How to talk to your children about sex – seven tips to cracking the age-old quandary
A school counsellor writes about her experience teaching sex education and shares tips on how to start the healthy discussion with your children
“I do know how babies are made,” my then eight-year-old son recently told his 13-year-old sister. She ignored him. “Mom ... you better tell him before he goes to camp and hears it from older kids,” she said. She was right. For years I had talked to him about love, but I must have glossed over the mechanics.
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According to Deborah Roffman, the author of Talk to Me First: Everything You Need to Know to Become Your Kids’ ‘Go-To’ Person About Sex, I was late to the game. “If we’re not deliberately reaching out to kids by the age of eight or nine, almost everything they learn after that is going to be remedial,” she says. “Sexual intercourse in the service of reproduction is thoroughly age-appropriate for six year olds.”
Not long after I got my son up to speed, I taught health and wellness to a class of teenagers for the first time. No amount of parenting readies you for a roomful of curious 13 year olds. To prepare me, my principal showed me questions students had asked in the past. “How many times can you ask a girl out before it becomes sexual harassment?” “Is it possible for a boy to put his privates in the wrong hole?”
Well, OK then. I could do this. As Roffman notes, these conversations are simply part of the nurturing process. “It’s about how we can raise sexually healthy young people from birth,” she says.
With this in mind, here are seven tips to help parents raise children who know how to make well-considered decisions.
