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Honesty with your teenagers E-mail

What exactly should you tell your teenager about your past and when should they find out? How honest does a parent have to be?
How can you respond to questions like-- When did you first have sex? Dad, did you smoke pot? What kinds of things did you do when you were a teen?
Some parents may answer honestly, others may not. And like the response of a staff counselor at the Yale Child Study Center, “There isn’t any one-size-fits-all response to your question.”
It can be difficult to discern how honest you should be as a parent with your teenagers. Should you admit to your not so clean experiences in the past? Fearing that you may lose grip on your teenager because of admitting to your own mistakes as an adolescent is normal.

Sarah Brown, CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, uses the words "Millions of little interchanges" to describe the normal talks that parents should have with their teens about touchy topics like sex, drinking, or drugs. "Consistently, the teens have always said … that parents have the greatest influence on their sexual decisions," said Brown. But at times, parents may not be pleased about their own influence.

"Specific conversations about risky behavior are important with kids," seconded Jennifer Manlove, making it less likely they will "have sex at an early age, or (become) involved in some sort of substance abuse, or (bad) academic outcomes or delinquencies or problem behaviors." Jennifer Manlove is a senior research associate at Child Trends, a reliable source of data on children and adolescents.

Brenda Rhodes Miller, executive director of the D.C. Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, said “I never felt I had to reveal much. As teenagers, my kids would ask me, what did you do … I never wanted to lie to them about things, but I didn't think my sexual history - what I might or might not have done as a teenager - was useful to them in developing their own decision-making skills."

Brown shares another point of view, explaining how teenagers find it powerful when parents admit to their own mistakes in the past and reflect upon them. "An honest answer - particularly if it's, here's what I did, I had sex for the first time at 16, and … on reflection I would not have done it, and I think you should not do it and here's why - that's a very honest answer that adolescents find deeply credible and meaningful."

No matter what, Manlove stresses that "If you don't want your kid to have unprotected sex, or you don't want them having sex when very young, or doing drugs, it's very important to show very strong disapproval of that."
 
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