Tag: dayahouston

1 in 3 teens will experience some form of physical, sexual, verbal, or emotional abuse by a dating partner and approximately 8.5 million women experienced sexual assault before the age of 18. Teen dating violence, a form of intimate partner violence, is the most prevalent form of youth violence – affecting youth regardless of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status.

Just a couple months ago I was invited out to Austin, Texas to conduct a training for a group of young college-aged women. I began my presentation with the same eye-opening activity I always use  – “Close your eyes and take a deep breath. Now, raise your hand if you either have experienced or know someone who has experienced some form of intimate partner violence. Now open your eyes and look around.” There was not a single hand in the room that was not raised…

After concluding my presentation with the young women, a few came up to me to express how they wished they had the opportunity to learn about healthy relationships before they had started dating. So, here is where you come in – preventing teen dating violence requires a broad coalition of parents, schools, and community organizations to join forces to start having conversations about healthy relationships at an early age.

Here are a few steps you can take to help prevent teen dating violence:

• Become a trusted source for information about relationships – talk about relationships, including difficult topics like red flags, sex, and dating violence.
• Teach your children about healthy relationships – how to form them and how to recognize them. Healthy relationships are built on trust, honesty, respect, equality, and compromise. Children need to hear about what constitutes a healthy relationship and how safe relationships are established.
• Encourage children to be assertive – to speak up for themselves and voice their opinions or needs. Teach and model ways to say “NO!”
• Help children recognize warning signs of an unhealthy relationship – include jealousy, controlling behavior, and other red flags.
• Encourage children to be active bystanders – to take action/give support when a friend is in an unhealthy relationship.

Effective prevention and action has been seen to significantly decrease cases of intimate partner violence in teens. If you are interested in learning more about healthy relationships or wanting to set up a healthy relationships training, please email tishya@dayahouston.org. 

Let’s do our part to decrease the number of hands that go up when asked “raise your hand if you either have experienced or know someone who has experienced some form of intimate partner violence.”