 we're discussing tonight. My name is Francesca Rattray. I'm the CEO of YWCA. I want to begin with our mission, which is to empower women and eliminate racism. All of our programs over the next few years will be aligning behind that mission. We've been working mostly as a community center, which serves a very important need in this community, but we understand that working to change the system of racism and an oppressive system against women is what we need to do. So we're part of the YWCA USA, which oversees a network of 200 associations. Nationally, the YWCA has been working on the issue of violence against women, and each year celebrates or commemorates a week without violence. Last year, as part of a week without violence, the BIDEN Foundation in partnership with the YWCA USA Network came down here and interviewed our own teens about intimate partner violence and other issues. So this is sort of a picking up of what happened last year. Locally, we address the root causes and work to empower women to our self esteem building program, so it's be caretta, and also educating boys about their role in empowering women and being taken care of women and treating them with respect. As a mom of two boys, this is very important to me in modeling good behavior to boys. So over the next few years, we are looking to expand those programs for young women to build self esteem and to build financial literacy so that they can leave relationships if it gets to the point that it is abusive, and also building programs that educate boys and girls. So with that, I want to thank all of my staff who made this evening possible, especially Lily Kasura, who I'm going to turn it over to right now. Thank you again for coming. For being here, we're just very grateful to be able to have this conversation about teen vaping violence and having it in English and Spanish thanks to the city of San Antonio for providing simultaneous translation. That's though over there, and so for our presenters to just be conscious of not reading very fast because there's a lot more Spanish to pack in in the translation. And because teen dating violence is a difficult topic and there's trauma associated with it, the reality is that as you hear the presentation tonight, not that there is anything that necessarily looks obviously triggering about it, but because of trauma, we sometimes hear things and think, oh my goodness, I have I too have experienced that. And so what we wanted to do, we put index cards on every chair. And if you feel like you have a question you wanna ask, which you wanna ask it in private, or if you have a situation you wanna get some advice on, put some information to contact you on it and drop it off in a masquerade here at the end and we'll make sure to take it seriously and get it to someone who can get back to you with some advice. So the purpose of tonight really is education. Survivors have amazing stories to tell. There's a lot of tragedy too that we've witnessed in this situation. Even in our own YWCA here, we had our receptionist who was working for domestic violence several years ago and it's still combative to staff who remember the law police. So we're just very glad you're here, but our purpose tonight very much is to educate about what teen dating violence is and isn't. It's connected to adult domestic violence, but it's also a self-experience. So we're hoping that by the end of tonight's three presentations, we'll have a question and answer session and our goal is that people walk away with a more holistic, comprehensive understanding of what this very important topic is that's so poorly understood in our community and that can help begin the healing process on us. So thank you for your time and I'm going to introduce Jenny Hickson, who is the point person for Metro Health in the city of San Antonio and the Violence Prevention Manager. That's a heck of a title. So thank you. I'm just starting in this room. It's a new goal for this year that's part of our general expansion in it. So one of the tasks that I've worked on over the last few months is doing a community-wide assessment of how we can put together a comprehensive plan to address domestic violence, including teen dating violence for San Antonio. And in doing that assessment, I talked to a lot of people. I talked to several of you in this room as a part of that assessment. And there were two things that almost every person that I spoke to said. The first thing was that we needed more information in the community about how to get help, about the resources that were out there and about what domestic partner and intimate partner violence looked like. And the second thing is that we needed youth programming that everyone saw as a big need that students in schools starting very young needed to get more information about what healthy relationships and what dating violence looked like before they got into their first relationship. From a public health perspective, this makes a lot of sense. My background is maternal and child health, which is an explicitly intergenerational understanding of the way that health works. And I think we all also understand that violence is an issue that is oftentimes intergenerational. And it starts early and it continues on. So teen dating violence is the place where we can intervene and support kids in developing healthy relationship skills in their first relationship. We can really change that trajectory for our whole community. So I'm so glad that you're all here tonight and I brought my son here too as well. I think it's a really important issue for all of us. So thank you so much. Thank you, Jenny. And I just wanted to introduce tonight's panelists because you really are in for a treat. So they're not sitting in the same order as they were on the flyer. But this is Dr. Heidi Rueina in the middle. She's a recently tenured professor in the social work department at UTSA. One of her research specialties is teen dating violence with Hispanic population, Hispanic youth. So very excited about what you're going to share. Patricia Castillo, we all know, Baptist social worker literally been working in this field since 1979 in San Antonio. She doesn't look it, which is great. But she's going to be able to talk about the cultural links, healthy identity formation, and where this fits into what we see as adult domestic violence. So very excited to have everyone here. And this is Kimberly Berry who works at the YWCA as the Mi Kevana coordinator, formerly of the Rape Crisis Center. And she has a really fantastic presentation that she's presented to teens before and also to educators every 10, 20. And I think we're really ahead of the curve with this evening tonight. And I'm very excited about what they're going to share. The format is they're each going to get up and teach their module. And then they're going to sit down, next person's going to start, and at the end we're going to have questions and answers. And again, if there's something you want to talk about but keep it private, feel free to just fill out a card and get it to us and we'll take it seriously. So again, thank you so much. I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Coyda. We have a PowerPoint over here. So I'm very honored to be here. And I just do want to thank William Flora for inviting us and for putting this really meaningful presentation together. I'm happy that you've been here with us for this year. It's a very important topic. So it's a heavy topic potentially. But a lot of my presentations tonight is also going to focus on resiliency, strengths and healthy dating, what healthy relationships can look like and how important they are for youth development. I dated in high school. I had a very long-term relationship. Started dating at 15 and we ended it at age 21. After a lot of what we call churning and meeting, getting back together, meeting the relationship, getting back together. This relationship was very impactful in my life. It's helped me to form my identity. It's helped me to try on new roles and to influence the peer groups that I was part of. One thing that I think I also want us to all take away from tonight is just the importance of relationships during adolescence. So let's get started with the presentation. Okay, so I mentioned that I started dating at 15. But that's not atypical. Actually, most teens date the statistic is really high. Nearly 70% of teens are involved in some sort of romantic or intimate experiences. That's within the past year. So how this sort of evolves is that teens go out and mix sex groups during middle school. They start coming together after having been apart in terms of gender all through elementary school. You may be aware of boys and girls calling each other names, not wanting anything to do with the other sex and then around middle school they start hanging out and mix sex groups. Dias start to form, dating, the coupling starts to happen. Today when we think about adolescent dating we also need to consider online interactions. So peers are a huge part of dating and that's one thing that really differentiates it from later relationships is the influence that peers have on their relationship, how involved they are and how complicated it's become with social media. So for example, someone posting a picture with friends, liking that picture and very easily someone can comment on that jealousy can happen, comment going back and forth in terms of through Facebook, through texting, through many other social media outlets. Teens are usually ahead of us, adults but they find a way to talk. So we wanna think about that and also developmentally Teens are forming their identities so they're looking for more autonomy from parents. They don't spend as much time at home, they don't spend as much time with their family but they also have intimacy goals. So they're trying to balance their new autonomy and being granted more privileges and more time with friends and potentially with romantic partners with the desire for a partnership or something that's real and meaningful. These first romantic experiences, we know how researchers actually do with sheep the individual across the element of adolescence that you've been to early adulthood and they're trying new roles and when I say that, that's part of that information. So today, hookups and friends of benefits and committed partnerships, teams have all different ways of dating and of meeting their types of relationships. I can't even mention my relationships, some relationships are really long-term and long-lasting. When you talk to teams, especially when you give them a survey where they feel like they can answer confidentially, they will tell you that they're very committed to their relationships but they mean a lot to them. These aren't like a puppy love as it's often been stigmatized. And teams want to know more about how to help help their relationships. So I'm really excited to see some teams here tonight in the audience. If you don't mind, could you raise your hand and just let the team, can you let me know? Curious who's in the audience. Okay, how kind of the parents of teams, please, who here works with teams professionally? Is the team interested in learning more about this topic? Or was maybe it dragged through by parents? Okay, great, well I'm happy that y'all are here for all of us because relationship challenges don't just go away after learning a little bit about them during adolescence. But something very unique about the adolescent's brain is that it's actually in a world spirit that's very important. So reaching teams is the perfect time because their brains are flexible. They can learn and they can integrate new behaviors, new ways of thinking easier than we can later in life. One thing that we do need to keep in mind though is that the brain isn't fully developed