How to Talk With Your Kids About Sex

Talking with your kids about sex is never easy. It takes courage, a little bit of homework, and lots practice. But giving your child honest, straightforward information about sexual health is the best way to support them in having a healthy sexual life, including protecting them from unwanted pregnancies and STDs. Below are some tips that might help you navigate the murky waters of talking with your kids about sex.

If you’re looking for age-specific tips, you might want to also read:

• Talking with your pre-school age child about sex
• Talking with your school age child about sex
• Talking with your teenager about sex

Make talking with your kids about sex a lifelong conversation

When parents imagine talking with their kids about sex they often work themselves up about the "big sex talk." But talking with your kids about sex isn’t about a single moment -- it’s about the thousands of small moments of learning and teaching about sex that can happen throughout your child’s development. This means you get more than one chance to do it right, and if you screw up a talk, you’ll get another chance next week. The important thing is to keep the conversation open. Read more about making sex education a lifelong conversation with your kids.

Know your comfort level when it comes to talking about sex

Getting a sense of your own comfort is crucial. The well-meaning parent who is so uncomfortable talking with their kids about sex might inadvertently communicate a lot of negative messages about sexuality. Take some time to imagine conversations at different ages and stages in your child’s life. If you imagine these scenarios and shudder, don't put yourself down for it. There are lots of things you can do to increase your comfort talking with your kids about sex.

Clarify your own sexual values

Knowing how to talk to your kids about sex is often complicated by the fact that few of us spend time considering our own sexual values. Sexual values are the beliefs, priorities, prejudices, thoughts and feelings we have about sex, sexuality, and gender. Our sexual values will change over time and experience. But knowing how we feel about key issues of sexuality can go a long way to communicating clear and helpful information to our children. Read more about clarifying your own sexual values .

Make it okay for your kids to ask about sex

All children have questions about sex. When we don't give our children permission to ask questions or create appropriate time and space for them to ask their questions, the questions come anyway, and they can come at embarrassing or inconvenient times. If you are genuinely interested in raising sexually healthy children you need to create an environment where they feel comfortable asking you questions. This might mean having age-appropriate sex education books in the house, or it might mean telling your kids straight up that you’re open to questions about sex.

Use age-appropriate sex information

We all take in information differently at different times in our life, and too much good information is still too much. Present your child with information that is appropriate for their age, in a way that they can understand, and don't give them more information than they're ready to hear. If you’re not sure how to gauge this, you may want to look for resources on sex education in your local library or contact an organization like SIECUS, which supports comprehensive sex education and offers great bibliographies on their site.

Practice talking about sex

The only way to get comfortable talking about sex is to talk about sex. The more you talk about sex, the better you'll be at it. And this experience is transferable. If you get comfortable talking about sex with a friend, or your partner, often that comfort level and self-confidence can help you when talking to your kids. If you’re comfortable, it can go a long way to putting your kids at ease, too, and you are modeling a behavior you want to support them in.

Take the time you need to talk about sex

When we feel rushed to answer questions, our answers are often not as good as they could be. A way to convey that sexuality is important to your children is to make sure that "sex talks" happen at a time when they don't have to be rushed. This is also important as these talks can open up into unexpected other subjects. Because sexuality is part of who we are, sex talks can lead to amazing sharing on other topics that seem unrelated to sex. If you get a sex question at a time when you don’t feel comfortable talking about it, let your child know that you’re happy to talk about it later, and then follow up.

Don’t feel pressured to answer sex questions on the spot

If you are shocked by a question, or get a question you don't know how to answer, it’s okay to admit that, and let your child know you want to talk about it, but you want to do that later. Don't use this as a way to avoid answering the question altogether, but if you've had a long day at work and are rushing around trying to get the grocery shopping done, it's okay to tell you child that they need to wait until the end of the day, or when you're at home and will feel more comfortable talking about it.

Don’t try (or pretend) to have all the answers

Tips on talking with children about sex and sexuality

Sexuality involves our bodies, minds, spirits, society, and more. There is no way you will ever have answers to all your children's questions. Admitting this to your kids can teach them that no one has all the answers (and that you are human like the rest of us) may well turn into a chance to help them learn where to find their own answers (a trip to the library, or a previously checked-out, credible sexual health website might be in order).

Know your boundaries and model them for your kids

You are not your child’s best friend, and you shouldn’t feel like you have to answer every personal question your child might ask you. Establishing boundaries (the things we will and won’t talk about with strangers, family, friends, and eventually romantic partners) is an important developmental stage, and you can model for your child by having clear boundaries about what you will and will not discuss with them.

By Cory Silverberg, About.com

Updated: March 30, 2008

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board

Do I Have to Talk With My Kids About Sex?

