Services for Children and Special Needs

Just For Girls

A program to help girls safely navigate the rocky road through adolescence and avoid pitfalls such as eating disorders and preoccupation with food and weight

Just For Girls addresses what happens to girls in the process of growing up female that silences their ability to express their feelings and articulate their experiences and encourages them instead to define themselves by numbers on the bathroom scale. The program helps girls decode the language of “fat” by teaching them about the grungies — the term coined to describe the negative voice that girls develop when they cannot be direct with their feelings and experiences. The program helps girls become aware of their grungies and encourages them to tell the stories that lie underneath. Through the use of discussion, role-play and creative activities, girls are able to express their feelings and articulate their experiences.

Just For Girls helps girls understand the societal pressures that they face during adolescence and the physical and emotional changes they are experiencing. It provides them with an awareness of their own bodies that goes beyond relating to them solely in terms of how they look.

The program teaches girls communication skills so that they can strengthen their friendships and support one another, and at the same time maintain their sense of themselves.

The Just For Girls program:

• is based on contemporary theories of brain sex and of female development.
• provides information and activities that address issues such as body image, communication, sense of self, depression and bullying.
• structured activities for energy breaks.

The program is used to address other social and heath risks that girls are vulnerable to such as: smoking, teen pregnancy, abusive relationships, sexually transmitted diseases and drug and alcohol use.

PROGRAM
" Six 1 hour individual sessions
" $270 plus HST
Insurance receipts are not available for psycho-educational programs.