yet. And what this means for team relationships is that emotions are heavy. They weigh in a lot because the part of the brain that's responsible for rational thinking and weighing emotions with our rational thinking and decision making, that's just not fully developed yet. So emotions are very strong and especially when we look at emotions like jealousy, thinking that a partner may be cheating, peer involved in getting left out, isolation, these are very real and very impacting emotions for you. This also contributes to making breakups extremely difficult. Okay, and a lot of what I'm saying right now is just normative, right? It's for teams who are going through any type of relationship and if there is a break up, that can be really devastating and it's something that contributes to depression and suicidality in many teams. So it's something to be taking seriously. When we get into talking about some violence aspects too, it's a risk factor for potentially more abuse or stalking depending on the context of the situation. And the most common topics in terms of conflict are jealousy and cheating. We can see that that's part of adolescent development very in school all day with their partner and so many other teams, right? It's not really any context. They might be their boyfriend in the hallway walking with another girl. What does that mean? What does that mean to the team? What kinds of emotions are solicited by that? Okay, so it's very common for teams to have some conflict and have some discussion around things that are bothering them in the relationship. I'm gonna go over now those qualities. I'm also gonna talk about conflict here in a minute and talk about communication because these are characteristics that we know are red flags for abusive relationships. Slapping, hitting, shoving, choking, any kind of physical violence like that. Hair pulling and throwing things is common as well. Yelling, name calling or put downs, probably that's the communication aspect and it contributes or could be even defined really as emotional abuse or psychological abuse to so far we have physical, also emotional or psychological gossiping about a dating partner. That's a type of violence that we study uniquely in adolescence as a relationship violence, trying to hurt someone's reputation during a time when reputation is so important. Excessively jealous and possessive, controlling how a dating partner dresses or acts, ignoring or giving someone a silent treatment, unwanted or pressure touching or sexual activity. Okay, then there's a long list but these are some of the behaviors we should look for. It's also important to know what a healthy relationship looks like and to, again, realize that these relationships are also common in adolescence and that relationships typically aren't defined by either unhealthy or healthy, right, that they have characteristics of both which is why it's really complex to be a teen in a relationship especially when complex exists and escalates or when there's violence. So some traits of a healthy relationship are assertiveness, understanding, trust. Trust is a big one for teenagers. Fighting fair, which I'll talk about here in a second, problem-solving, negotiation and compromise. Anger controls also is something that we see a lot in the research contributing to escalating arguments and being a role model. Okay, do you mean that? I don't think that there's a perfect couple in the room or really in the closet, across the cloak, right? We're trying to love our friend better, essentially. So this is speaking calmly and warmly. I have a lot of time for arguments can start with what we call first startup which is straightening with an insult or what somebody's not doing right, something that we're upset about but bringing things to light in a calm and respectful manner. It helps when we take time to relax. We want to be specific with one issue instead of what we call dumping, which is bringing a whole bunch of issues to the conversation. We want to focus on solutions, okay? Compromising solutions. And especially in teens, this is something that we really want to work with teens on and value is the building of their friendships and considering friendships as the building block for romantic relationships. We know this from both marital research and research with teens that we want much more positivity in the relationship than negativity. The golden rule is five times as much positive interaction as negative. Don'ts, talk about an issue while you are very emotionally upset. That's a huge, huge issue. I think don't, don't bring up old issues. Focus on who's to blame or use sarcastic or insulting remarks or threats or other forms of violence. Okay, and I bring these up in the context of some of my research. I did a study recently where we recruited teenage couples, my Mexican American couples to be video teams discussing areas of conflict in their relationships. So they got to decide what are the top two areas of conflict? What do you fight about essentially? And then seven minutes on camera, one teen, seven minutes on camera on the other teen's issue, right? They spoke 14 minutes about their conflict. And when we analyzed that data in terms of what they were talking about in the context and how they were towards each other in terms of verbal aggression, poking some of your youth in the pencil on the table, boundary, crossing. The biggest thing that we saw and we were able to link this then to couples that also answered that they had unhealthy relationship dynamics and violence in many cases. Musics are sarcastic or insulting remarks. Okay, calling each other name, giving each other the silent treatment. But those behaviors were evident even in a video-taped interaction. You might think that they would be themselves on video, but actually you leave them in there a minute and I was knocking on the door and saying, okay, we'll type it up and they were still talking, still working things out. So, if you're a practitioner and you have a team that comes to you or a parent, especially right now I think it's so important to be thinking about screening for types of violence because right now I'm talking a lot about communication and that's because that's part of situational violence, it's the term that we use in research, situational meaning that it's not necessarily patterned control, patterned types of fear. We are gonna talk about that a lot tonight. That's partly why we're bringing this to the forefront. What we see here though are risk factors that a team, an individual brings to the relationship plus relationship conflict and stress. This is the formula for what can happen in situational violence which is essentially out of control fights, okay? These are often mutual, which is a, I think something that a lot of individuals don't understand about out of lesson dating violence is how it can be different is that both teams often are going at each other and you know in physical ways with emotional threats and emotional abuse purposefully making a partner jealous, negative tone. So we see this with both boys and girls. I'm sure you can picture this in your mind if maybe you have some experience with us in our relationship where teams don't have the communication skills and the emotional recognition to be able to handle the real easy conflict in a respectful way or to exit the conversation and take the time out that they need to take. Technology can contribute to this and interestingly when we look at research there does tend to be a power imbalance with situational violence often favoring the females. So more research is needed on that but I'm just gonna leave it to you from, again we'll begin here, emotional violence is the strongest predictor of physical violence meaning it goes from verbal to physical, okay? So I'm gonna give you an example because I think this is so telling of two individuals who were in the last they were being recorded a couple obvious of the course to protect their identity. Age 17 born in Mexico, Christina age 17 born in the US, okay, but both identifying as Mexican-American. They've been dating or going out for two years. Not a lot of teens even say going out anymore it's hard to stay on top of the trends. And their chosen conflict issues were jealousy and a partner avoiding talking about difficult issues, okay? They're here at the lab and they need to talk about it. Javier said, I try to talk to you and you just like hang up on me. How am I gonna try to talk to you if you're just gonna hang up on me? Christina said, will you do the same thing? Javier said, why are you trying to flip it against me like that? We're just trying to like talk about it. Christina, see what I just did different right now? You do that to me all the time. Why are you trying to like you're still doing it? So you can hear them kind of talking over each other? Christina, I know that I'm just telling you Javier but I'm just like, Christina, I know that I'm just telling you you don't have to get pissed off, Javier. You don't have to get defensive. I'm not getting pissed off, Christina. I'm not getting defensive. I'm just telling you. Okay, so you can see how there wasn't, so there were solutions up right there or mutual problems helping it kind of just find out and to anger about the issue and an ability to make some progress on the issues. And again, that verbal aggression when we could see that on the camera and then we also talked to team-credivist or focus groups and we did over 300 surveys, excuse me, we were able to look at all these data together and see how these types of interactions are predictive of violence in the relationship. Intimate terrorism, this is something different. This is really important to understand that these two types of violence situational and intimate terrorism don't share overlap because they certainly can and they can start out this situational and become what we call intimate terrorism. But this is where one partner asserts control over the other, threats and intimidation and isolation. This is where we see typically one-sided, male-dominated relationships. There's a power differential there and where the violence is directed towards females. This often also is contextualized by sexual control. More severe forms of violence like the life-threatening, this is the type of violence that can escalate to homicide. And also where breakups put the couple at risk for future, for further abuse or stalking so that our females are able to leave or break up and then actually escalate and make things very scary. Okay, so I do think our other presenters are gonna talk about that specific type of violence and their experiences. I'm gonna continue to talk a little bit more about adolescent dating relationships and dating violence in general. So of those 70% of teens that I mentioned were dating, 80% had experienced physical violence. Okay, we don't know the context of that because this is a nationally representative survey so we're looking at teens from all over the United States. And we know that oftentimes it's reciprocal when it is situational. So most of the time it is situational and about 70% of violent episodes are within situational context. 