What does it take to raise a healthy well-adjusted youth in today’s toxic society? With the proliferation of drugs and pervasive sexual innuendo and content, how can we keep our children safe?

Knowledge of risk and protective factors will give single parents an edge in protecting their children against preventable risk factors while equipping them with the knowledge of how to incorporate protective ones.

Certain positive factors are necessary for the healthy development of today’s youth. Other factors should be avoided to the extent possible. By providing parents with the necessary education on these protective and risk factors, parents will be better able to provide the protective factors while avoiding and/or decreasing exposure to risk factors.

Parents that are concerned about risk factors such as youth violence, early onset of sexual behavior, substance abuse and others would benefit from a workshop enlightening them on the factors that research indicates that exposure to will increase the chances of their child engaging in risky behavior.

Similarly, for youth that are exposed to unavoidable risks, parents must be educated on the protective factors to instill to buffer youth against these unavoidable risky behaviors. Additionally, parents interested in building resiliency skills in their youth must be aware of the protective factors that foster those skills.