How to Use the Guide :: C. Home Centered Activities

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The Home-Centered Activity Sheets link the goals of the Texas Prevention Resource Guide: Drug and Violence Education with activities that can occur in the home environment and include the significant adults in the student's life.

• See Goal A. Learn Essential Information for home-centered strategies to reinforce the drug and violence prevention knowledge gained in classroom lessons about drug-related and violence-related issues.
• The home-centered strategies in Goal B. Examine Models and Examples encourage examination of beliefs, attitudes and behaviors regarding drug use and violence by students and adults together.
• Goal C. Acquire Skills and Strategies provides additional opportunities for students and families to reinforce and practice effective communication skills.
• Families can use the Home-Centered Activity Sheets for Goal D-Practice Personal Plan to help guide the student in refining his/her personal goals and decisions regarding a drug free and violence free life.

The Home-Centered Activity pages and the information in the guide additionally serve to support the roles identified in Parenting Training Is Prevention (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991). These roles require that parents look closely at their own alcohol and other drug use, that they become knowledgeable about an array of alcohol and other drug use issues, and most important, that a major goal for their children is succeeding by remaining drug free/violence free.

1. Parents act as role models regarding the use of such legal substances as tobacco, caffeine, alcohol, and such illegal substances as marijuana, stimulants, sedatives, cocaine, and heroin. Parents also act as role models regarding the behaviors that they display in solving problems, resolving conflicts and managing their own feelings. The focus here is on both what parents model in their own alcohol and drug use behaviors along with the ways that they solve problems and resolve conflicts.
2. Parents act as educators or information resources for their children about legal and illegal substances and their likely health and social consequences; ways to peacefully resolve conflicts and handle angry feelings and their physical and social consequences; family histories regarding alcohol/other drug use; family histories regarding the use of violence (witnessed and experienced); and the sale of alcohol and other drugs for personal profit as well as the pro-use messages that emanate from the media, tobacco, alcohol and other drug industries, and poorly informed health practitioners. This multifaceted educational role requires that parents become knowledgeable and that their children learn to turn to them for tobacco, alcohol, and other drug information and for ways to resolve conflicts and problems without violence.
3. Parents act as family policymakers and rule setters for their children regarding the use and sale of tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. The focus is on establishing clear no-use (tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, violence) and no-sale family policies or rules with clear and enforceable consequences for violators.
4. Parents act as simulators of and participants in enjoyable family activities that provide alternatives to boredom or social events involving tobacco, alcohol, other drugs, and violent behaviors. The focus is on helping children engage in healthy activities (including tobacco, alcohol and other drug free parties) as an alternative to unhealthy activities.
5. Parents act as consultants and educators of their children about peer pressure and strategies to resist negative peer pressure. The focus is on helping parents appreciate the power of peer pressure by providing children with resistance techniques.
6. Parents act as monitors of their children's whereabouts. The emphasis is on locating children when they are not at home and being reasonably assured of their safety.
7. Parents act as collaborators with other parents and significant adults in their children's world regarding tobacco, alcohol, other drugs and violence. This involves communicating about social events, monitoring children's activities, and conducting community-based alcohol/other drug and violence prevention projects.
8. Parents act as identifiers and confronters. Parents must have the knowledge base regarding the signs of their children's or other children's tobacco use, alcohol use, other drug use, and violent behaviors. Additionally parents should be equipped with the skills to confront children regarding their behaviors concerning tobacco/alcohol/other drug use and violent behaviors.
9. Parents act as interveners with alcohol and other drug dependent children and in instances where children demonstrate violent behaviors.
10. Parents act as managers of their own feelings about their children's tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use and their children's violent behaviors. Parents must work through these feelings so that they can take productive remedial action.

The intent of the home-centered activities is to empower the significant adults involved in a student's life to participate in the education process. These activities have the ability to develop and/or strengthen the adult/child relationship in ways that enhance both adult and student learning.