11% of females have been forced to have sex. Sexual violence is a different, it's its own thing, okay? We look at sexual violence typically that is male, aggressor, foreseeing or really foreseeing a female to go further than she wants to sexually. It's pretty sad that most of the time when females first have sex it is under pressure, okay? And again, many others are forced to do sexual things. All right, emotional abuse is also really common. We see that anywhere from 50 to 80% of teens use some form of emotional abuse. And again, that type of fighting that's really reflective of the more communication field. Okay, so what are the risks? What puts a teen at risk for experiencing dating violence? Well, the biggest one is exposure to violence. We see exposure to violence in our homes, we see it at school with our peers and we see it in the community. Parent-child aggression, okay? When parents and children are experiencing aggression using a parent to child, that's when we wanna think about how we're gonna take it. We want to use what's called authority to parenting. And it's kind and it's warm, but it also sets boundaries and monitors the teen, talks to the teen, knows what's going on. Acceptance of violence is another huge predictor. Okay, when we're seeing violence all around us, it can be the norm. It can be just what's expected or what we see. Trait anger, meaning again, emotional escalation, it is often what attributes the situational violence and when a person comes into a relationship and has anger is a really big part of what they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis, that is a match to the relationship. Okay, poor anger management or communication. Also, there's some demographics. LGBTQT youth are a higher risk that they're due to have disabilities. Oftentimes, situational violence happens when teens are using drugs or alcohol, especially alcohol, okay? And within Hispanic culture, we do see that alcohol use is more permissible at earlier ages. So, family barbecues, boys especially getting together and partaking of alcohol earlier is just more society acceptable within that culture, but it's also highly normative across other ethnicities. Also, highly oriented traditional gender norms, open arms are fine. That doesn't necessarily predict any kind of violence, but when those gender norms are so rigid that the male has a certain role or has certain roles and capability there, that can be a risk for violence, okay? More time in the United States. So, teens who have just immigrated, they have less likelihood of experiencing violence in their romantic relationships. The longer they're here, the United States, the higher their risk. Okay, another risk for dating violence. All right, so there's that help to love her or protect you who may experience violence. These are more fun to talk about. Adaptive, much useful. This really is not what we simply think about when we think about much useful, okay? But there are adaptive and positive aspects of much useful that we can be fostering in our way. So, there's more of our research coming out around this. But boys are oftentimes problem solvers in their relationship. They're emotionally there for their girlfriend or their partner, and that hasn't received as much attention as the negative points of what she feels. We would encourage leadership with our boys and girls. We want to encourage role study. We want to encourage emotional intelligence, okay? Family wisdom from Balinese school. Strong sense of ethnic identity to buffer the acculturation stressors or having those United States. There's a lot of stress that comes along with that. Anyway, religiosity, that's especially when it's personal to the youth, a little different than kind of going to church twice a year or when you get a drag there. But it can become internalizing, become self-esteem and self-advocacy, sports after school activities with peers, and it was mentioned earlier that having more programming for you that can be a really big asset to teachers. Okay, when they come to us, we want them to come to us, don't we? We want to be there and have these conversations so that they can prevent further abuse that's already taking place or prevent abuse at all. But what we know is that most teams, 86% around 90% talk to a friend. That's who they're gonna go talk to, okay? Before they talk to an adult. And they have to perceive that the abuse is very strong or very severe because they're there before they'll talk to an adult. But they know about each other's relationships. So I just wanna end my presentation with some tips for peers, for parents, and for practitioners to understand that it's now learned to resolve complex peacefully and it doesn't take work. Want to, they know that I'm involved with it. We want to encourage our friends to get help, okay? We want to be a peer mentor, so someone in the school, someone in our, learn to recognize the signs of the abuse and well and to seek help immediately. So on behalf of our friends, if there are some issues of work and concern about intimate terrorism, that type of violence, where they could be hurt and we wouldn't want that to happen. Our school also about starting and helping the relationships program for all teams. How to have all the relationships and they're looking to you. So talk to them often and model those good relationships skills for them. Set helping parameters for teams technology, meaning when can they use technology, how should they be using technology and have those conversations. Understand that team's goals, I think this is a big one, are often to stay in their relationship and to work it out, even if there has been violence. They care about their partners. These are meaningful relationships, just like adult relationships are. The same feelings if you do a brain scan on the team, the same parts of the brain are lighting up with strong emotion, connection and wanting to commit to the partnership that we create at all. So understand that they want to work it out. Even in violent relationships, if they feel supported, they share intimate details of their lives with each other and are best friends. My favorite one, because I like to advocate for school days programming because it's where we can meet all teams. It's where all the teams are and we use the universal programming every time you get some prevention services. That's where we can find them. And earlier, the better. Teams are dating in middle school. The school counselors, nurses, social workers, y'all are at the front line. So if a team doesn't go to get help, it's to one and y'all, okay? So you want to learn about the different context of violence and how to screen. What type of violence is happening here? Is this appropriate to teach communication skills and anger management? Or is this more of a situation where safety is an immediate threat? We always want to do safety planning. That's the first thing that we want to be thinking about with any team in a violent situation. We want to stay with and support that team through the whole process, right? It's not a one-time thing. It's not something where we give them a resource or we give them a flyer or we give them a talk. And this is so hard because there are so understaffed in schools. There might be one social worker for so many teams. So we want to find ways as a community. That's part of what we're here to do tonight is to come together around this and to figure this out, how can we better stick with teams throughout the whole process. And be sure that everyone is trained in trauma and trauma practices because many teams are experiencing trauma. They have experienced trauma coming into their relationship and that can have a huge impact that we want to be thinking about. How can we train everyone, even the janitors in our schools, right up in our schools, how to work in a way that is sensitive to trauma and that is punitive and disreunforces power and control over that team. Also, just a few programs that I know some research right now called the 4th R. That's a relationship program and so far it has some really great outcomes in terms of preventing violence and also helping you to communicate and to prevent violence. Also, love notes and relationship smarts plus, these are the Dible Institute, if you want to look those up, those are also evidence-based schools. We do want to think about couples, groups, or individual counseling. Couples, counseling, we want to think about whether there are safety concerns or whether we name a couple together to mask some of the issues going on. So individual counseling is recommended in group or for just having teams support one another and be able to talk about it more generally. This is one of my final plans and it's advocacy for policy around team-dating violence prevention and intervention because 19 states out of 50 have a state mandate around what schools are supposed to be doing with team-dating violence and Texas is one of those states. Our policy, and this is word for word, urges or requires, you can see the ambiguity there, each school to have a team-dating violence policy. What's an team-dating violence policy? It says, how are we gonna handle situations of violence? Are we gonna have a plan for moving a child or moving a team out of the classroom, out of the school so they don't have to be in the same context as their abusive partner, okay? This should be a policy that's available to parents and Spanish and in English that outlines what's happening at the school in terms of what are the programs going on, schools move to work with teams around healthy relationships. So I did a study on this and surveyed all of the school districts and I could get a hold of it in San Antonio so I would be able to survey schools representing over 84,000 youth here in San Antonio and looked at this policy. Do they have one? Is it posted online? Is it in Spanish? How accessible is it? And what does it say? And sadly, we're not really doing a great job with that. It's very difficult to find a team-dating violence policy in any of the schools and when there are two-dating violence policies, they're not very clear because of what. So teams, you know, talk to your school, talk to your teachers, your social workers and your principal at a school. What is our dating violence policy here? You know, that's one way that you can support your peers as well. Okay, so I'm gonna end there. We have another meeting presentation tonight that you're welcome to contact me at my phone number. In terms of everything that young people in our communities are facing and how unfortunately, sometimes if we're not careful and puts young people in danger, in dangerous situations, especially if they don't know what the signs look like, what the behaviors are indicators of, what put somebody in a situation, share of this type of behavior, which is something that often this works since 1979. When I started doing this work, I was a little green social worker working at the Bear County Women's Bar Association clinic to see lawyers where women who were in violent relationships, right? And then from there, I went to go work as a community organizer and I would be knocking on people's doors in the east side where I was working. That was just, you know, my area, or somebody with a black eye would open the door or a busted lip or a bruised cheek and, you know, me being, and they would tell me when, you know? And so I got to see how prevalent it was. And then from there, I went to work at the Better Women's Shelter and we need to quit calling it the Better Women's Shelter, right? Okay, when you Google Better Women, so that's not a good, that's not a good thing. Who are being abused, right? It's not, it's, you know, it tends to, you know, make fun of it, right? And we're talking about serious things, right? People who are being abused. And Lely taught me that and I'm very appreciative of that, Lely. She opens my eyes to a lot of different things and that's what we need. We need to be helping each other to learn about these things, right? And so from there, I went to go work at the, at the Better Women's Shelter, I mean, at the shelter for women who are victims of violence. And I really learned a whole bunch of stuff there because the women who I was serving were my greatest teachers, right? And then I went to go work at the jail. I went to run the match program and the jail and that's a program for women. If you go to classes then you earn contact time with your