How Open Conversations About Sexual Health Can Keep Kids Safer in a Hypersexualized World

Highlights from a Culture Reframed Webinar: Preventing Sexual Assault with Sex Education

Parents, caregivers, educators, and others who care for young children can take steps to reduce the likelihood of sexual assault by starting science-based sex education at an early age and creating paths for open communication. Empowering children with knowledge and critical-thinking skills can help them recognize and prevent the root causes of sexual violence, including exposure to degrading, misogynistic, and violent online pornography.

The widespread incident of sexual assault, defined as any sexual activity that occurs without consent, affects people of all sexual orientations and ages. Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. adults experienced sexual assault or harassment in the past year. One in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse.

Two sex education experts shared information and resources for parents and caregivers during a recent Culture Reframed webinar, “Preventing Sexual Assault with Sex Education”:

• Kerri Isham, Founder of Power Up Education, specializes in sexual health education for children from kindergarten through high school. As an educator, coach, and facilitator, Isham aims to make exploring sexual health fun and meaningful and alleviate the shame and embarrassment sometimes associated with this topic.
• Amy Lang is the Founder of Birds and Bees and Kids, which offers resources to guide conversations about sex with young people. Lang is a sexuality and parent educator and sexual abuse prevention specialist who provides training on childhood sexual development and sexual abuse prevention for early childhood and youth-serving organizations.

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During their discussion moderated by Dr. Mandy Sanchez, Director of Programming at Culture Reframed, Lang and Isham agreed that providing early and proactive sexual health education can help create open and trusting lines of communication between young children and parents or other caregivers. “If kids have open communication with their parents … they feel better about themselves,” Lang said, adding that these conversations also ease later discussions when children near puberty.

Isham said educating young children about sex provides a foundation that will serve them as they mature. “When we’re talking to kids from a young age, that solid foundation is there,” she said. “Having these conversations early just builds trust for future conversations.”

During these conversations, parents can also share their values related to sex before children encounter other potentially confusing ideas from friends, classmates, or online sites. “When they have this information, it shuts down the ‘mythic’ information they hear on the playground,” Isham said. “It sets a foundation for kids to be able to not only set healthy sexual boundaries but maintain them through the teen years and adulthood.”

Helping your child develop an age-appropriate level of sex education is a protective strategy in a world where the average age of exposure to pornography is now 12, Lang said. “Ultimately, it’s protective. So when they are exposed to porn, they know that’s sex and not for kids,” she said.

Isham, who works with children aged two and older, said preschool-age children can start by learning the correct names of body parts. They also should learn who they should consider trusted adults: the “people who listen, support them, respect their body boundaries — they never ask them to do touches they don’t want to do and never ask them to keep a secret about their body,” she said.

Preschool children can learn the difference between surprises, which are usually fun, and secrets, which someone has asked them not to share, Isham said. “We don’t want to teach kids to be passive because sometimes adults ask them to do something that’s totally reasonable, and other times an adult crosses the line,” she said. “We want to be able to tell kids that it’s OK to say no.”

Discussions about sex are often easier for children than adults for several reasons, Lang said. “We come to these conversations with everything we know, and it makes things hard on us,” she said. “But the reality is our kids are open to this, especially when they’re under 10 or so. They’re open to it, they’re curious, and you want to capitalize on that.”

Lang also said they should be a regular part of parent-child conversations. “None of this is one and done,” she said. “Your job is to make sure your child is as informed as possible so they’re as safe as possible.”

Watch the full conversation to learn more about these and other topics, including how to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy sexual behaviors and how to include neurodivergent children in the conversation.

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