It’s hard to know if we’re helping kids make healthy choices. Here’s how to equip your children with the tools to make healthy relationship choices.

Talking about healthy sexuality may feel overwhelming for women who have been victims of marital rape, sexual coercion, or sexual betrayal (whether physical or virtual). If you relate and need support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

An Important Part of Healthy Sexuality is Emotional Health

When you teach children about healthy sexuality, it’s important to also teach them about emotional, psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse. Sex can never be healthy if abuse is involved.

To see if you can recognize all 19 different types of emotional abuse, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Teaching Healthy Sexuality Needs To Include a Your Value System

When helping kids make healthy choices, parents must not only teach the basic truths of sex and sexuality, but family morals and values. As children and teens understand both the blueprints of healthy sexuality and the moral and values-driven components of intimacy, respect, compassion, and safety, they will be better equipped to protect themselves and treat others in healthy ways.

Transcript: How To Teach Your Kids About Healthy Sexuality

Anne: Sherie Christensen, the author of My Body Is a Gift from God, is on today’s episode. It’s a book that helps children understand how precious their body is. And helping kids make healthy choices. Sherie, can you talk a little bit about what prompted you to write your book?

Sherie: So the book is called, My Body is a Gift from God Introducing Conversations to Safeguard Children. The book is about helping kids make healthy choices sexually, from very young ages, to help protect them. And prevent the barrage of unhealthy sexual messages they’re going to get throughout their lives.

It’s heartbreaking to see the alarming rise of sexual addiction in general, and the lowering age of exposure to sexual materials. All the damage caused by sexual addiction. It’s a public health crisis. It’s my belief that schools, governments, and other institutions can do wonderful things to prevent this crisis and helping children make healthy choices.

But I see parents and families as the place where the rubber hits the road. Parents have this unique responsibility and opportunity to educate their children on what healthy sexuality is and what it looks like. When I started presenting years ago, there was almost nothing available to help parents. Everywhere I was presenting, parents literally asked if they could record what I was saying, because it sounded possible. Sometimes we get in these mindsets that healthy sexuality is a difficult topic, a scary topic to talk about.

We don’t know how to do it in age appropriate ways. It just feels scary. I thought, we need to get information out there to people so they can do it themselves. This book is about helping kids make healthy choices sexually in general.

Helping kids make healthy choices: Challenges and Solutions for Parents

Sherie: It is not about teaching your child about pornography, sexual abuse, or body image. It covers all that. Like the title says, it’s about introducing conversations to safeguard your children. So each page is literally an invitation to further conversations, either initiated by the parent or the child. So you can have thousands of conversations based off the contents of this book. And that’s very intentional. It’s written to get that process started, because that’s what we need to do.

Anne: You know, the old school way was like, okay, plan this special date. Take your child to a special place, and then tell them how beautiful sex is. And don’t talk about pornography, because if they understand how beautiful sex is, then they’ll just avoid it naturally. It was just this weird way of doing it, rather than being like, we talk about sex anytime.

Yeah, right, we talk about our bodies or how we’re feeling at any time while we’re going to school, while we are at dinner. There’s not this overriding feeling at our home that we can only talk about certain subjects at certain times.

Sherie: Absolutely, or not talk about them at all, right? I think very few parents even got the, let’s go to a special place and only talk about it one time ever.

Anne: Even though people say we have to talk about it all the time, because teenagers have pornography in their pocket on their cell phones.

Historical Context of Sexuality

Anne: It would have been beneficial for people to talk about healthy sexuality in the 50s, or even in the 1800s. It would have been healthy from the beginning of time for people to talk about healthy sexuality. But in 4000 BC, they didn’t even know what healthy sexuality was.

I mean, the first recorded instance of rape being a problem was in 1750 BC with the code of Hammurabi. But that only stated that if a man forces himself on the betrothed wife of another man, that was really as a crime against the other man. Not against the woman.

In English common law was the first time it was like against her. The rape against a woman was punishable. Defined as a woman of 10 years or older. I mean throughout history the idea that women are equal to men. And that’s what healthy sexuality is. People coming together in a partnership is actually a relatively new idea. Pornography is the manifestation of the thousands of years of misogyny that have always existed.

Sherie: Absolutely, so this book is monotheistically non denominational, which means if you believe in God, in a God that loves you and wants you to be healthy and care for yourself, then this book is for you. Every layer of truth that we put into a topic gives it more breadth and depth. Our children need as much truth as possible around this. You can make it very sterile and talk about body parts, how they fit together, and how they work. And that’s fine. That is one layer of truth.

Layers of Truth in Education

Sherie: It’s your sex ed, but there are so many layers of truth that give essential meaning, breadth and depth to an understanding of healthy sexuality. Like when you start talking about how sex works, and masturbation, and all these different issues that come up.

Anne: Frankly, girl parts are tough for me. I didn’t know what a cervix was until I was eight months pregnant.