kids. So I worked there a couple of years and then I went to go work at SAPD and guess what? When I got to SAPD and at the jail, I started running into the women and the daughters and the granddaughters of some of the people that I had worked with at the shelter. So I got to see the legacy of family violence, of relationship violence, where the kids were learning that behaviors that they saw in their families of origin. And so that's why this issue is so important and so critical that if we don't recognize how this can be a learned behavior that we pass on from generation to generation then we're never gonna finish, right? We're never gonna do something about this, right? We're not gonna be able to make a debt, okay? So it's important that in all of this also, just as Dr. Greta said, we've got to look at how cultura plays a part in all of this, right? So I think of examples of cultura like in my family, she brought up the whole thing about familismo when my family and familismo was very important, right? Like, you know, we had the hierarchy, right? With the father on top, right? And then the power came down this way, right? From my father. But honestly, in our form of familismo, my mom was lajeva, right? She was the boss, right? My mom was the boss, but she made my dad look like the boss all the time, right? And so my dad would have his place on top of the hierarchy and he looked like he was the boss but really, she's the one that ran everything, right? And so we believe in those kinds of structures, right? But in some structures, that is really authoritative and it can turn into something abusive and it can turn into something violent, right? When somebody has that position of power where it's unchecked power, where it's unquestioned power and then that behavior gets modeled and passed down to the boys and the girls in our families, right? And so I got to see both. I got to see my dad as the hardworking man who loved us and would give his life for us because we were his children and I also got to see my mom who in her quiet, shy voice pretended like she was just the little wife when really she was La Eva, right? And so she ran everything. But still it wasn't the strong foundation that we familia, right? That's what made up the strong foundation that we familia and unfortunately though in some families' home we pass on those negative behaviors, right? Where the children are the property of the parents and that's not good, you know, when the children are the property of the parents because then the parents might come from a mindset that they can do whatever they want with those kids, right? Because you know, you've heard that saying, right? I brought you into this world, I'll take you out, right? Give me out, you know, that's not a good thing, right? But, and it speaks to the whole thing about violence and how violence is allowed. And one of the things that we're trying to do also to start young with our young kids is to talk about how disciplining our children cannot involve. There we're planting the seeds of violence. When we hit our children, we have to communicate, you know, because our words and the way we deliver our words is much more powerful and much more effective than slapping somebody because they did something wrong. And so we have a campaign called Love and Respect the Relationship and it's about how parents raise children and whether or not, you know, we should be hitting our children. We already know from science, from studies, from research, from everywhere where we know that when children are hit by their parents, especially by their parents, especially at a very young age, you're affecting their brain development. And it's a brain that becomes developed and trained by trauma, right? And we really have to look at approaches and rethink them for the sake of this next generation that's coming up. And if we were to stop hitting our children right now, that we've never known before because all of us have been raised with a lot of hitting at least, most of us, I would say, because when I talk to people, everybody tells me, hey, my parents beat the crap out of them, scratching a little bit beyond the surface, you start finding out all the problems those people have, right? You know? And people tell me, well, you know, your parents hit you and you turned out okay. They didn't get to say, we've been setting the tone and putting forth an example for our kids that would be completely different, right? Based on communication, based on relationship building, based on those assets of our history, right? And helping our children learn about themselves and learn who they are and learn their values and their traditions and their dreams and their beliefs about all kinds of faith, about love, relationships, about education, about, you know, being involved in your community. I mean, all of these things that, you know, we don't take the time to talk to our kids about, and then they don't even know if our kids discover themselves, learn about themselves. You know, what's their history? What's their, you know, what country is their family lying from? You know, what was their great-grandparents' jobs and what were they about and what did they do and how did they accomplish that? And, you know, but we don't talk about it anymore. Some kids don't even know what their mom's favorite color is, what her favorite color is. You know, and do they know their mom's bells? And so that's the kind of foundation we gotta be talking about in terms of our kids and what we want them to turn out to be like. And then to hopefully fulfill them having good, healthy, strong, productive relationships for themselves and their futures, right? And so we just wanna challenge us to really talk about how do we, you know, engage community to be engaged with their kids and teaching their kids and helping their kids discover themselves and who they are and forming their identity, right? Because otherwise, you know, we're gonna be fostering relationships that are based on ignorance and a lack of information and a lack of understanding of how relationships are supposed to work. And, you know, then really, you know, what we turn into is just a series of hookups, just a bunch of hookups, happy moments for somebody, but I think, you know, I would like to see young ships that are about respect and communication, benefits and mutual love and, you know, getting to know each other and getting to, you know, live life together, right? So what, like, I think about music, think about music in terms of our culture. What are some things in music that we've seen that, you know, kids are this, oh my God, no wonder the kids are so jacked up? Think about the kind of music kids listen to, right? And, because we all worked at the shelter, I'm not all the women that I work with at the shelter and there was this one song that said, mette me tres balazos en la frente, pero no me dejo. And that translates into, you know, you can shoot me in my head three times, but please just don't abandon me, don't leave me, right? And those are the kinds of songs, you know, that we would sing and that we would, you know, achar gritos to ha, ha, ha, enjoy ourselves, right? So I mean, those are horrible, just as bad now, right? And we gotta think about the role of cultura and how it shapes our kids and how it makes us, you know, our kids think about themselves and think about the people around them. And that's just one thing, right? And so, we gotta think about how cultura then can either hurt us or it help us, right? What are some of the ways that our cultura can hurt us? Okay, so we, like I remember my mom when I was a kid, she would tell me, you know, and I'd be like, you know, okay, it's like, you know what this is, they don't, you know what this is. That's right. They don't, you know what this is, you know what this is, you know what this is. Okay, so in her family, she grew up, you know, saying that women are supposed to be obedient to the men. Period, that's it. And women belong in the house, right? And do work in the house, right? But she stood up to that and didn't buy into it, right? And those are some of the ways that cultura can hurt us, right? If you buy into it and you just accept it and, you know, don't question it or don't challenge it, right? I think it's real important too, is that we recognize that we are the creators of cultura, cultura, nosotros, we are the creators. Every day, with everything that we do and how we do it, right? So we make those decisions about how we're gonna act and how we're gonna be. And so we can decide to be different. We have that choice. And I don't think we think about that enough. Then we have the right to change our cultura, to make it be different and to benefit us in a much more effective way than what we have up to now. And so when we don't know ourselves, the other thing that happens is that we become vulnerable to somebody coming in and telling us who we are and what we're about. And what we should believe. And what we should like or not like, right? And so it's important for us to do that for ourselves first so that we know what our standards are and who we are and what we're about and not have to just let everything fall by the wayside when we fall in love and let somebody else make decisions for us, okay? And so that way is the easy way, certainly it's the easy way, but maybe that other person is not gonna have our best interest in mind. And that's the thing that we've got to be concerned about, right? And sometimes it might feel good for somebody to say, And we romanticize that, right? We say, oh, how sweet that he wants me to be really close to him. Or he wants us to spend time together just being him, right? When really what they're doing is isolating you. And if you don't know that, I guys in a drama, right, we fall into that trap. And so we really have to be knowledgeable and aware of these things. Otherwise, you know, and parents are in a position to teach that to our kids, right? But parents have to be schooled first also. I'm so glad that Heidi also brought up in Texas, you know, the student health advisory councils, what they call the SHACs. Inside the public school systems, those are the entities that are in charge of deciding how much of this, you know, prevention and education information gets delivered at the schools. And so for parents that might be interested in talking to somebody at the schools, you have to go through the SHAC, okay? The student health advisory committees. And they're the ones that are responsible for deciding how much this information gets into the curriculums and how often it gets to deliver it and all of that, okay? And the other thing that we've got where we have a lot of substance abuse, right? And sometimes when young people get caught up in situations of abuse and violence, one of the ways to escape is through substance abuse. And if you have a family where this pattern is already established, then it's even much easier to fall into that trap of coping and numbing yourself and not dealing with your problems by way of substance abuse. And then you might end up in a situation of abuse and violence where your partner will make sure you do drugs or you drink in order for them to be able to control you, dominate you and do whatever they want with you, right? And so that too is part of our community and our cultura that I think makes us vulnerable in San Antonio and Bear County is that we tend to abuse drugs and alcohol a lot here. And to me, that's another sign that our community needs a lot of healing because there's a lot of us that are the walking wounded and we need a lot of healing and we need a lot of support. Be sure that we are not embarrassed to seek that help and that healing, that solution that we so need and don't be embarrassed and don't be ashamed and turn to each other for