In five or six sessions, parents and caregivers learn specific actions that promote healthy development and reduce risky behavior in the teen years. Home practice and weekly family meetings build family connections and help families apply skills in real life. Guiding Good Choices® emphasizes strong family bonds as the key that motivates preteens to follow family guidelines and stay on a course toward better health and educational outcomes as teenagers.
How GGC Works
Guiding Good Choices gives families information and tools that work to protect preteens and teens from the inevitable risks they encounter as they become more independent. Just as important, families will learn ways to build or maintain lasting relationships, because teenagers who are more closely connected to their families have better health and educational outcomes. At the end of each session, participants learn how to hold a family meeting to share lessons learned or plan some fun family time. This regular time together builds bonds, promotes health, and helps GGC skills become a part of family life.
The Guiding Good Choices Program
The Center for CTC is currently supporting virtual delivery of GGC. Click here for Parent Resources.
In this format, there are six sessions.
Introductory Session
Building a Learning Community
Parents will learn about fostering community while participating in GGC virtually.
Session 1
Getting Started: How to Promote Health and Wellbeing During the Teen Years
Parents learn about the nature and extent of problem behaviors among teens and decide for themselves how they want to prevent problems in their own families.
Session 2
Setting Guidelines: How to Develop Health Beliefs and Clear Standards
Parents develop clear family guidelines and expectations for behavior.
Session 3
Managing Conflict: How to Deal with Your Anger in a Positive Way
Parents learn to manage family conflict in a way that maintains and strengthens bonds with their children.
Session 4
Avoiding Trouble: How to Say No, Keep Your Friends, and Still Have Fun
Children and parents are invited to this session. They learn skills children can use for staying out of trouble and keeping their friends, while still having fun.
Session 5
Involving Everyone: How to Strengthen Family Bonds
Parents learn ways to strengthen family bonds and increase children’s involvement in their family through the teen years. Parents also learn how to create a parent support network.
Four to six years after parents and 6th graders participated in Guiding Good Choices, participating youth, compared to controls, were:
28%
more likely to remain drug free
41%
less likely to use alcohol and marijuana
54%
less likely to progress to more serious substance abuse
Research & Results
Guiding Good Choices (GGC) was developed by University of Washington School of Social Work faculty, Professors J. David Hawkins and Richard Catalano. It has been successfully delivered to families across the United States in school, community, and healthcare settings. GGC was tested in two randomized controlled trials demonstrating positive effects on the wellbeing of teenagers and their families. These effects lasted long after the program ended.
Parent Resources
Here you will find session-specific information and additional resources that will enhance your GGC group experience and learning.
Get the new GGC curriculum materials
Get access to everything you need to present Guiding Good Choices parent workshops, join the larger GGC community, and learn from other GGC workshop leaders in a monthly learning series hosted by master trainers at the Center for Communities That Care.
