Teen Safety

Facilitator Reproducible Self-Assessments, Exercises & Educational Handouts

Being a teen has always been challenging, but today teens face issues compounded by a rapidly changing society and a plethora of technology. These changes require new strategies to teach teens to protect themselves from the challenges they will constantly face in school, the community, and with their friends and family.

Some of the areas in which teens worry about their safety include:

• Risks related to violence, including bullying, exposure to gangs, and harm from guns and other weapons.
• Online dangers including harassment, cyber-bullying, sexually explicit materials, identity theft, financial theft and scams, and agreeing to meet strangers in person after developing online relationships.
• Victimization of crimes.
• Risks while driving in dangerous ways, including driving after drinking or taking drugs, underestimating dangerous road situations, texting or misusing cell phones, and not wearing seat belts.
• Putting themselves in personal danger by pressures to do things they do not want to do, such as experimenting with drugs and alcohol, having unprotected sex, going to unsafe places by themselves, and engaging in risky behaviors.

For teens, staying safe is a much more difficult task than in the past. To help teens sharpen their awareness of the need and ways to stay safe, the Teen Safety Workbook will guide them as they explore situations fraught with danger and face people who may threaten their safety.

During adolescence, teens are eager to press to become more independent from their parents, caregivers, or family. They need to learn to be more responsible for their safety. Whether at home, school, work, community, or online, they must face significant safety hazards and be aware of them. Teen judgment levels are still forming; most are not ready to make adult-level decisions. Teens need to learn that they have the power to keep themselves safe and equip themselves with the tools to overcome dangerous situations.

The Teen Safety Workbook can help teens self-reflect, examine the thoughts and feelings that go into their decisions, and learn practical tools and techniques to stay safe in the future. This book combines two powerful psychological tools for managing unsafe, potentially dangerous thoughts, feelings, and behaviors: self-assessment and journaling.

The Teen Safety Workbook contains five separate sections to help the participants learn more about the choices they have made and the choices they have yet to make in their lives:

• Positive Feelings Scale helps teens explore the negative feelings they are experiencing in life and learn effective methods to express their emotions constructively.
• Healthy Choices Scale helps teens explore how healthy or unhealthy their lifestyle choices are.
• Social Media Safety Scale helps teens explore safe behaviors while texting, chatting, using social media sites, and surfing the Internet.
• Relationship Safety Scale helps teens explore the safety in their family, friendships, and dating relationships.
• Self-Harm Scale helps teens explore the extent to which they deliberately harm themselves in attempts to cope with intense, overwhelming emotions.

This workbook is also available in PDF eBook format, making it simple to store on your computer or mobile device and to access with a PDF viewer. The PDF format allows you to easily print copies of the activities and worksheets during therapy and counseling sessions.

At the end of each chapter, enrichment activities are a third tool for facilitators of teens from families struggling with substance abuse.