Family Living

Please note: This product is a digital file. You will need to download the file to your computer and print it from your printer.

Age Group

Youth

Brief Description

Intersection includes complete resources for teaching both younger and older youth, including learner’s materials, teaching guides, and handouts. The teaching guide is options-based, so teachers can customize sessions to match their favorite approach.

“Family Living”

The teen years are often a big strain on families. There are many factors which contribute to this, such as the growing need for independence; communication; busy schedules; approaching freedom; and responsibilities with cars and college, school and grades, hot tempers, raging hormones, insecurities, fears about the future, the need for acceptance and love, and the list goes on. These factors are issues shared by both parents and youth alike. Put all these things together in a family and you can see how things can be challenging, to say the least. This unit provides an opportunity to help youth explore the concept of family and their contributions to family, focusing on four components that contribute to a Christlike perspective on family.

Because so many teenagers struggle with their identity and their reason for being here on this earth, session one can be empowering and exciting for them. In this session, we explore why God made us and how this influences our typical understanding of family. After understanding God’s purposes for us, we can no longer just think of family as our mom, dad, and siblings. This session illustrates that we belong to a larger family of God and that we are called to treat our neighbors and creation with care, as if they were family. This session challenges and stretches the traditional boundaries of family.

Session two offers another opportunity to build up the self-esteem of young people. Through this session, they can realize that they actually have important roles in the health of their families and in the health of society. In order to help them come to this conclusion, ask them, “What is your role in your family?” Each of us has been given spiritual gifts which are to be used in such a way that God receives the glory.

No one can successfully make it in this world without good communication skills. At a time when so much change and development are influencing families with youth, helping them to communicate better can make a huge difference. The teen years can be full of friendship trials, conflicts at school, bickering between siblings, and even a measure of disrespect between parent and child. Session three offers practical guidelines for healthy communication, providing opportunities for young people to exercise effective communication skills. This session can immediately affect the relationships youth have with their friends, families, and teachers.

Session four challenges teenagers to look at the kinds of commitments they have made and should make with their families. This concluding study is the culmination of and natural response to their exploration of family in the previous sessions. As youth look at their commitments to family, help them not only to look at their immediate family but, as they learned in session one, to look at their commitments to the larger family of God and their commitments to society and God’s creation. This session moves young people to respond in tangible ways to what they have learned about families. This may be the first time youth have consciously made promises regarding their involvement with family. Your teens can continue on their way to becoming people of character and integrity as they commit to treat others with God’s care and respect.

by Tiffani Harris

User License
The purchaser of this file has permission to print twenty copies of this Learners Study Guide. Neither the file nor the printed contents may be sold copied or transferred to another person or church. The purchaser may make a backup copy of the file.

The purchaser of this file has permission to print one copy of this Teaching Guide. Neither the file nor the printed contents may be sold, copied or transferred to another person or church. The purchaser may make a backup copy of the file.