information. So please, if any of you do need to talk to somebody or want some information, don't forget about those index cards and putting them in the little basket up here because we would love to return those phone calls and help the community out. So I'm gonna stop there, thank y'all so much and I'm gonna turn it over to Kimberly. I'm about to make a thank so far only thing for older teens. It is very much important to talk about healthy relationships at a really young age because I was 12 years old the first time that I, well, my best friend was in a dating-private relationship. That's really young. And when I talk to parents about this, they're shocked. But working with teens, I see this a lot. And so I don't want us to forget young teens because we don't know what they're experiencing either directly or in my case indirectly. A lot of teens that I talk to will say, well, my friend. And they're honestly talking about a friend, right? But that's something that they can deal with that still affects them that can be traumatic for them even if they're not directly affected by this. So I just want us to look at it for the parents' benefit. So when we're talking about violence, it is cyclical and then it is really hard once you realize you're in a violent situation to get out of it. There is that old question of why don't you just leave, right? If you really don't like it, why don't you just leave? I don't understand. A lot of people don't understand. It's complicated. So I like to throw this up here to see a visual of abusive relationships. As Heidi was saying, it's not all bad. Because if it was 100% bad, no, we would be like, I don't need it, right? I don't want to put up with it. But there's a lot of good stuff that also comes out of these relationships, which makes it really difficult. So relationships always start off great, right? If on the first date, your boyfriend or girlfriend punches in the face again, you're not gonna go back to them. So it's a really good relationship in the beginning, which we call the honeymoon phase, okay? So the honeymoon phase right here is all the time. The first date is the second date, the third date is the fourth date, right? The surprise when they're longer or their notes, things like that, it's awesome. But then something happens at some point where it starts to get tension building. Intention building can be a myriad of things that all of a sudden the other partner starts to use some power and control. So maybe they're phoned by breaks, right? And the partner is like, okay, your best friend texts you. And they're like, why are you looking at my phone for it? Wait, you don't trust me, right? You're getting really defensive. And that tension building can start. Where that partner that was instantly just telling you that their best friend texts you is now kind of getting uncertain about what they can do, right? Or how to talk to you about certain things. Because to them it was something really innocent, right? So that tension is building and it all we've been in an explosion phase, okay? So this third part, where there's gonna be that violence. And that violence is actually really small. And that's why it's so hard when teams are in relationships and they're experiencing dating violence because they'll tell me it just happened that okay, it happened three times, but it's been a while, right? They'll kind of make excuses because it's really short. They've been dating maybe six months and just now they've had a really big fight where they push them or they sell these things. But they're noticing that it quickly happened again, a fight happened again. And so the hard part is that fight, they only last 30 minutes, maybe an hour. They say, I'm sorry. The hard part is that sorry is usually a blame. I'm sorry you've gotten so upset that I yelled at you. I just felt like an I'm sorry. Well, you know, I was having such a bad day and just the way you were talking to me, again, that's not really an apology, that's all excuses. And that's the big thing that I try to work out with teams all the time. Well, how do you resolve that fight? And I always hear excusing apologies. I don't actually see rewards or genuine apologies, which I really want or I really try to work with them and recognize it, right? If your boyfriend or girlfriend says, but you were doing this and you made me angry and that's why I yell, no, I want to hear another apology, because that one really good, right? You can't blame someone for something as you're apologizing for it. And that's a big thing that I work on with teams understanding resolutions because arguments happen all the time, right? I was over here saying, no relationship's perfect. And so I do tell teams all the time that even though you're fighting, it doesn't come being your inner vital relationship, but it's what that looks like. And so after that fight, it goes, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm in a happy place, right? Let's go on a date, I'll make it up to you, I'll leave you behind, and it just keeps going. This cycle keeps going and denial is a big factor that fuels this cycle. It doesn't happen that often or they didn't really mean it or you know, I really love them. And so it's really difficult. Outside perspective, you get to see it like a TV show and you're like, yeah, leave me. But when you're in it, there's a reason why we say love is blind, right? It's really hard. When you really care about someone, you don't abandon them necessarily. You almost want to fix them. And that's what breaks my heart in the past two years of doing this. They always just want to fix their partner. They're like, I don't want to leave them because I like them, but I want to change this. I don't like this. I don't like that they use me as a punching bag, but I want to be there for them because they're going through a lot of home and I understand what they're going through. And so that's hard too. They're kind of putting that in themselves. Last or second, right? In that relationship. And partnership I was telling people, if anyone at any point is feeling like wants to win in fights, which you never win any, right? That's an imbalance of power. And that's when relationships can become abusive. So different parts of dating violence. One that I see a lot and that we don't talk about is emotional violence. Because emotional violence is something you don't see, right? Like the black guys, you see those. You see the scratches and bruises where people ask and that's why you hide it. You don't want that attention. With verbal abuse, no one sees it. So we don't have to talk about it, right? They can post on their Instagram or Facebook all the cute anniversary pictures, but then you don't know when it's just them two. They're getting talked down to. They're getting told, well, who are you gonna be with? How long are you gonna be there for? What are you gonna do afterwards? When are you gonna text me? That's a lot, right? And when I talk about that, a lot of teams are like, yeah, you know. I have a partner that made jokingly put me down and embarrassed me from my friends. And again, they're kind of making those excuses of their jokingly doing this. But if they really care about someone, are you gonna embarrass them? Are you gonna put them on the spot all the time? You know, make fun of them at their expense all the time? Maybe still would, to a degree. But in a partnership, that shouldn't be so. A big thing I see with verbal abuse is the control of dictating what they wear or the hangout with. I see that constantly with teams, okay? So I really want parents on the river to hear this. If you're hearing your daughter or son talk about like, well, you know, I'm gonna go to a student, I'm sorry, I'm standing in the house of a street cop team that I've been talking about for a while, right? Like, she used to come over all the time. Oh, well, you know, now that we're together, she doesn't really want us hanging out, right? All the time. Jealousy is a big thing, introvertationship. And because teams are still learning how to do this, their jealousy is telling them, I'm gonna isolate you. Even though they're not literally telling them to isolate them, they're still uncomfortable. They don't want to lose their partner so bad that they're telling them, don't hang out with them. I've had plenty of girls tell me that their boyfriend told them that they can't talk to any boys at school. Any boy? I was like, so what do you do when you come? This is where they kind of laugh and like, yeah, my friend does sound ridiculous because that shouldn't be the case. But they're just so insecure about them or they are, that relationship that they think that like, I don't want to lose them, so I'm gonna hold them super tight, right? And that's something that we get so nervous about. But as we learn through adulthood, adulthood through experience, we realize if we really care about that, we have to let them be them, right? And that's where trust comes into play, right? Whenever there's jealousy, I always say, well, there's not trust in that relationship. If there's really not much jealousy, there's not that much trust. There's jealousy in natural. I tell people that all the time, because they'll be like, Miss, I'm crazy, I'm jealous. No, jealousy is totally natural. But how we control our jealousy is really important. Okay? If you see your partner walking with them where you're on the hallway, right? That's a big one. They'll get jealous, right? Because you're like, hey, I wouldn't be there talking to my boyfriend or girlfriend in the valley. But how do we deal with that situation? Some of them like, stop up in this situation and be like, well, who are you on the boyfriend or girlfriend? And they try to be really territorial. And I tell them, you're basically like, peeing all over them and saying like, my partner can't talk, I talk for them, right? You're not really giving them agency or letting them be your own person. That's not a healthy relationship, okay? Same thing with dictating what they wear. I see that a lot with girls, okay? Where their partner will tell them, those pants are too tight on you and I don't like it, right? Where that crop top you're wearing, I don't like it. And when I work with girls, I tell them, ask your partner why? Because really what a boy will sound to is they're insecure that you might leave them from someone else, right? Because my girlfriend looks so good in that crop top, I'm worried that some guys are gonna go ask her out. Okay, but if there's trust, then that random single guy that goes up to your girlfriend and asks her out, she'll be like, no thank you, I have a boyfriend. Simple as that, right? But that's stuff that we really didn't learn. And we don't always see from our family, right? That's a big thing. One of the things I was talking about, we learned that from our family. A lot of times in families where the husband made their wife wear circle-length, right? Or where they feel like their good wife will cover up. Even though they might admit they really want to, right? They didn't even look really good in this one dress, it's really tight. But then they feel like they're not being good girlfriend or wife if they're doing this. And this is where a lot of manipulation comes from. And this is the hard part because that's like in a brain, and we don't necessarily recognize that. So verbal and emotional use is really difficult to see. And so as parents in the room, really talk to your kids all the time about their relationship, right? Ask about their girlfriend or boyfriend all the time. You know, how's it going? You know, do you guys fight yesterday? I heard you was kind of yelling in the bedroom, right? Ask about those things because that's good. If you're just assuming that everything's okay for your child, then they get used to