Crossing the bridge to discuss sex education with your Teen
Media and Misinformation
Gently pushing her auburn hair aside, his lips kiss her right ear lobe as he breathily whispers into her ear. She lets out a naughty giggle, and he goes on to stroke her arms, bit by bit inching his way up to her shoulders. With a firm grip, he takes her shoulders in his hands and rubs in circular waves. His fingertips graze upon her neck, trickling down until they reach her back. These brawny hands slowly caress her powder soft skin, moving to the tips of her toes up to her calves, up, up until her thighs....CUT! Dancing bars of soap, happily singing a jingle in unison suddenly fill the screen. Commercial break.
Is this really how you’d like your teenager to learn about sex? I think not. Well, wake-up call parents out there! For a majority of adolescents, television is where they get their first hints (at times quite obvious ones) of sexual relations. If not from the media, it’s usually from other older but not necessarily wiser, teens.
Now in the age of the World Wide Web, the internet is a significant source of information—and misinformation. Picture this, your teen’s surfing the net, doing some homework research and all of a sudden a pop-up appears of a man and woman doing some mattress acrobatics! What will this leave him thinking? After catching a glimpse of a sex scene on the net, your teen’s left to interpret this any which way he wants, unless he’s given the proper guidance.
Openness
But as much as we’d like to adhere to keeping mum about topics which may leave us feeling awkward, we ought to consider the genuine advantage of openness. Studies have shown that starting your children with an open relationship early on improves the chances that they will go to you for answers to questions that trouble them in the future. It has even been documented that being open with your teen can actually lead them to take proper precautions when faced with a sexual situation. These are good points to keep in mind when you may be experiencing “the talk” jitters.
Openness can be a vital tool for you as a parent. What parent wouldn’t want their teenager to come to them first with their problems? In order to offer the best guidance, as parents we need to know what’s going on in our adolescents’ heads. Unfortunately, not all of us are blessed with the powers of mind-reading or mental telepathy! We may result to ‘feeling things out’ instead. And for this, awareness is a key. Pay attention to any signals your son or daughter may be sending about his/her sexuality. But sprinting to the finish line to interpret them isn’t a good idea as well. There are certain things to consider.