The Importance of Providing Sex Education for Your Kids
By Cory Silverberg, About.com

Updated: March 30, 2008

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board

Many parents would rather not talk with their kids about sex. Of course many parents would rather not talk with anyone about sex. And while you can choose to avoid sexual communication in your adult life with romantic partners (but I wouldn’t recommend it) if you choose to never talk with your kids about sex you do so not only at your own peril, but theirs as well. There are lots of good reasons to talk with your kids about sex. Here are a few of my favorites.

Talking with your kids about sex can help keep them safer.

There is a lot of research that has shown that when parents talk with their kids about sex, their children are:

• more likely to use contraception
• more likely to delay intercourse
• less likely to have a teenage pregnancy

To be clear, it’s not just any kind of sex talk that helps, and some of the survey research offers conflicting reports on the impact of talking with your kids about sex, which may reflect the fact that it is possible to talk with your kids about sex in ways that are not helpful. So while it’s a good idea to talk with your kids about sex, it’s equally important to know what makes for good sex education and what the best way is to do it.

Kids listen to their parents when they talk about sex.

It might surprise some people who think of teens as extremely disaffected and contradictory to find out that both adolescents and teens, when asked, say they listen to what their parents have to say about sex:

• One study in 1995 found that adolescents rated parents higher in credibility than school and friends when it comes to getting sex information (although they rated them low in “accessibility”).
• A more recent 2006 survey by the Canadian Association for Adolescent Health found that sixty three percent of teens considered their parents a major source of information, and forty three percent thought parents were the most useful and valuable source of information.

It may be true that when they reach a certain age your kids are less likely to listen to what you have to say about many things. Interestingly, sexuality doesn’t seem to be on that list.

You’ll learn things from talking with your kids about sex.

Having to talk with your kids about sex means having to re-think many aspects of sexuality you may now take for granted. Even answering a simple question like “why would anyone want to have sex?” (not an uncommon question among kids of a certain age) requires us to think carefully about what sex means for us. In another example, with an older child, you might have to do some research just to keep up with sexual options on line, and this means learning for yourself as well as your child.

The fact is that when it comes to sex we’re all life long students. Our sexuality never stops changing as we age and this means that as long as we don’t turn away from it, there is always something new to learn. Talking with your kids about sex is another way to keep your mind open to the meaning of sex in your own life.

Talking about sex with your kids can further develop your relationship.

Any relationship that’s based on communication is going to have its challenges, and often its in overcoming those challenges that the relationship grows. Your relationship with your kids is no different, particularly as they get older and become more independent adults. Talking with your kids about sex won’t always be easy, but it’s well worth the effort, and the payoff can be more than a healthy child, it can be a healthier relationship overall. _{Sources:
Eisenberg, M.E., Sieving, R.E., et. al. “Parents’ Communication with Adolescents About Sexual Behavior: A Missed Opportunity for Prevention?” Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Vol. 35, No. 6 (2006): 893-902.}

When Should Sex Education Start?

What Age Do You Talk with Your Kids About Sex?

Many parents want to know at what age is it appropriate to start teaching their children about sex. What most of us don’t think about is that the question presumes that there is an age at which sexuality becomes important or “an issue”. This presumption is 100% wrong. Sexuality is an intrinsic part of who we are, from birth to death. And while our sexuality isn’t the same when we’re six as when we’re sixteen, or sixty, it is always there and always a part of us. So the question isn’t so much when to start talking with your children about sex, but how to do it at every age and stage of their lives.

Many, possibly most, parents are less than proactive in talking about sex with their children, and don’t deal with it until moments like these:

• Your toddler begins exploring his or her body in public and you’re not sure how to deal with it.
• You wonder at what point it’s “not okay” to let your child see you without clothes on.
• Your child asks you where they came from or where other babies come from.
• Your child begins to ask questions about their body and why it looks different from their brothers or sisters.

Each of these are important teaching moments, and if you want to avoid dealing with situations and questions at awkward or inconvenient times (say, in the middle of a holiday service, at a family dinner, or just as your rushing off to work) you’re best protection is to be proactive, and make space for sex talks on an ongoing basis.

Teaching your children about sex should begin as soon as you’re communicating with them. If they have questions they’ll let you know. And even if they don’t, you can let them know that you’re open to the questions by including sex education in all the things you teach them.

A good example is body parts. A common early learning experience between parents and children is teaching the names of body parts. We all learn about our ears and eyes and nose and mouth. In fact we usually cover all the major parts of the body but many parents don’t include names for parts of the body they consider sexual (e.g. penis, nipples, vagina, etc…). They’ll ignore those parts of the body even while young children are learning about them by touching themselves. Make no mistake, children learn as much by what parents don’t talk to them about, as they do from what parents do tell them.

Of course talking with your children about sex is extremely difficult when you have questions of your own, and no comfort level or practice. But waiting doesn’t make it easier, and the most important thing for you to do is be willing to listen to your child and help them find answers even when you don’t have them.