Five Things We Never tell our Children About Sex (Or Hardly Ever)

I was giving a talk a while back to a group of elementary school parents at a public school in Manhattan and I was discussing how little girls at the age of three, four or five, will sometimes learn to masturbate by humping a stuffed animal, or by rubbing their legs together, or by rubbing their vulva against some other object. It then dawned on me…rather than teach our daughters about their clitoris and how pleasurable it can be to touch and rub that part of the body, parents spend countless hours hoping and praying that their daughter will either stop the humping and rubbing altogether or perhaps they will learn on their own that they can “touch down there” and get the same results. But teach them how to masturbate? Nope! Or teach them about their clitoris? No way!

Well this really got me thinking that there are some things we never tell our kids about sex…or hardly ever. I came up with five things that I’m fairly sure of. They are:

1. How to Masturbate

I have never had a parent tell me that she or he has taken the time to teach their daughter or son exactly how to masturbate. I have spoken about masturbation numerous times in over a thousand presentations to parents about child sexuality and have never had a parent disclose to me that they have. Nor can I remember ever seeing any research that addresses parents who have. I can certainly understand how this would be a problem for many parents, the whole idea of speaking to their son or daughter about the variety of ways to stroke, rub, or touch the genitals for pleasurable reasons. But if we stop for a minute, take all the emotion and any incestuous images out of our heads, and just look at the masturbatory act for what it is, perhaps some of us may start to look at the whole thing differently. After all, masturbation is probably the single most universally practiced sexual behavior in the entire world and it is the one sexual behavior that can be engaged in irrespective of age. Doesn’t matter if you’re one, eleven, twenty one, or ninety one, masturbation knows no age limit.

And we know our children are gonna do it. As sure as the sun will rise our kids are going to masturbate. Yet apparently it never dawns on us parents to tell them how to do it. Think about that for a moment. We know our kids will masturbate yet we don’t ever think about teaching them how to go about doing it. And just like anything else we do in life, everyone who wants to masturbate HAS to learn how to actually do it. It doesn’t just come to us in the middle of the night; it is a skill that must be learned and usually takes a bunch of practice in order to get it right. But it’s as if we just throw our arms up and say, “Well, I guess they’ll just have to learn it the way we learned it…it’ll come to him/her eventually”. From a very objective point of view doesn’t it seem a little strange that we don’t teach our kids how to masturbate? It certainly doesn’t hold for too many other behaviors that our kids will participate in does it? Can you imagine if we took the same stand with respect to teaching our children how to safely cross the street? “Ah, they’ll figure it out on their own eventually”.

2. The Clitoris

So, have any of you parents out there ever taught your daughter where her clitoris is and what purpose it serves? I’m sure there are some parents that have but I bet they are few and far between. And I bet those that have taught their daughters waited until they were well into adolescence before doing so. And how about your sons? Are there any parents reading this that have taught their sons about the clitoris? Especially boys under twelve years of age? Just like most boys don’t have a clue that girls and women don’t urinate from their vagina, I think it’s fairly safe to say that most all of them don’t have any idea what a clitoris is either. 

So, we’re talking the single most sexually arousing body part for females and there is an excellent chance that most all parents don’t teach their daughters anything about it. Another amazing fact of life don’t you think? No wonder many women have difficulty reaching orgasm with any sort of regularity. If you’re kept in the dark for most of your developmental years about your clitoris what sort of impact will that have on your ability to develop an overall healthy sexuality later on?

3. Orgasm

Okay…so how many bodily experiences are there that only last about five to ten seconds but gives us as much pleasure and affords us as much excitement as an orgasm does? Heck, is there even any that last a whole lot longer that can come nearly as close (no pun intended)? When I think of all the questions I have been asked by preadolescents over the years about sex, there are some that I get over and over again and, “What is an orgasm and how do you know when you have one?” is one of them. I know there are parents that have talked to their kids about orgasm. My guess is though that they are a definite minority, and when they do most don’t spend nearly enough time helping their kids learn how to personally achieve one or, heaven forbid, learn how to engage another person in a mutually orgasmic experience.

