Talk With Your Teen About Sexuality Early On

By: Teeja Hivsbob
Submitted: 2008-05-26 12:43:57
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Adolescents are usually the ones who have to deal more with an identity crisis, what with the familial and peer pressure on them and the raging hormones to boot. And since your teen is going through physical changes both confusing and exciting, they are forced to face sexuality issues unwillingly.

If you want your teen to get through adolescence with a healthy perspective on sexuality and his or her self-image, you have to initiate the changes now while he or she is still susceptible to a healthy frame of mind. Once a mentality is ingrained in adolescence an individual tends to carry this well on through adult life, and it can make or break an adult's healthy outlook in life when it comes to matters concerning sex.

Your teen should learn about an adolescent's changing body early on, particularly with how the reproductive organs work. Actually, you have to break the information in comfortable portions, and dish it out to your child from early childhood and well onto adolescence to make the transition as smooth as possible.

This enables you to bypass the potential taboos which are usually hard to overcome if the issue is dealt with 'in bulk'. As a parent, you should be the first authority when it comes to sexual issues, not your child's peers, the media, or even the public school system. In this way your teen learns about it sans the hype and the misconceptions.

Your teen has to know the difference between the genders from a healthy point of view. The fact is, gender transcends the physical aspects; your child may have preset notions about gender roles which may be faulted due to societal prejudice or just plain misinformation, and it is your job to clear things out.

If your teen has watched or intends to watch adult videos (which is very likely considering the intense curiosity associated with the adolescent phase), anticipate the awkwardness of discussing such a possibility by stating that adult videos may not essentially put their take on sexuality on a bad light, but they shouldn't be taken as the final authority on sexuality either. Tell your teen that you have come across adult videos yourself during your adolescence, and they do sate curiosity. If that's what they intend to soothe from watching such.

As expected, your teenager may already be feeling something of a sexual nature with the opposite or the same sex. This is inevitable and you have to assure your teen that this is a normal thing. He or she has to embrace the feeling in a healthy manner by expressing his or her frustrations rather than suppressing them. These should be dealt with an open mind in order to develop a mature perspective on sex later on.

Since sexuality cannot be separated from the sexual act itself, the first information on what intercourse is and what it is for should also come from you. Assure your teen that sex itself is indeed pleasurable for both genders, but it comes with a high degree of responsibility.

Your teenager deserves information on his or her sexuality, one which is untainted with prejudice and deals more with the facts. With such information, your teen will take on a more mature outlook on sex, quite unbecoming for such an early age.

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