When your child asks where babies come from, do you break a sweat and blame it on the stork? Have you had a conversation about oral sex, masturbation or contraception with your teen? If you haven’t started “the talk” with your child, sex therapist Dr. Laura Berman says you could be making a big mistake. Dr. Berman says kids today know a lot more about sex than we think they do. In fact, Dr. Berman says children are being forced to make sexual decisions by middle school, from receiving sexually explicit text messages—also called “sexting”—to feeling pressured to perform acts like oral sex. What you need to do as a parent, Dr. Berman says, is arm them with knowledge that will guide them well into adulthood. “You want to start these conversations early with your kids—before they find themselves in the circumstances where they’re having to make those healthy sexual decisions.”
Although some mothers shy away from the conversation because they don’t want to seem like they’re condoning sex, Gayle says you have to arm your daughters with as much information as you can. “Knowledge is power,” she says. Seventeen magazine editor-in-chief Ann Shoket says girls don’t only want the nuts-and-bolts talk about sex—they want to learn more about the feelings that can come with it. “It’s clear that these girls are doing very advanced sexual things,” she says. “And yet what they really want their mothers to talk about is the emotional side. They want their mothers to talk to them about: ‘How do I know if this boy is just using me? How do I know if I’m ready for it?’ That’s the part where mothers play a huge role that the Internet or their friends just can’t do.”
Dr. Berman says it’s important to start an ongoing conversation when your kids are young that will continue to develop as they get older. “They want a sense from a very early age, not so much about the nuts and bolts about sex, but that it’s okay to ask questions about their body,” Dr. Berman says. “If you wait to have that one big talk until they’re 13, 14, it’s often too late.”
Dr. Berman says making them feel good about themselves is key. “Feeling good about their bodies. Feeling good about their genitals. Feeling good about their sexual function. Feeling empowered about who they are as people and as sexual beings. And then that makes the path so much easier when they’re in their teen years.”
When it comes to teenagers, Dr. Berman urges all parents to stay calm when approached for information. Overreacting, she says, could make your child hesitant to come to you in the future. “Listen—don’t just lecture them,” Dr. Berman says. “[Encourage them] to ask questions about the words and the terms and the things they’re hearing about at school, to ask questions about what they’re seeing in the media.
Dr. Berman says the main goal of any sex talk is to communicate that sex is a very normal and natural thing. There are three main topics to cover: male and female anatomy, the mechanics of making a baby…and becoming familiar and comfortable with your genitals.
Dr. Berman says it’s important to talk to kids about getting to know their own bodies—and that many kids have been exploring themselves since they were babies. “It’s about soothing,” Dr. Berman says. “It’s not about sexual arousal and the sexual connotations that we put on it. It’s just about normalizing it for them and setting the seeds that this is normal.”
According to the sex survey, only 35 percent of mothers teach what Dr. Berman says is one of the most important lessons about sex—pleasure. “We need to teach them about pregnancy prevention and STD prevention, but we also have to teach them about the gift that sexuality is,” she says.
This is why Dr. Berman says it’s important to have a big talk with your child when she hits high school about masturbation and orgasms. “This is something that’s normal and natural, and if you’re talking to a girl from a young age about this, it’s a natural thing,” she says.
Teaching your daughters to take control of their own pleasure can help them avoid unhealthy sexual experiences. “You’re teaching them about their own body and pleasuring themselves and taking the reins of their own sexuality so that they don’t ever have to depend on any other teenage boy to do it for them,” Dr. Berman says.
Dr. Berman says an easy way to start the pleasure conversation is to point out specific body parts to your daughter on a diagram, encouraging her to explore her own body in private. “You are the best ones to teach them,” Dr. Berman says. “You are the one who can incorporate your values.”
Still nervous? Dr. Berman says you may need to become more familiar with your own body. “Learn all of this stuff yourself,” she says. “When you are comfortable, that’s when you can really raise a sexually empowered daughter.”
In the study, only 4 percent of girls say their beliefs about sex are mostly influenced by their mothers—this is your chance to change that statistic. “You are arming them with the information they need to make wise sexual decisions,” Dr. Berman says. “You want to be their main sex educators—not their friends who are going to give them the misinformation that you don’t want them to have.”
“You need to start early, letting them know you’re open to conversations, answering their questions without judgment,” Dr. Berman says. “Tell them that information does not mean permission.” – Oprah.Com
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