"Do you know what happens to your body when you get older?" "Um...you get hairy in some places?" "Yeah...other things happen too.  We'll get you some books."   That was what I learned about sex education when I was seven - I was always grateful that I learned it from my parents (who were pretty terrified to talk about it,  I think) rather than from the other kids at school.  But then the topic wasn't mentioned again until I was about 18, with a vague reference to "being careful" with my first boyfriend, whom I wasn't even sleeping with yet.   Friends: we have to do more than this if we want our children to be able to show up in relationships as fulfilled human beings who understand what pleasure is, how to ask for it, and how to give it.   We need our children to know that sex does not have to equal intercourse, and that there are a whole host of ways to enjoy our (and each other's) bodies without doing this if we don't want to do it (when they're ready for it!).   And we need to help our children understand boundaries so they can protect themselves when they need to - without getting so caught up in the shame that pervades our thinking about sex.  (Since the sex = shame narrative is deeply pervasive in our culture I don't think we can overcome it completely, but we can make a start...).   In this episode we build on our conversation with Charlotte Rose about sex for us parents to go (far) Beyond Sex Ed with sex educator Dr. Nadine Thornhill, whose direct, fun, engaging style will help you to see that you, too, can have conversations about sex and pleasure with your own children.  You can find more information on Dr. Thornhill's work on her YouTube channel where she addresses topics from what happens if the kid walk in on parents having sex to whether first time sex always hurts, as well as on Instagram.

Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits 

If you want to make your own transformation from a relationship where your child JUST DOESN’T LISTEN to one where you have mutual care and respect for each other’s needs, then the Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits workshop is for you. Go from constant struggles and nagging to a new sense of calm & collaboration. I will teach you how to set limits, but we'll also go waaaay beyond that to learn how to set fewer limits than you ever thought possible. Sign up now for the self-guided Setting Loving (& Effective!) Limits for just $7. Click the banner to learn more.

  Episodes mentioned:

• 021: Talk Sex Today!
• 096: How to prevent sexual abuse
• 097: How to support gender-creative children

