions about partnering, childbearing, and marriage. They have many misconceptions about cohabitation and are woefully ignorant and even misinformed about the economic, social, and personal benefits of marriage. This unit offers an opportunity for teens to examine how unwed childbearing, divorce and destructive marriages, cohabitation, and father absence can impact child well-being.

The aim of these lessons is not so much to look back, but to look forward and instill confidence in teens—backed up by real knowledge and skills. An important goal is to impress upon teens that the quality and stability of parents’ relationships really matter to children, and that children benefit when their parents are older, educated, more mature and settled, and solidly committed to each other. Teens will also learn about the myriad benefits of a quality marriage for adults.

We are lucky to be living at a time when promising tools are emerging from empirical research to help people in their desire to form and maintain quality relationships and marriages. Making young people aware of the information in Baby Smarts may better inform their own choices in the future, such as in mate selection, when to have sex, whether to live together or to marry, whether or not to have a child outside of marriage, and what children need for their development.

Topics Addressed in Baby Smarts

• Myths and facts about getting pregnant: how pregnancy affects a girl’s and guy’s life materially and emotionally; how their relationship, now and in the future, may be affected; or how this may affect each of their separate future love lives.
• A girl’s motivation in “keeping her baby,” contrast her needs with a baby’s needs; explore the young father’s situation; examine child outcomes and risks to babies of young unwed mothers; and construct a foundation for understanding why a parent’s relationship matters to a baby—its existence, its stability and quality.
• Characteristics of good fathering and the unique contributions fathers can make; explore issues of father disengagement; examine the structural situations that favor quality fathering; build awareness of the connection between quality fathering and quality marriage.
• A child’s needs in the first few years of life – the pre-natal period, attachment bond, emotional attunement, early socialization and effective discipline and parenting practices. Learn about findings from early brain research on the importance of early experiences. Learn about links between early experience and later child/adolescent behavior.
• The most profound consequence of sexual involvement—pregnancy. Examine the adoption option. Explore the critical issues and questions that need to be asked about having and raising a child that include parenting and getting smarter about one’s love life. Learn about post-birth relationship realities—whatever the relationship status of the parents. Hear about “do’s and don’ts,” advice for teen parents from young parents who’ve “been there.” This advice addresses parenting and relationship issues.
• Social, cultural, and economic changes in the past thirty years that have impacted attitudes, expectations, and practices around marriage. Compare the differences and similarities between cohabitation and marriage. Look at the research findings on cohabitation. Learn about the findings of thirty years of accumulated social science evidence on how changes in family structure have impacted child outcomes. Look at the personal, social, and economic benefits of marriage (not destructive marriages) that demographic research has identified. Become familiar with the latest research findings on the patterns that destroy or protect relationships and marriages, and the promising skills-based programs that are emerging from it.

Lessons
Lesson 1. Pregnancy—How It Happens; Effects On Him, Her, and the Relationship
Lesson 2. Teen Pregnancy through the Eyes of a Child—Baby Needs and Teen Needs: In or Out of Sync? Young Parents Who Go It Alone; Test Your Baby Smarts
Lesson 3. What About Fathers—Do They Matter? Good Fathering and Unique Contributions; Case of Disappearing Fathers
Lesson 4. The First Few Years Part I—Before They’re Even Born; Attachment and Emotional Attunement; and Insights From Early Brain Development Research.
Lesson 5. The First Few Years Part II—Early Socialization and Parenting Practices; Early Experiences and Child Outcomes
Lesson 6. Decisions About Pregnancy—Ethical and Moral Dilemmas; Adoption Stories; “Keeping My Baby”—Critical Questions to Ask
Lesson 7. Marriage—Does It Really Matter? Part I. Marriage Benefits
Lesson 8. Marriage—Does It Really Matter? Part II. Why Marriage is in Trouble; Is Living Together a Good Idea? Research Findings on Marriage Success and Failure; The Promise of Prevention Education
Lesson 9. Troubled Parental Relationships/Divorce—How Kids Feel; Teen Advice on Dos and Don’ts for Splitting Parents; Troubled Parental Unions and Child Outcomes; Should Parents Stay Together “for the Kid’s Sake”?
Lesson 10. Soul Food—The Power of True Love and Enduring Commitment

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