What is a girlfriend?
Overview
This lesson introduces the concept of romantic relationships and highlights how these are different from other relationships.
Foundation knowledge for this lesson includes differentiation between: male and female; baby vs child vs teen vs adult; self and others; family and others.
Generalisation ideas
- What is a boyfriend?
- Sorting: activities you would do with a girlfriend vs a friend; who could be a girlfriend vs who could not be a girlfriend (e.g. family members, different skin group, strangers, tv personalities)
- Consequences: how do you find out if someone would like to be your girlfriend?; how do you develop friendships into girlfriend/boyfriend relationships; what sort of feelings do you have when you have a girlfriend?
- Flipside: what do you do if someone doesn’t want to be your girlfriend? what do you do if don’t want to be in a relationship with someone? what are some tricky feelings of having a girlfriend? what are the social rules about girlfriends and boyfriends?
- Social story creation: developing a relationship with someone you like; managing feelings in a relationship; healthy relationship signs; unhealthy relationship signs
- Watch DVDs/TV shows: watch a section, pause, and discuss themes. Some examples are ‘Mike’s Crush’ about a boy wanting a girl to like him in a romantic way; tv soap operas can be used to demonstrate relationship stages (but often move a lot faster than real life!)