The purpose of the Real Love & Real Life: Living the Faith Retreat is to explore God’s special gift of human sexuality and the beauty and wonder of growing up and becoming an adult.
- Audience: It is designed for seventh or eighth-grade adolescents. At least one of the teen’s parents or adult guardians must attend with the teen. Program is delivered by Family Honor adult Presenters.
- Format Options: Either 1 session per week, in the evening, for 3 weeks in a row OR all 3 sessions done on a weekend. Each session is approx. 2 hours. Content includes fun skits, informative PowerPoints, audience participation, and time for parent(s) and your teen to ‘connect’ and communicate!
- Session 3 – special note: If you are a single parent, a mom raising a son or a dad raising a daughter, you may want to ask a trusted adult relative, godparent or close friend who is the same sex as your child to come along with you and your child to Session 3. During this session, boys and girls are separated into same-sex groups for a fertility appreciation talk. Basic illustrations of male and female reproductive anatomy are shown and there is time for a question/answer segment.
Objective and topics for Session 1: (PARENT ONLY SESSION)
Provide focused time with parents to discuss (at an adult level) some of the challenging topics your teen will likely raise with you. Helps you prepare for Sessions 2 & 3 with your teen.
- Encourages and empowers parents in your role as the most powerful influencers in your child’s moral education.
- Equips parents with faith-based and science-based information to assist in responding to teens’ challenging moral questions.
Objective and topics for Session 2: (Parents attend this session with your teen)
Foster an understanding of the importance of effectively communicating within the family the concept of true worth as it comes from God, to help parents develop your children into mature persons in the area of sexuality.
- Examines and practices communication as key to parent-child connectedness.
- Answers the question, “Who Am I?” through the language of the “Theology of the Body.”
- Answers the question, “What is Life For?” through the language of the “Theology of the Body.”
- Introduces the concept of total person sexuality as part of being created in God’s image.
Objective and topics for Session 3: (Parents attend this session with your teen)
Foster an understanding and appreciation for the gift and dignity of our bodies, the uniqueness of each person, and the tremendous potential we have to give life.
- Explains the virtue of chastity as a way to love as God loves.
- PowerPoints: review of male and female fertility / reproductive systems and the special power to give life. To preserve modesty, Dads/boys and Moms/girls are separated into same-sex groups, in different rooms, during the fertility presentation. Although the opposite-sex parent will not be with their child during this one-hour presentation, we strongly encourage both parents to come, since information presented in each group is basically the same. It will give both parents common points of referral in later discussions with their child.
- Answers the typical questions adolescents ask.
- Addresses the meaning of “Real Love” and why some acts fall short of genuine love; helps teens better understand the impact their decisions have on future goals.