For Parents: Talking About Sexual Literacy & Sexual Ethics With Our Children

As parents, we hope our children will build meaningful, mutually respectful, and honest relationships as adults. At the same time, many of us are unsure how to talk honestly about topics like intimacy, sexuality, relationships, and consent. How can we open the lines of communication? How can we identify and share our values with our children, rather than allowing them to be unintentionally educated by friends, pop culture, and the media?

At Marin Waldorf School, we encourage a straightforward and proactive approach to sex education, which unites open communication at home with an age-appropriate sexual literacy and sexual ethics curriculum at school. Let’s learn together!

When (and Why) Should We Talk to Our Kids About Sex?
When should you start talking to your child about sex and intimacy? Probably earlier than you think! While parents and teachers traditionally begin sex education during puberty, today pediatricians recommend that parents start having honest age-appropriate conversations about body basics, bodily autonomy, and consent starting at 5 years old. Why?

Research shows that children and teenagers who have regular conversations with their parents about intimacy and sex are less like to take risks and more likely to make safe and healthy choices in their personal relationships. Research also shows that children today are far more likely to learn about sex and sexuality unintentionally—often from peers or unsupervised access to the internet.

Importantly, opening the lines of communication in elementary school lays the groundwork for more detailed discussions about intimacy, relationships, and sex during middle school and high school. The key is to scaffold the conversations in age-appropriate ways. (Scroll down for some resources to help you get started. It’s never too early—or too late!)  

Educating Ourselves to Educate Our Children
For most of us, sex education was awkward, outdated, or uninformative—certainly not a model for how we’d like our children to learn about this important aspect of life and society. So how can we approach the topic more effectively?

One of the first steps is defining our values and expectations, and sharing those values and expectations with our children. That’s according to author, activist, teacher, nonprofit founder, and frequent MWS guest speaker Natasha Singh. During her lively and thought-provoking presentations, Natasha emphasizes the importance of understanding our own view of sex and sexual ethics—even helping us define the values or biases we may not be aware of!

Natasha’s roadmap to sexual literacy includes discussing your values directly with children, starting in the early years, in addition to having age-appropriate conversations about topics like bodily autonomy, body parts, consent, and relationships in elementary school. (Scroll down for more resources and tips from Natasha.)

Through these conversations, we lay the groundwork for topics puberty, sex, and relationships in middle school and high school. "Even when parents say little to nothing about sex, their silences—or what little they do say—reveal a lot about their attitudes towards sex," writes Natasha Singh in The Atlantic.

What Can I Expect My Child to Learn at School?
At Marin Waldorf School, we aim to educate children to become responsible, informed, respectful, and open-minded adults. Topics like consent, personal boundaries, and bodily autonomy are discussed in early grades, and sex education is explicitly introduced in middle school as part of the social ethics curriculum, a discussion-based class that covers social topics in a wide range of areas, from racism and anti-bias education to personal health and digital citizenship.

In social ethics, students discuss topics like puberty, sex, sexual orientation, gender and gender roles, consent, and how to be a responsible friend and partner in an open, age-appropriate way, and within the context of relationships, health, personal responsibility, and society. The goal is to empower middle-schoolers to reflect and share their opinions with the class in a supportive, teacher-led setting. 

In complement to the social ethics curriculum, middle schoolers study anatomy, physiology, and the human reproductive system during science blocks in 7th and 8th grade, giving them deeper insight into the changes taking place in their own bodies.

Resources: Talking About Sex With Our Children 

“Parents fear the conversation will be awkward, embarrassing, not knowing the right words to choose,” says Dr. Asma J. Chattha, M.B.B.S., a pediatrician at Mayo Clinic Children’s Center, in the article “When To Start Talking About Sexual Health With Your Child.” “Our discomfort is the biggest barrier to getting this knowledge to children. That’s why I’m a huge believer in equipping parents with educational material — what to talk about and when.”

  • Join us on Thursday, January 16, at 6:30pm, for a special evening with author, activist, nonprofit founder, writer, and speaker Natasha Singh. Open to the whole MWS community and appropriate to parents of children of any age, Natasha’s presentations provide practical tools and strategies that can lay the groundwork for healthy communication with your children. More information here.

  • Natasha Singh’s Tips & Resources for Waldorf Parents includes a discussion of values, scaffolding age-appropriate conversations, consent, bodily autonomy, and other key issues.

  • Get a taste of Natasha's practical and compassionate approach to sex education in this podcast from Parent Footprint with Dr. Dan. 

Julie Meade