like, blurring you out, right? It's really important to keep that open communication. One more thing I want to talk about is gas lining. And that's something that, it may be a new phrase that we hear, but it's something that's very old. We blame the other person the way, but I showed up at 11 and I didn't text them and I was drinking and they're telling me, you told me you'd be home by nine. I was like, no, I didn't, right? I'm basically kind of mind playing them to feel crazy. No, I never told you that. Yes, babe, you did. When did I tell you that? Even though I know I did, I'm trying to play this game really hard because I'm a good poker player right here. We're trying to play it really hard so that you're like, yeah, I knew you. I swear you told me nine o'clock. I swear you told me nine o'clock. No, I never told you nine o'clock. If I had told you nine o'clock, then I'd be home by nine o'clock because I love you and I wouldn't be out late. And that's when relationships, right? When some girls will be like, I feel crazy. Gaslight, where it is valid, but they're feeling, but their partner is making them feel, we're basically telling them what you're talking about. That's not reality, which is really difficult. Especially with teams that are emotional. It's like, well, yes, I've got this, but it's really romantic and really hard. That's a new term I feel like that we're using now, but it's still something that's been happening for a long time. So teams in the room, right? You're not crazy. You're feeling like something was supposed to happen or they sent this, stick to it, right? Talk through that, because if you can talk through that, you may catch them in that line. There's only so long that they can cheat that line up, right? So physical, physical one, I know it's obvious and indicating something country, but I do want to add that it's not just to the person, but it can also be those things, okay? So if they, after a fight, key their car, okay? All these things, it doesn't have to be you hurting them actually directly, key their things, their belongings, or I've had teams with more fights throw their partner's phone against the wall, right? And then like, you may be this angry, don't make it happen again. That's intimidation, right? It's actually like handling it. And so that's also hard for some teams because they'll be like, no, not in the violent relationship. My partner just has anger issues. But that is a violent relationship because they're intimidating the world's time. Another thing is cyber abuse. A new thing, right? The parents understand that we're talking about cyber abuse, checking in on the time when the team is like going somewhere for school and their partner where they can't stop texting. Guys, there's some teams that have that are like, I don't miss the text like 24 seven, right? If we're not texting, then something's wrong because we're always doing that. That's not necessarily helping. And as a parent, you want to let them know that, right? I don't talk to your mom or dad sometimes for like eight hours at a time, right? And the reality is that there has to be trust there. Yeah, maybe I don't talk to mom or dad for like two hours. I'm not freaking out, right? I know they're at work or I know they're out getting lunch or I know they're doing laundry, right? There's trust. And if I am, maybe you can start as the mails are happening, I talk to them, right? Because texting is not the best way to communicate but it is a large way on which we communicate, right? Teams are way more comfortable. I'm way more comfortable texting sometimes, right? And it's really important that we kind of pull away from that, especially when we have a conflict where we want to talk about something serious, always do that in person. Sexting is something I also see with relationships where if we're talking about digital consent, a partner will send maybe a naked picture to their boys and their girlfriends. And they now have that picture, a very long picture, and they can sometimes use it against them. I've seen this a lot with waiting to have sex. They'll be like, well, because I'm not ready to have sex so I send them these pictures because they do care about them. I really care about them. I don't want to lose them. So I send them these because I don't mind because I'm not comfortable yet having sex. Okay, I get where you're coming from. And it's really hard to have a partner who's the best at it and says, well, if you're willing to send these pictures, you're willing to do it, right? Or they use all these really derogatory names and call them and be like, well, be happy that I'm sure you can do this. Or if you don't have sex with me, I'm gonna show these pictures to people. It becomes blackmail. That's really hard. Because you care about this person. So you may want to be like, hey, don't do that. But then who do you go to? Right, who do you go to? When a teen can't even blackmail by their boyfriend or girlfriend, that's really difficult. Because they don't want to tell on them. Right, they just want them to stop. And that's what's really hard. Especially when we're talking about age, right? If we're under the age of 18 and we're sending an explicit picture, that's considered child pornography. No matter what age or person that happens. And that's a whole other gamut, right? But ways in which we, teens have told adults at their school or their parents and we've been able to address this team having that violent relationship by just looking at the pictures of their sending, right? And that text to indication. Also, as well as sexual abuse, okay? So with that pressure, all right? We really want to push consent asking for things and not just asking for sex, literally, but asking like, I really want to kiss you, right? It does not just have to be with sex or I really want to take you out on this date at this park. It's not anything. But we also really need to have consent and we're talking about any kind of sexual activities that we're doing, right? And that does not mean that if I'm saying yes to making out that that means yes to anything but that's not how that works, right? Consent is continuous because you may love making out with them and they're now saying, oh, people, let's take our clothes off and you're like, okay, I'm comfortable with that. But now they're wanting to maybe push this further and you're like, no, I kind of just want to stay with it, right, and I don't really want to look forward. I like it right here. That's fine. When a partner starts to push that and they're like, no, no, no, let's just keep going because they don't really care about what you have to say. That's when that's no longer fun sexual activity but not considered rape or sexual assault. If your partner doesn't want to go further with what you want to do, but there's always another time, all right? So like teeth in the room. I know you may have an expectation of like what a date could look like afterward but if your partner's not comfortable, like if you really want to make out with your partner or let's just be first date person but that didn't happen, that's okay. It doesn't mean I don't like you. I tell you that all the time. Just because your girlfriend or boyfriend doesn't want to sex with me yet does not mean they don't care about you. Intimacy on this same level of like, you really care about me, all right? Because it's intimate, it's vulnerable, right? We're doing things that we're not doing with other people. And so a lot of teams will do this to prove their love or affection, right? I love you. For all here, if you really loved me, then you would do this with me. Or you would explore this with me. And that's hard because you may love them. And you're like, well, yeah, I love you but I don't want to have sex yet. It's confusing in the mind game, right? Trying 216 year olds that are really caring about each other and now one of them is throwing in sex and it's like, well, if you really love me, you can try this. I'm watching, I guess, right? I do love you. Telling me no means to listen to that good instinct. Okay? Whether it was called enhanced or anything more than that, if your gut is kind of like, don't do it, right? And they'll even joke, well, we can't decide yet, but if you don't want to do it, you don't have to, right? Even though I'm going to date with a boy or a girl, you don't have to, okay? But I don't feel like they have to, you know? Like, if this popular boy or girl has an abnormality, feel like we need to have to work more as one of the boys will say, you know, until it looks like you're dating a lot, I got to say yes to all these girls. It's like, oh, you're doing it, you're comfortable with it, right? So let's talk about consent. Those are really important. And consent is more than just yes or no, all right? Consent is not, even on the SBA consent board, consent is way more than just yes or no, all right? Consent is something that should be continual. Consent is something that makes you feel comfortable. Consent should be a conversation. I guess they know that a lot of parents ask me, okay, but legally, what is consent? It's like, okay, so I'm going to answer that question. Legally, right? So in Texas, you cannot have sex if you're under the age of 17, right? Which, when I talked to a lot of parents, they're like, if you need to get consent, a lot of them will be like, oh, 14, 15, okay. I tell them, 17, they're like, 17, okay. Because again, that generational cycle, I'm like, wow, I said 15, so that must be fine. Difficult to make a really thought-out, comfortable decision, because there's so many other factors, right? It's not just pressure, there's a lot of other factors. When we're talking about sexual activity, it can never be forced, but there's also that trick you want to coercion, right? When the one who loves you do this. And that's one of those triggers, is that you can't really see manipulation all the time. On the outside, yeah. Like your friends may see it, or other people may see it, but you who are right in that relationship, are like, no, that's not what this is. It's really hard, because there's so much feeling and emotion attached to it, that you don't want to see it as coercion or manipulation really. But if your partner's saying, well, if you love me, do this, that's coercion, right? They're kind of trying to make that yes, right? So you're trying to make that like, no, we're like, and we do not want that, right? And our culture, right? We always talk a lot about culture, that's really important, that's our culture. We always encourage boys to just keep asking until they get a yes. And that's really hurtful for our community. Because when we tell boys we just keep going until they get a yes, right? Or give a girl enough to drink before they go home with you, really unhealthy messages about sex. Really unhealthy. Because you're basically telling girls, try really hard to say no until you give up, right? And boys, keep going until you get a yes. And so basically kind of like pushing until one person gives in. And that's not how this should go. Sex should be two people wanting to do this, talking about, you know, thinking about it, right? Or really like to do this with you. That's a consensual helping conversation, right? I tell teens all the time, if you're not able to talk to your partner about having sex, you're not really going to have sex, right? That's how old you are. You're not ready. You can just still uncomfortable even talk about it, right? Because you don't need to. I tell teens all the time, you can be in a long term relationship, right? I've had teens that have to date for two or three years and they're not having sex. There's other ways to be intimate or be vulnerable, right? Sharing things about yourself to have that connectivity without the sexual influence. And it's not