Students develop techniques for building good personal and family relationships–being flexible, setting and respecting boundaries, learning how to resolve conflicts–though these dynamic case study activities. As they work in cooperative groups, students practice skills in decision making, problem solving, critical thinking, teamwork, leadership, and communication.

After randomly selecting the elements of a case study scenario, each group analyzes the situation, suggests solutions or alternatives for dealing with specific dilemmas, and makes predictions about the relationship.

Finally, each group completes one or more creative activities–drawing a picture depicting the future of the relationship, role-playing a scene relating to the case, writing a story that further develops the characters, or creating an advice column about issues raised within the relationship.

This book gives you teaching procedures, organizational hints, educational objectives, and more than 200 reproducible pages of worksheets, handouts, and case study descriptions. The case studies deal with 15 relationship situations: dating relationships, family conflict, teen parenthood, sisters and brothers, success in marriage, strong families, dysfunctional families, dual careers, divorce, blended families, young adults and the elderly, roommates, the decision to parent, child-care decisions, and child abuse. (Author abstract)