Parents and Children and Sex - Oh My! (Part Two)

Wow, the week just totally got away from me! Sorry about that, loyal readers! Here is the promised second part of teaching kids about sex.

Okay, people don't like to think of kids as sexual beings, but they totally are! I have a friend who has a 1 year old, and last time I saw her, she remarked, "I had no idea that kids touch themselves so much!" Of course they do! Because it feels good and they haven't yet been taught to associate shame with those areas of their body. Wouldn't it be nice if people never learned to associate shame with their bodies...?
But when it comes to teaching kids about their bodies and pleasure, people get really squeamish about dispensing accurate information. I'm not saying that we should be encouraging people to have partnered sex at a young age (as I've discussed, I'm a fan of consensual partnered sex, and the legal age of consent is 18), but that's not all that sex education is about.

Even the youngest of children are entitled to learn about how their body parts work, including their reproductive organs. And yes, that involves learning about pleasure, but is that such a problem? Children are going to touch themselves in a sexual way anyway, it's just human instinct. Wouldn't it be great if they knew that it was healthy and good to give themselves pleasure, but that it's not ok for others to touch them in that way? We warn kids about "bad touch," but how do they know what that is if they don't have "good touch" to compare it to?

Another part of sex education that I think should be taught from day 1 is healthy communication. As I've mentioned, communication starts with self-esteem and knowing that you are entitled to ask for what you want, in the bedroom or otherwise. We try to teach children how to communicate with one another in a direct, clear and positive way, but we never connect that to sex, and I do think that we need to explicitly make that connection. If we model for children that it's okay and even preferable to have open and honest talks about sex, that will hopefully cause them to associate sex with accurate information rather than with shame. And that will lead not only to a healthy sexual relationship with their own body, but also to healthy interpersonal sexual and romantic relationships in the future.