Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month (TDVAM)
Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month is about learning how to avoid unhealthy relationships, but also about looking at what makes a healthy relationship. This month is all about communication and learning about red flags and green flags. Relationships are complicated and we often forget to put boundaries in place. Empower your teens this month by breaking down how a relationship should work. Let’s get talking about boundaries, communication, respect, and trust.
“Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others.”
– Brene Brown
What is Teen Dating Violence?
Violence can present in many different ways. It is important to know the different types of abuse, which are emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, digital abuse and stalking. It may be difficult to talk about abuse with your teens, but it is important they understand the different ways abuse can occur.
Some examples of physical abuse:
- Scratching, punching, biting, strangling, choking, grabbing, pulling on clothes or kicking
- Throwing items at you like a phone, book, shoe, or plate
Some examples of emotional/verbal abuse:
- Degrading language, telling you want to do, embarrassing you in front of others, gaslighting you
- Yelling or screaming at you, isolating you from friends and family.
- Damaging your property (throwing objects, punching walls, kicking doors, etc.), threatening to harm themselves to keep you in the relationship
Some examples of sexual abuse:
- Unwanted kissing or touching
- Unwanted rough or violent sexual activity. Refusing to use condoms or restricting someone’s access to birth control
- Preventing someone from using protection against sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
- Sexual contact with someone intoxicated from drugs or alcohol, unconscious, asleep, or otherwise unable to give clear and informed consent
- Threatening, pressuring, or otherwise forcing someone to have sex or perform sexual acts. Using sexual insults toward someone
Some examples of digital abuse:
- Telling you who you can or can’t follow or be friends with on social media. Sending you negative, insulting, or threatening messages or emails. Using social media to track your activities
- Insulting or humiliating you in their posts online, including posting unflattering photos or video
- Sending, requesting, or pressuring you to send unwanted explicit photos or videos, sexts, or otherwise compromising messages. Stealing or pressuring your to share your account passwords
- Constantly texting you or making you feel like you can’t be separated from your phone. Looking through your phone or checking up on your pictures, texts, and phone records
- Using any kind of technology (such as spyware or GPS in a car or phone) to monitor your activities.
Some examples of stalking:
- Showing up at your home or workplace unannounced or uninvited. Sending you unwanted texts, messages, letters, emails, or voicemails. Leaving you unwanted items, gifts, or flowers
- Calling you and hanging up repeatedly or making unwanted phone calls to you, your employer, a professor, or a loved one. Using social media or technology to track your activities. Spreading rumors about you online or in person.
- Manipulating other people to investigate your life, including using someone else’s social media account to look at your profile or befriending your friends in order to get information about you.
- Waiting around at places you spend time. Damaging your home, car, or other property
Why Should We Have Boundaries?
Boundaries are put into place to keep you safe and comfortable. You don’t like to give hugs, make that clear to the people around you. You don’t like sharing your passwords with your partner, make that clear to your partner. Boundaries are not rude. Boundaries are a map for people to understand you better. Sometimes we have to create a road map for where a person can go with us and where they can’t and that is ok!
This month is about empowering teens to use their voice, so let’s lead by example! Show them it’s ok to tell someone no or it’s ok to set a boundary with the ones we care about. When setting boundaries is normalized for young adults they will feel more comfortable doing it themselves especially in romantic relationships.
Therapist Tracy Hutchinson, PhD, says the first step to feeling respected and safe in your relationships is knowing your rights. These rights include:
- To feel safe in a relationship
- To have your privacy and boundaries you have created, respected
- To be heard and listened to
- To feel validated
- To be appreciated and valued
- To respect that the answer “no” means “no”
- To have your needs met
- To be treated respectfully- absence of emotional, physical, or verbal abuse
Hotlines
Call: 1-866-331-9474 or 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Text: Text ‘LOVEIS’ to 22522 or text ‘START’ to 88788
February Recommendations
Please, be wary that this month’s recommendations deal with topics that can be triggering. The topics deal with child abuse and other mental disorders. It is important to bring awareness to these topics, but it is also important to know one’s limitations and boundaries. Please, be safe and take caution in reading and watching these materials.
Everything, Everything
Directed by Stella Maghie
Trigger Warnings: Ableism, Child abuse, Munchausen by Proxy & chronic illness
Maddy (Amandla Stenberg) is a smart, curious and imaginative 18-year-old who is unable to leave the protection of the hermetically-sealed environment within her house because of an illness. Olly (Nick Robinson) is the boy next door who won’t let that stop them from being together. Gazing through windows and talking only through texts, Maddy and Olly form a deep bond that leads them to risk everything to be together, even if it means losing everything.
Pumpkinheads
Written by Rainbow Rowell
Illustrated by Faith Erin Hicks
Deja and Josiah have spent three years as seasonal friends while they worked at the local pumpkin patch. But this is their last year: they’re both college-bound next summer. And Deja has a plan: instead of a maudlin night thinking how much they’ll miss one another, she and Josie are going on an adventure full of excitement, snacks, and maybe even a chance for him to finally meet the girl at the Fudge Shoppe. Shy Josie isn’t sure he’s ready for what Deja has planned, but sometimes, a friend knows just what you need — even when it pushes you WAY out of your comfort zone. This delightful graphic novel by bestselling author Rainbow Rowell and Eisner Award-winning artist Faith Erin Hicks celebrates friendship, love, and nights you’ll never forget.
