When people find out that I am a professional sexual health educator, spontaneous and meaningful conversations ensue. This is especially true with folks who are parenting, caregiving and championing our youth. Parents, caregivers and youth champions often share with me that they did a pretty good job talking with their kids about sexuality until high school. They say their conversations ground to a halt and have left them concerned that it’s “too little, too late” to pick up these conversations.
It’s not ever too late to pick up these conversations with our high-school-aged youth. Curiosities, thoughts and feelings about sexuality are coming in hotter than ever as are the constant and always explicit media messages about sexuality.
For these reasons, these conversations with you, their trusted adults are more important than ever!
How to jump back in
Approach these conversations (plural) with curiosity; let your youth know that you’re curious about their opinions, questions and realities which are likely somewhat different than yours were at their age. The amount of sexuality information (reliable, untrue, entertaining and everything in between) available to them literally at their fingertips is unprecedented.
The conversations you choose to have with your youth provide a powerful antidote to this information and allow youth to understand care-full sexuality. The term care-full sexuality is intended to provide a framework for sexuality as feelings and experiences that have the potential to be positive but require a lot of care to be realized. This helps youth (and adults!) re-frame and re-define sexuality from something to be fearful or ashamed about to something to take pride in and care about.
Our sexuality conversations with youth are always grounded in topics such as healthy relationships and decision making. Talk with them about how a person knows if/when they’re ready to be in a relationship, what type of relationship (if any) would they feel comfortable with at this stage in their lives—emotional, physical, both? Let them tell you about themselves rather than making assumptions about their interest in relationships, their identity and their attractions. This opens the door for the kids who don’t feel as if their orientation and identity are adequately represented, understood or welcomed.
A care-full approach
A care-full approach to sexuality also creates pathways to discuss sex safety from a physical perspective including safer sex supplies such as barriers like condoms and lube, contraception (if needed) and STI prevention and testing. Map out the closest youth/sexual health clinics so your youth and their friends know where to go for supplies and/or testing. Remind them they have a right to confidential and comfortable health care. Feel free to physically point out these community services as you drive by on your way to dance, lacrosse or musical theatre practice!
We absolutely cannot discuss care-full sexuality without talking about the role of communication and how often it is overlooked because it can feel awkward to discuss something so personal. Remind youth that communication is simply the greatest life skill that none of us will ever master! Especially when it comes to such a topic like sexuality that is layered with values and beliefs from our families, cultures, faith and communities.
Communication and consent
We need time to develop comfort, empathy and understanding. Your conversations are role-modelling this. When we understand and teach the intricacies of effective communication it allows youth the opportunity to become more confident in setting and accepting boundaries, asking for what they want (pleasure!) and offering the same to those around them.
This is exactly what consent is rooted in: agreement, respect, autonomy, agency and empowerment. When consent is well understood and communication is well practiced, we understand that consent is a communication skill that is much more about what we are comfortable with and affirmed by than what a person is allowed or not allowed to do.
If you find yourself wondering if it’s “too little too late” to chat with the high school youth in your life, it absolutely is not! Don’t feel pressured to cover all the topics at once, let them arise naturally. You have time to have these care-full conversations. Given the current cost of living, you’ll likely have your high schoolers with you for the foreseeable future, which offers you lots of time for care-full conversations.