[accordion] [accordion-item title="Click here to read the full transcript"] Jen: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Jen and I host the, Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. We all want her children to lead fulfilling lives, but it can be so hard to keep up with the latest scientific research on child development and figure out whether and how to incorporate it into our own approach to parenting. Here at Your Parenting Mojo, I do the work for you by critically examining strategies and tools related to parenting and child development that are grounded in scientific research and principles of Respectful Parenting. If you'd like to be notified when new episodes are released and get a free guide called 13 Reason Why Your Child Won't Listen to You and What to do About Each One, just head over to  YourParentingMojo.com/Subscribe. You can also continue the conversation about the show with other listeners in the Your Parenting Mojo Facebook group. I do hope you'll join us. Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo Podcast. Do you ever have trouble setting limits on your child's behavior? Do you ever set limits and then wish you hadn't because you realize afterwards, this was not a hill you wanted to die on? Do you set limits that your child ignores, maybe even while looking at you with a glint in their eye? Do you wish that you didn't even have to set limits because you could find ways for your child to work with you? Well, if so, come and join me. I'm running my free Setting Loving and Effective Limits Workshop again, starting on Monday, April 26. It runs over the course of five days and on each day you get a short email with a thought prompt or an exercise and some homework that's going to take you less than 30 minutes. Thousands of parents who have been through this workshop have found that by the end of the five days of shifting how they think about limits and their children's behavior, and not focusing directly on changing their children's behavior, their children are suddenly testing much less and they're cooperating much more. And both parent and child feels like they aren't fighting nearly as much. And they have tools to solve problems they're having that don't even involve setting limits at all. So if you want in on that, it's completely free. You can sign up at YourParentingMojo.com/SettingLimits. Now let's get to our episode. Today we're continuing our mini-series exploring issues related to sex. And we started a little bit ago by talking with Charlotte Rose, who's the co-host with her business and life partner, Chris of the Speaking of Sex Podcast, and together they're known as Pleasure Mechanics. And in that episode, we talked about what we learned about sex has implications for how we feel about sex today and why there's so much shame involved in that. And also how we can both have more sex and also feel less pressure around sex with whomever is our partner at the moment, whether that's our parenting partner or somebody else. So we focus very tightly on sex for parents in that topic. And today we're going to focus on the intersection of our children and sex, which may seem like a non-sequitur, but it's not. And so, some years ago now, we actually talked with Saleema Noon, who is a sex educator, and we talked about the basics of using anatomically correct body parts and what to do when children masturbate. And we followed up on that a couple of years later with Dr. Jennie Noll of Penn State University on how to avoid sexual abuse. We've also covered raising gender creative children with Dr. Diane Ehrensaft. And today we're going to go beyond these topics to learn what we want our children to know about sex. And maybe even some things we're still learning about today. And so here to help us do this is certified sex education, Dr. Nadine Thornhill, whose Doctorate in Education focus on child and adolescent sexuality. She helps people to access fact-based information and build strong communication skills so they can teach the children in their lives about their bodies, building positive relationships and feeling good about who they are. She also notes on her website that she strives to work within sex positive, queer positive, anti-oppressive, and pro-choice frameworks, and that being an educator means that her own process of learning and unlearning is ongoing and as such her work evolves as she does. And all of that is so well aligned with so much of what we do here on the podcast in how I learn and grow as well. So welcome Dr. Thornhill. It's so great to have you here.   Dr. Nadine Thornhill: [00:04:15] Thank you so much for having me.   Jen: [00:04:17] All right. So we're kind of starting this conversation with a baseline understanding that parents are already using anatomically correct terms for body parts, and maybe they've had a conversation with their children about how babies are made from sperm and eggs. And they've taken some basic steps to prevent sexual abuse, like, you know, things like making sure your child can name three adults that they can turn to, if something is making them uncomfortable. And that's often kind of where these conversations stop. And so I think there's a lot more to it than this. And I'm wondering why do you think it's important for us to continue the conversation beyond these basic topics?   Dr. Nadine Thornhill: [00:04:53] So, first of all, for folks out there who sort of have taken these preliminary steps and have these preliminary conversations, that's fantastic because now you've already opened the door and something that I talk about a lot when I work with parents is that sex is just one component of sexuality. So when we think about sex, whether that be in the context of conception or we're thinking, well, when they get older, they may have sexual partnerships and sexual relationships. Absolutely, that's part of sexuality, but sexuality are really all of the things that might inform who we are as sexual people. So that's everything from the bodies we live in, how we understand our gender, our sexual orientation. We're talking about things like how the world responds to the bodies we live in, and then even certain things like other pieces of our identity, like our racial identity, our religious identity, our economic situation. Really, what I say is sexuality is the experience of being human. Virtually every aspect of our humanity informs our sexuality in some way. And so when I talk to parents about why it's important to teach kids about sexuality, it's because. It's part of how they learn to just kind of navigate life. And so that A, it doesn't just suddenly sort of happen when they hit puberty. It's this ongoing developmental process. And so they're constantly observing things. They're observing how people behave in various relationships. They're paying attention to how we communicate with each other. They're paying attention to the ways that we talk about our bodies and the way we treat our bodies. And that's going to inform how they learn to relate to both themselves and other people. And so helping them, talking to them, teaching them, modeling for them is going to give them more context and more information to understand these things that they're really immersed in because kids live in the world with us and are alive, and you know, figuring out how to be human. Well, they are human, but they're figuring out, you know, what does that mean for them? And so that's why I think it's really valuable to continue these conversations and to keep thinking about, you know, what is it that I'm teaching them about these aspects of who they are as humans, as young humans. Jen: [00:07:17] Yeah. And my goodness, it's like, it's basically the curriculum of life, right? It's... and it's taught in schools, which I'm sure we'll get into in a little bit of. It's basically penetration  and is that happening, it's bad that it's happening, don't let this aspect of it happen. And, and there's just that entire other surrounding context that you're talking about is completely missing from this conversation.   Dr. Nadine Thornhill: [00:07:40] Absolutely. So I try to take sort of a more, I guess I would say holistic approach to sex education and to human sexuality, that sexuality isn't this siloed experience that only affects us if we happen to be having a certain type of sexual experience with another human, it really is integrated and just.... It's part of us in the same way that our intelligence is just part of us. And our emotional experiences are part of us. And our physical experiences are part of us. And all of those things are interconnected. You can't separate them. They don't happen in these compartmentalized sort of ways. Although it might be nice and easier to navigate if they did. They don't, they're all just kind of mushed together and happening, you know, in concert and affecting one another. And so, yeah, sexuality is another component of being a human.   Jen: [00:08:31] Yeah. Okay. All right. And so I think most of us grown ups are pretty terrible at communicating our feelings and needs in intimate relationships, whether these are related to sex or not, because we weren't taught how to do this when we were young. And so I'm thinking there are some ways that we can get off on the right foot with this, with our children, so that we're not sort of seeing where we are and in understanding our own feelings and needs and thinking, okay, this is, I would like for my children to have an easier relationship with understanding their feelings and needs than I have, and being able to communicate with other people about those. So I'm trying to figure out what kinds of things do I need to teach and do I need to teach them directly? Or are they mostly learning this from watching me interact with other people?   Dr. Nadine Thornhill: [00:09:17] So it depends on the child, but oftentimes particularly with younger children, modeling is very, very powerful. And so, based on what I've observed and also, you know, research I've looked at in terms of child development, if you're saying one thing and doing another thing, typically the thing that you're doing is going to have more of an impact than the thing that you're saying. And it's wonderful if the things that we're saying and the things that we're doing can be aligned as much as possible, but children are generally like fairly experiential learners, as opposed to sitting down with them, you know, over a cup of coffee, well  we're not giving our children coffee, but you know, we're not going to sit down at the table and be like, let's have a discourse about communication strategies in the family. Um, and so A, I think if we do find that it's challenging for us to communicate in our own intimate relationships, whether that's with, you know, our partners or co-parents, you know, even friends, other family members, you know, that's something that we can look at working on ourselves. And then what is also really valuable is thinking about how we actually communicate with our child. So to give people, you know, something concrete, if you're just like, but I don't, I don't know how to do it is even starting with things like just naming emotions. So for example, if you were sitting down to have like a chat with your child, let's say I'm going to take an example. So let's say your child is running around the house naked, and you want to have a conversation with them about the family boundaries. And you're thinking I'm anxious, I'm afraid. I'm not sure how to have this conversation. Something you can say to them before you even get into the issue of, Hey, let's talk about how we're going to handle running around naked is, you know what? These are not things that I used to talk about with my parents when I was your age. And so I'm actually feeling a little bit nervous about having this talk. How are you feeling right now? And just getting into that habit of in a very straightforward manner. This is a feeling I'm having, this is the name of that feeling. I want to know how you're feeling. I care about that. And they may or may not be able to name the feeling. Then you can sort of take in their body language and their behavior. You know, maybe they're having a great time running around naked. You say like, it looks like you were having a really good time and that made you really happy. All right, let's talk about that. And that can be, you know, a place to start and if it's new for you and you don't have those skills, you know, start slowly be gentle with yourself because even just modeling that grace and that self care is so powerful for your kids, letting them know that, you know...