Even if you have had some discussion with your kid about masturbation have you included any explanation about what an orgasm is? And even if you have, because we don’t teach our children how to masturbate, it is likely that you have never taught them about the best practices for achieving an orgasm. And as far as discussing orgasm within the context of any mutual sexual behavior with another person, will your child be left to her or his own devices to figure that one out also?

4. How to Have Sexual Intercourse

Just like I always get questions from preadolescents about orgasm I also get a lot about how one actually goes about having sexual intercourse. Kids ten, eleven, twelve years of age are really interested in knowing exactly how people move and respond when they have sex. How does the penis move? How much does it move? How does it feel? What does the vagina do? How does the woman move? How do gays and lesbians have sex? Do people rest while they’re doing it or is it non-stop?

If research shows that a majority of females report that sex hurts or doesn’t feel good when they first start having sex, I would think that most all kids could benefit from considerable discussion around how one actually goes about having intercourse, and how one needs to appreciate as best possible how they make their partner feel when they have sex with them. The actual mechanics of sexual intercourse do need to be learned. How to achieve the greatest amount of satisfaction during intercourse, as well as how to provide the best possible experience for one’s partner, are skill sets that ultimately need to be learned by all our children at some point. Will you see to it that you will play a role in what your child will learn about how to have intercourse or is this another one of those behaviors that your child will learn without your involvement?

5. Leave the Lights on

When you do have your talks with your child about intercourse will you ever discuss with her or him the importance of leaving the lights on when they do decide to have sex? Not likely I would think. But I talk about this every time I am asked to speak to kids about sexual responsibility. Why you ask? Simple…if a condom is to be used during sexual intercourse how will either partner know that the condom is performing the job it is supposed to do unless the lights are kept on and they can actually see that the condom has not slipped off the penis or been torn while having sex? That’s right…wearing a condom feels so natural, there is so much lubrication involved, that it is frequently difficult to feel any difference when one has sex when using a condom as opposed to when one does not. All this talk from guys that wearing a condom during sex cuts down on the feeling one can have is all a bunch of, well, just talk. Truth is it doesn’t feel really any different wearing a condom from not wearing a condom. So, if the condom has slipped off during sex or the condom has been torn just how will either partner be able to tell if the lights are off and they’re doing it in the dark? Pretty difficult to do I would think. So let’s teach our kids that when the time comes for them to have sex be smart and leave the light on!

I’m sure we could come up with some more things about sex that we really don’t want to tell our children about…a whole bunch of things probably. I’ll just leave it for now with these five.

The Sexualized Wall of Messages Facing Our Children

Visualize your child sitting at a table. On the floor around her are thousands of one inch by one inch blocks and each block represents some sort of sexualized message. Perhaps it’s something sexual that she hears from a friend; or some sexual image or content on TV, or on an advertisement. It could be any type of message that has some sexual reference, whether it is fairly innocent and benign or explicit and incomprehensible. But every block represents some sexual message your daughter or son could encounter on any given day.
The first time your child is exposed to one of these sexualized messages, a block is placed on the table in front of her. With her second exposure to a sexualized message, another block is placed on the table next to the first block. With a third exposure a block is placed next to the second, and so on until the row is, let’s say, eighteen inches long. With the next exposure, a block is placed on top of the first block in the first row. This continues with each exposure to a sexualized message. With eighteen more blocks in place, a third row begins. A wall of blocks begins to form.
Got the picture? Now imagine how high the wall would be after just one day. How many sexualized messages--blocks--would be on the table in front of your child? Obviously, the older your child the higher the wall is likely to be, simply because we would expect an older child to have more varied experiences and hence more exposures to sexual messages. So how high would you expect the wall to be after a week? How about a month? Six months? A year? Ten years? If I were a betting man I’d bet that the wall of sexualized messages that your child has been exposed to has disappeared way up into the sky, well out of our sight. So think about this: by the time your child begins to enter puberty he or she has probably been exposed to thousands, if not tens of thousands of sexualized messages. And how many of these sexualized messages will be problematic, not representative of your values system? How many of them will portray women as sexual objects and men as hunters, lusting for sex? How many of them will be heterosexist and homophobic? How many of them will portray sexual intimacy and behavior without any sense of responsibility? How many of them will portray sex as something we can all engage in without having to be in love? How many of them are incomprehensible and just outright confusing to your young child? How many of them come from sources that you would have a problem with?
All this has got to send a little shiver down your spine right? And what will that wall of sexualized messages look like after your child has entered puberty and his or her sexual feelings and desires start being actualized, and peers begin to have more influence on your child than ever before? How high will it be then? And there your child sits, with a gigantic wall of sexualized messages staring her or him in the face. Our job as parents is to help our children make sense of that wall.