Sherie: Because a lot of women don’t even ever touch it. Like they’re taught, you got to wash yourself with a rag and whatever. But then guys are constantly coming in contact with their sexual organs. They know exactly how it works, because it’s right there and they’re getting feedback. Yeah, that’s always such a huge issue for women. And I know for me, when I became sexually active, it was a big deal, because I didn’t know how all of that worked.

And that will be different for each child. parent and each family, but it’s needed. In the book, it’ll talk about how amazing our bodies are, and that each of us is made differently, and that is incredible, and it makes us each unique.

When you say those things, you can feel that’s another layer of truth that helps them in their view of healthy sexuality. So when they come across pornography or other unhealthy messages. There are so many other layers of truth that you can talk about based on your own specific belief systems.

This book is written for parents to put their own values in. The studies show that is what children want. They want to know what their parents’ values are.

Helping kids make healthy choices: You put your own belief systems into it

Sherie: These are our values around this and you work together. Which also gives that child ownership of those beliefs of those value systems.

Anne: I also think it’s important to talk about in the context of religion. Because in the religious experience, you get the chastity talk, you get all the stuff that everyone’s gotten for years. But they haven’t received the healthy sexuality portion of that. Like why? Really, why do you not want to have sex before you’re married?

Actually answer these why questions that the traditional chastity talk doesn’t answer. It really helps kids connect those two dots between healthy sexuality and the things they learn in church. When helping kids make healthy choices.

Sherie: Absolutely.

Anne: Yeah. I’m really appreciative. I’ve been using this book with my kids, and they love it. My kids talk a lot about sex and pornography and it’s so fun for our neighbors, I’m sure.

My son, who’s eight, came home and said, Mom, one of my friends told me he could search for naked women on YouTube. And then he told me not to tell anyone. And he said, I know that that is a signal I need to tell someone. So here I am telling you, and I feel uncomfortable around him now.

It was awesome for him to have that conversation. He knew what words to use, because we talk about pornography. He knew that looking up naked pictures meant pornography. The depth of his understanding and the way he could talk about it was only due to the fact that we talk about it all the time.

Practical Applications & Real-Life Examples

Anne: He wouldn’t have had all those words, or the ability to express his feelings about what had happened, if it were not a layered and ongoing conversation in our home.

Sherie: Yes, I love that. We need to preemptively talk about exposure, which is so important. This is what you’re going to do when you get exposed to stuff, or you hear things, you’re going to talk to your parents. This is how your parents will respond to you. So it’s that safe environment. So that children know exactly what to expect, and parents know how to respond. When helping kids make healthy choices.

Anne: We haven’t talked about this, but I’m kind of off the shame wagon. And now I’m more like, I don’t care about the shame. You work through it. So instead of trying to eliminate shame now with my kids, I’m trying to teach them everybody feels shame. This is what it feels like. Don’t let that stop you from doing the right thing.

Sherie: Right. I like that.

Anne: Because I think the shame elimination thing that’s been happening lately in the anti-pornography movement is ridiculous. We can never eliminate all shame. You work through it.

Sherie: I totally agree. A feeling is an indicator. If I’m feeling shame, what does that mean? And what to I do with that healthy, rather than being unhealthy.

Anne: Yeah, you might feel like you want to lie and you can acknowledge that, but then do the right thing anyway.

Sherie: Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot.

Anne: Their feelings don’t have to dictate their actions. They can make conscious choices about how they feel that are healthy and good choices to help them resolve negative feelings. Rather than make those feelings worse.

Helping kids make healthy choices: They can make conscious choices about how they feel healthy.

Sherie: Right, yeah absolutely. What is the right thing to do in this situation?

Anne: Yeah, if you feel ashamed, the way to get out of it is to tell the truth. That’s the only way out. Because if you hide, you’re just going to feel it worse. The thing I worry about because addicts have, I’ll call them mutant feelings, like they feel like they hate their wife, for example. Or they feel like they’re being insulted when they’re not actually being insulted.

Having an addict focus on their feelings usually only worsens their narcissism. Whereas having them think about their thought processes helps them realize how abusive their thought processes are. That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately. If you have an addict focus on his erroneous feelings, he’ll never get out of his erroneous thought processes that cause his erroneous feelings.

Sherie: Yeah, and that’s why I think we teach our children about feelings. Again, it’s the same issue as teaching them healthy sexuality. Teach them to process those feelings and use them in healthy ways, instead of getting stuck in these patterns.

Anne: Yeah, helping kids make healthy choices and teaching children how to accurately process their emotions and then make healthy choices no matter what. Even if they “feel like they have to lie.” That there’s always a healthy and safe alternative. You accidentally triggered the soapbox of mine right now,

Sherie: That’s fine.

Anne: As I talk to more professionals in the field and interview victims, it’s like gathering data in real time. And I’m realizing that disconnects between what victims learn and what’s actually happening in people’s homes. You’re awesome, Sherie. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your thoughts.