Helps for Teaching and Understanding Consent
Empowering your child regarding sex is an important way to give your child power, vocabulary, a voice, safety, and context for healthy relationships.
If you want to teach consent to your child. Watch these videos (alone first, so you understand and know if you feel comfortable with the messages) and then watch them with your age-appropriate child. When watching alone, write down the ideas that feel right to you. And use these ideas as jump-off points for conversations. Tee up these conversations, in age appropriate ways, often. Don’t have one single conversation. Have many small conversations overtime.
It is ok to feel a little awkward when having these conversations with your child. Do your best to be clear with your thoughts and attempt to simplify your messages. But it is far better for you to have these conversations, even awkwardly, than to let the world, the internet, porn, and your child’s uneducated peers teach your child. Don’t wait for things to be less awkward, don’t wait for the “perfect time.” don’t wait for them to get older, don’t wait.
And for those of you who want to encourage your child to wait until marriage before having sex, studies show that comprehensive sex education leads to lower teen pregnancies. A child who doesn’t know about sex or how to say “no,” they have a greater chance of being a victim of sexual assault.
Protect your child. Have the consent conversation today.
Is your child a foodie or into biking? These two videos explain consent using tea and bike riding as metaphors.
These metaphors can be applied to sexting, sex, kissing, etc. Make age-appropriate comparisons when speaking to your child.
Another video talking about the importance of the consent conversations.
Let’s talk about setting healthy boundaries.
Why is consent important? Watch this.
Let’s change the way we talk about consent.