consensual if someone is under the influence as well as unconscious. So when teens are at a party and they've been drinking even though it shouldn't be, yes, that's happening, does not mean that they're asking to get raped, right? But then drinking at parties, right? They hopefully will learn can't you drink too much? That's not healthy for you, right? Don't do it again, Paul will probably ground you. But it's important to know that if someone's been drinking or under the influence, that it is us that is potentially taking advantage of them. I tell adults, if it makes sense, do you know you're letting them drink and driving? Do you know if you have a beer at dinner when you drive home? If you say yes confidently, oh yes, I can, that's fine. And you're also able to have maybe a beer in Texas. If you've had maybe two margaritas, it's based off you. Can you drive home? Do you feel comfortable driving home? That's also another thing. You're like, yeah, I'm a really good driver, no, no, no. Right? But that's different. Shouldn't you be? Right? Shouldn't you be? Because, what is it? Mom's against driving has really changed our culture to where now, especially when I go to colleges, they'll be like, no, man, I take their keys, I'm a good friend, right? I take their keys, I know what to do. And I'm like, okay, but what if they've been drinking a lot but they're not driving, but they're leaving with someone you've never seen before? Oh, I don't know, that's on them, they're gonna have to go out. So when it deals with driving, we're pretty good. It's a pretty good about taking those keys, right? And making sure that they're safe. But there's that disconnect of going home with them or being intimate with them after drinking. Because our culture kind of encourages drinking which is so unhealthy, right? Because we wanna be able to be sober and enjoy this, right? Sober and being intimate and really knowing what your partner likes or what you like, right? That's really important. Especially if you think your partner has been drinking and you wanna get intimate, there's always another time. I tell teens all the time, there's always another time. Because it's not, yes, I know it's a crime, yes, I know mom's out of town, there's always another time. Do not force this. Because you could potentially be taking advantage of your partner, boy or girl. There's an intellectual or mental disability, okay? So we're talking about some 15-year-old that's functioning at a seven-year-old level. Then dating a 15-year-old, they cannot really be intimate in that way because they are functioning at a seven-year-old level to work out about understanding the choices that they're making, right? Because think about it as if you were seven. And really, that means, right? And so that other person is very much can easily take advantage of that other person. So the disability community is very much targeted for sexual violence. And then lastly, people that are there to help. So public service people, so like police officers, fire fighters, not allowed, right? Police officers, they pull you over and they ask for a sexual exchange for your ticket. That is not allowed. And I know some people have choked about this, of course. Or teens have anyway. And it's really important that we know that yes, police have definitely an authoritative figure to where you don't, you're like what, they just ask me. Right, almost to where you're like, if I say no, am I gonna get more trouble? Right, am I gonna pin it on me? Do I say yes? When I met people in this situation, they said, well, I said yes because I didn't think that I had a choice. I didn't think I could say no to this police officer that could potentially make it worse for me. And so those people that are there to do that are also not there to have sexual relationships with us as well as people that are there, like counselors, right, teachers, people that are there to educate or help us. We're not supposed to blur those lines. There's supposed to be clear boundaries about like no, we cannot have a relationship. We're juvenile detention. I worked a lot in juvenile detention and we had a guard, I wanna say a year ago, that had a relationship with a teen in the 25th. They always talked about the relationship and I'm like, why are we not talking about it as abuse? Right, oh, I almost said like, well, it's a relationship. The 35-year-old and a 16-year-old had a relationship. We need to change that language. Right, that was abuse. That was not okay. You know that 16-year-old was like, yeah, I wanna do it. That was a 16-year-old with a 30-something year old. Right, I don't care if she really wanted to do it. It was not okay. That adult had all the power and decision-making in that. Not okay. So we need to make consent into a conversation to where it's not so uncomfortable for us to be like, oh, can I kiss you? But more talking openly to your partner. Like I said before, if we're kind of uncomfortable, talking about it more actually will make it less uncomfortable in a comfortable period. But talking more to your partner and being more vulnerable will actually make you more comfortable when it comes to talking to the agency. That's really important because the whole point is we wanna be comfortable with this. Yes, sex is new and you're exploring that, especially when you're young. And so maybe not hundreds of comfortable, but at least on the same page of like, oh, you and your partner are at. Where you're able to ask questions, where you're able to be like, actually, no, I'm like, can we go back to this? Yeah, maybe, yeah, but let's go back to this. And I like this, right? I don't have to push you around or force you around to like make you feel like you can go all the way. So, sending boundaries is really important. I know they're talking about sending boundaries. When we're talking about sending boundaries, it's basically how do you want people to treat you? And that is so important because you don't talk about boundaries. And when we do, whatever I ask you, what do you know about boundaries? Because they're like, oh, yes, it's like a line they're not supposed to cross. Oh, what's this line? Right, and they're open about it all. But like every high school we're just gonna go to, always we always get the same verbiage, right? There's this line that's supposed to cross. So we really have teaching boundaries effectively. Because it's not just lines, imaginary lines. I can kind of try to tell them it's like a bubble because I try to do something that they can relate to if you've heard before. And it's like, what makes you feel comfortable? Your best friend hanging all over you, you may feel comfortable about that. Maybe your boyfriend or girlfriend hanging all over you, maybe you don't, right? Because you have another two closer and I wouldn't touch you here, I don't know, right? And that's okay. You may tell your boyfriend or girlfriend, I don't think it would kind of hang all over me. And that's what making a boundary is, that's it. You tell that person how you want them to treat you. Because it's not making you feel so good. It does not have to be this stable, sit-down conversation, it doesn't. You're basically just letting that person know honestly what's going on in here, right? I'm not necessarily feeling uncomfortable and I want to let you know. That shows a healthy relationship. If we're nervous to tell our partner about this, there could be abuse or just talking about a big lack of communication in that relationship, all right? I know what we've been going over, like what abusive relationships could look like. If your teen, right, has a boyfriend or girlfriend that dictates what they wear, that does not mean that they're in a abusive relationship, but that could be a factor in it, maybe for, you know. There's a lot, so it's really important that you talk to your child, have his own communication, not just a one-text sit-down of how is your relationship going. But ongoing, right? You ask them how school is, they say, fine. Okay, cool, let's ask about something that you didn't care about before, right? So, hey, how is Sandra, right? Like, how are you two going, right? Are you gonna go hang out up Friday night? Ask about that stuff, that's important. Because sometimes they'll tell you some stuff, sometimes they won't, so you gotta keep that. Right, that's really important. And also, be really vulnerable with them and talk about your relationship, right? So, as far as what parents can do, take away, talk to them about being your dad, have fights sometimes, right? And it's really frustrating because I want to hit them, but I never do, right? Your kid may be like, you're an inspector, right? Or they can hear it. But you being really open about that helps them and it kind of opens up this like, maybe there's not so much more than as far as like getting more awkward or more uncomfortable, you know? So as parents, sometimes you want to break the ice and throw something out there that is really vulnerable for you because your child's gonna sense that, right? And they may start to kind of give you pieces of their relationship, of their life that they may not tell you before. Really hone in on the idea of that their body belongs to them. At an early age, and we're talking about teens, but every single child really needs to know that your body's yours, okay? We teach that here, like they care, right? Like you can touch them, they didn't say you can. Right, it's really important to do because too often, especially girls, we kind of feel that like, oh, well, the boy likes you, they're gonna touch you. Right? I go to schools and high schools all the time. Grab ass Fridays and things like that where girls will say like, oh, well, I had two boys do this. Right, it's almost like a status thing. It's really unhelping because we're basically talking about harassment at schools, which when I tell people at schools, like, oh, no, that's not harassment. Yeah, that's sexual harassment at schools, right? And you need to do something about that. And that's happening at a lot of high schools and middle schools, so if we don't have any people that are in the, you know, high school, that is what they think that we really need to be talking about because it's happening across the board, and we're kind of using it. Some of them don't like it, right, as they should, but some of them are using it as like a status, which can be really unhelping in the shape of how young they are. Get comfortable talking about sex, okay? Because you want to know if your child's doing this, right? You want to make sure they're comfortable. We have so many teams that become pregnant or teams that have unsafe sex, right, that takes two teams to have sex, and they don't really do this stuff, and we're not really talking about it, right? Our sex ed here is like giving good content to safety's sake until in girls don't do it. So we get a lot of mixed messages and we get a lot of team-writings. And so we really, parents, this is about you. You need to get more comfortable talking about sex, literally, okay? It is for your child's benefit. It is really important, okay? And I'm not telling you that you have to talk about your own sexual, whatever, but talking about sex, right? Using the real names of things, right? Like they're not supposed to touch your vagina or your crotch, same those things, right? I don't know about some bad words, right? If you're gonna talk about bad words without cursing, right? Saying word penis is not a bad word, right? You wanna get them to understand those things and it's normal, but also age-appropriate, right? Very important. Talking about privacy, okay? With cell phones especially, they shouldn't be giving their passwords out and talking about female undressing, especially when you talk about middle schoolers in like walker