The Good And Bad Of Sex

Perhaps the single most important message that your child needs to hear about sex is that just like a coin it has two sides. Without sex, none of us would be here today. Sex creates new life! Think about that. A sperm that’s microscopic joins with an egg cell the size of a grain of sand and about nine months later a fully formed human being about six pounds in weight and nineteen inches long is created. Absolutely amazing! In my opinion, there is nothing more incredible than that fact. But turn the coin over. Sex can kill you. What an interesting juxtaposition that one is; the same behavior that creates a life can also take a life! Turn the coin back over. Sex can make two people who care deeply for one another feel even closer to each other. Physically rewarding intimacy with another person is something that so many of us want and seek, and when we experience it our lives can be thoroughly enhanced. But turn the coin over again. The same behavior that has so enriched our lives can be catastrophic and horrible: witness the devastation of teenage pregnancy, AIDS, sexual assault, sexual bullying, and the like. We want them to be able to make sense of a confusing sexual world and we want them to be able to distinguish between the bad parts and the good aspects of sex and sexuality.

The Sexualized Bully

For me, the scariest trend in child sexual behavior to develop over the past fifteen to twenty years is sexual bullying: children, some as young as 5 and 6 years of age, harassing, intimidating, even assaulting others by using some form of sexual behavior or by provoking another child to use some form of sexual behavior that is unwanted
We are raising a generation of sexualized bullies. As society sexualizes all children through the vast array of prevalent sources of sexual information and influences that are everywhere, those children who have developed bullying personas are learning that using sexual behavior to bully other children is as effective and as rewarding if not more so than using traditional methods of bullying. I get numerous calls from elementary school principals, counselors, and other school staff about young children who are using sexual behavior to harass, intimidate, and strike fear in other children. We virtually never saw these behaviors among such young children fifteen or twenty years ago. But now we are seeing them on a regular basis so if you are a parent beware the sexual bully. 
I have received far too many calls about children who touch the genitals of other children without consent, or force them to touch their genitals in return. There are children who force other children to pull their pants down, children who intimidate other children by rubbing their genitals against them or by lying on top of them. There are children who will forcefully kiss another child’s genitals or force them to kiss their own. We are seeing more and more children who force, intimidate, and/or strike fear in other children by using sexual behaviors. It’s hard to say exactly how prevalent the sexualized bully is, but if you want to get a sense of the scope of the problem you should see the response I get from elementary school teachers and counselors when I discuss the topic. Every time I make a presentation there are multiple cases that are brought to my attention. I would love to see the statistics kept by a school district or state education office on the numbers of student to student sexual harassment and assault cases. I will guarantee you that the numbers at the elementary school level alone will shock every one of us. This is what happens when children have multiple exposures to sexualized messages that are confusing and incomprehensible. The sexual bully has been created as a result and will remain as long as we live in a super-sexualized society.