A step-by-step guide (with practical questions) to drive your conversations with your children.
For children under 5, helping them understand the following should be priority:
- Parts of their bodies
- Appropriate and inappropriate touch
- How much you love them and how important they are
However, by age 10, there are few things that our children should already know:
- What a crush is?
- What dating is and when it should happen?
- Appropriate or inappropriate touch
- What pornography means (in age-appropriate words)
- What sex means (in age-appropriate words)
- What is appropriate for married and unmarried couples
With tweens and teens, it gets a bit more detailed
- Who do they like and why?
- Who do they have a crush on?
- What happens when they are attracted to someone?
- When dating should happen and why?
- Masturbation
- Pornography
- What a healthy and unhealthy relationship looks like
- What type of people would they date?
- When they want to get married?
After the teenage years, it’s pretty more open after that.
When your children are under ten, it is possible to have a sit-down conversation about relationships but as they grow older, these discussions are part of their everyday lives as you go about daily tasks. The whole idea is to help them be comfortable with you enough to be able to speak to you about how they are feeling.
A valuable tool is to develop a healthy and close relationship with your children very early in life, this will give you a leg up throughout their teen years.
It is important that you make a conscious effort to hear what your children’s thoughts are before you discuss your propositions on how things should go.