rooms, right? What's that privacy look like? What kind of privacy do you give your child, right? What do you expect back? Very important. Use media as an example. I love that you mentioned songs, yes, right? Teens, love music, and you are in school or picking them up for school. If you hear a song, which you'll hear tons, that talk about anything violent or withdrawatory, bring that up, right? And I talked a lot with parents about this. It's one of the easiest ways to connect with them because they know the songs. They're singing the lyrics. The hard part is they're not always connecting the meaning with the lyrics, right? They'll be like, this, I can sing this full Cardi B song and they'll sing the whole thing and they'll be like, what does it mean? I don't know, you just hear me singing, were you not paying attention? Yeah, I was, but what does it mean? That's the disconnect, right? And so as parents, we can be like, Dave, what did they just say about that lyric? Do they just call her a bitch? Wait, did you hear that? What does that mean? I know it's your song, so I think it has a lyrics, right? What does it mean? And having a conversation in that way because that's something that they're already connected, they know how to talk about and it's less personal because it's not talking about them, it's talking about the song, right? Or the TV show, right? You're watching a TV show and some girls slap the guy across the face because they're like, you're being annoyed. Do you think that she should have slapped him like that? Those are great openers, they're great conversations that you can start in because it's not talking about them specifically, it's what they're watching, right? And that is so important because especially on TV, we're seeing a lot more girl violence, right? And we're kind of trying to get up to, oh, well, what would he do? And you're like, well, that was a guy slap a girl on the TV, you'd all be like, oh, no, that is not okay. But for some reason, when we see girls doing it, we kind of have a justification for it when we really need to put that to rest, right? Girls can be violent just like boys can, but we don't want to reciprocate it, right? Because sometimes girls will tell me, I don't want my boyfriend to beat up on me, so I beat up on them. I want them to know that they can't mess with me. I've even had a girl tell me that she stabbed her boyfriend once. We don't want to show that like girls, especially that if someone's being a bully to you, you just be a bigger one. That's not the right message that we're sending, okay? We really want to talk about, I feel hurt by this or I didn't like what you're doing, and I'm not going to tolerate it. I'm going to give you maybe another chance because plenty of us have more really unhealthy habits from our parents, so yes, we need to work on it, right? We kind of have to work on a healing journey. But we also need to know, I'm not going to give you 5,000 chances, right? And so I'm going to bring up what you did, what I didn't like, and I want us to work on that. And if that partner's really trying to fix it, then that's a great relationship actually. I know some parents that would tell me like, oh, I told them to push there without one time, and I no longer let them date that person, so I told them to push them. It's almost like you just kind of dragged them away and isolated them out, instead of letting them learn from that, right? Because that pushing is not acceptable. But you basically just told them, we're not dealing with this, we're running away from this problem. Instead of this is a meaningful person, a potential boyfriend or girlfriend, right? How are we going to deal with this situation? That's really important for them to kind of see that, right? There's something I don't like, and I need to talk to them about it, right? This is where communication comes. This is really important because communicating easy things, again, are easy, right? Like, how's your day today? You know how much I love this? This is really easy to communicate. Talking about how I didn't like to put your hand on my lady, that made me kind of uncomfortable, even though you are my significant other, is a little uncomfortable to talk about, but that's what we need to communicate. It's never too late to ask for help, okay? The end of your team is 12, 18, 20, I don't know. It is never too late to ask for help and get resources, okay? If your child is not damaged, if they sit in a bad relationship, no way, by enemies, all right? This is something we can use to learn in a way and help them heal. If they fit, there's something traumatic that's really important to help them heal, and not just, well, you're never dating them again, and let's go, let's move on, right? Let's just forget about it. The team may not be able to forget about it. Right, that's important. Bring that into the open. I think one of the questions that I would have for you is, what do you want to know more about? I mean, I think the thing for me personally, that I only learned last year as quite an advanced adult in this situation, is about trauma bonding, that sometimes when we grow up in messed up situations, we are naturally drawn to other people who can relate to that, and they've got their own trauma, and we think that's love, because those puzzle pieces fit, and it often takes some really bad situations to disconnect from that, and realize that's not always the healthiest, that I'm bringing my bad, and you're bringing your bad together, we can still be healthy together, that we have to learn new tools, and have more insight into our own behavior, and as Patricia was saying, we have to form our own identity first, and this is a lot of deep stuff we're talking about, and I think beyond just really appreciating the insight of all three of the presenters, I just would love to know what you feel like, where do we go next from here, and bring that into the open, that we've needed to talk about for a long time, the modeling, the intergenerational transmission of trauma, the fact that you see bad behavior, and then it's just instinctive to be like that yourself. I think sometimes in my own life, it's like, how many conflict resolution skills do I really have? Maybe like two, that I learned from my family, how many is healthy? Maybe it's like 14. How on earth would I find out if those other 12 are? And to this day, I feel like I need those. We are so much the product of how we grew up, what we saw, it feels so normal to us, just like jealousy, that at some point, we have to break that cycle. It's gotta happen through education, through literal training and skills, through role playing, whatever the ways to do this are, it feels like we're at a point in this community where we know we need to do something about this, and we need to tackle this also with team dating problems, because we don't want to see this become perpetuated in a cycle that people can't break away from and add to the problem with adult domestic violence. So, I'm just curious if anyone, anything struck you in tonight that you feel like really want to know more about this? Feel free to come up and tell us. About these, because I'm a really young girl, and I'm worried about to be dating somebody who's not being able to help her out, I mean, not to be feel comfortable, secure, confident, and loved. I'm worried about that, because I see how home some parents don't pay attention, and they think it's okay to treat your daughter or your son in that way. And my endometrist colleagues has a book about her daughter, she is an entomber from Czechoslovakia in Spain. So, she wrote a book about her daughter, how she was taking away from her and learning a lot of lying to her mom of her situation, and then by the time she tried to rescue her, it was too late, so wait, so how she made it. Antonieta saved her daughter. I don't want to be on Antonieta's shoes. I want to be in the safety, walking, healthy relationship with my daughter. Something I was looking forward to have. I'm safe, I'm still not secure. I'm still not confident about it. I'm a married mother, and still wanted to have the question, am I in the same relationship? Am I going to sleep in the same pillow and wake up? Am I going to go home? And I'm in a meeting right now, and wondering, I hope my husband is not upset because I'm here early, or being late because it's dark early. So, if that's kind of the case, as a mother, as a wife, I would like to see we can work with them to educate more people about this, because I wasn't looking forward for something like this in the long term. And now, I'm like this is the age. So, I would think it would start early, start early with the little boys, because I play with boys, and I use the barbies, and I find when I saw this boy playing with the barbies, he says, you, come here, get in the car. I'm like, no, why are you asking her, can you please come over here, I'll be right with me, and enjoy the view. It's, so I teach that boy. It was not my son, he's a parent. And I realized how good it was, I don't age. So, boys can play with girls, and it's okay, because that's how you take out their mental behavior, you think, why? So, I think, 16. I want to make a suggestion, really, because I married my first, my first boyfriend, who ended up being my husband for 20 years, was abusive, and he had an abusive nature when we were teenagers, and I had no idea what relations, gaslighting, abuse, this is why I had no idea what that looked like. To me, I just saw somebody who was wounded, and I wanted to help them and make them better, and show them a way of a better life, and support them. And I didn't have the tools, the resources to do that, I just didn't know. So, again, like Bethesia says, it's like what Dura teaches you, your family teaches you to tolerate, to take it, and take it, and take it, because that is what you're supposed to do, because that's what you're raised, as you know, in our culture, we're raised to believe that. And what I would like to suggest, I would say is to even introduce a storytelling time where teens and adults share their stories in the public, so that other people who are possibly going through the same thing hear this firsthand, and that they know what the signs look like. I mean, we're hearing it from the professionals, and because we, you know, you know, based off of your knowledge and education and your skills, you're also set that you're teaching us resiliency and strategy and signs. But I think if we set aside a platform for storytelling, for the actual survivors, or the people that are going through it, and share that, I think that that provides a way for people who are actually going through it, to recognize it for themselves, and step up to get out of the relationship, or to seek resources, or to ask, or to talk to somebody, because when you're on the other side and you feel the isolation, you don't know who to talk to about what you're feeling and what you're dealing with, or how to get out, or how to find some safety zone. So when you hear other people talk about it, it may feel, it may make a person feel like, yeah, a little bit of confidence, or a little bit of bravery or encouragement for them to step up and say, I can survive this. I can come out of this. And so that's just what I would like to share. Great way to end this evening. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart, from the YWCA, for coming to this evening. I really hope this begins the conversation that can lead to healing about team-dating violence. And I want to thank all the presenters who did such a wonderful job, and the staff here really making this evening happen. And Charlotte Ann, for taping this so that we have, this is educational and training material that will be available later. So thank you so much for coming. Really, really appreciate it.