Talking To Teens: Expert Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Andy Earle
Hey, it's Andy from talking to teens, it would mean the world to us. If you could leave us a five star review. reviews on Apple and Spotify help other parents find the show. And that helps us keep the lights on.

Thanks for being a listener. And here's the show. You're listening to talking to teens where we speak with leading experts from a variety of disciplines about the art and science of parenting teenagers.

I'm your host, Andy Earle Haye, we're here today with Dina Alexander talking about sex with our teenagers is one of the hardest things that many parents of teenagers have to do. For some reason. It's just a really difficult topic to discuss with our kids. Dina Alexander has been helping parents give better sex talks for a long time. Now she's written a series of books on how to talk about sex with kids. And she is actually just releasing the second edition, now totally updated and expanded really interested to talk with Deena today about what has changed since the first edition and get all of the latest most up to date tips on how to discuss sex with teenagers Dina is the founder and CEO of educate and empower kids, an organization determined to strengthen families by teaching digital citizenship, media literacy and healthy sexual education. She's the creator of how to talk to your kids about pornography, and the 30 days of sex talks, and 30 days to a stronger child programs. She's also the author of Noah's new phone and Petras power to see she has three kids herself. We're going to be hearing about a lot her youngest is just a senior in high school right now. So she's been having lots and lots of sex talks with them. We'll be really interested to hear about how those one All that and more is coming up on the show today. Dina, thank you so much for being here.

Dina Alexander
Thank you for having me. That's a big deal for me is just making complicated scary things simple because I think so. So much of parenting we freak out are we think it has to be bigger than it has to be when really it can be broken down. People we can do this, it's there are certain things that are always going to intimidate us based on our background or our own baggage. But there's always a way to talk to your kids about everything. And I mean, everything.

Andy Earle
Definitely sexuality is really one of the big topics that you write a lot about and having sex talks with kids is a topic of a lot of your books and content and everything like that. Why is that? It's why did you choose to write about that?

Dina Alexander
Well, to me, it's an important topic. And it is one of my favorite topics always has been even when I was a teenager. And then what I have found about 10 years ago, I started a nonprofit called educate and empower kids and I had looked at, I had just saw this article about teen porn consumption. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, does this really what's important? I had not seen online porn at that time yet. And just thinking of my own kids, my oldest at that time was in the eighth grade. Now she's 23. And I got only one left at home. That's a senior in high school. But thinking oh my gosh, I gotta talk to my kids about some of these different things. We had already initiated various sex talks were a really open family, we had kind of nurtured a lot of different conversations from when they were little. And then I started talking to other parents and realizing how totally freaked out they were I thought at first okay, maybe this is a Christian problem, because I'm Christian. I thought maybe other Christians, maybe this is just their problem, right? And realizing, oh, no, wait, okay. My atheist friends and my agnostic friends, Jewish friends, everybody had some hang up, had some concern. And at that time, so again, this is 10 years ago, most of them had no idea what was in porn, and how much their kids were watching. That also became a thing of okay, we need to talk about this. Even if you as a parent say are into porn, we still have to educate our kids on the difference between porn, sex, and real sex and real life and fantasy and a myriad of other topics. It just kind of snowballed from there with just tons and tons of research over the years that I still do still talk to lots of parents around the country. That's basically where it started from.

Andy Earle
It's like one of the most scariest things to talk about for some reason, and universally even parents who have not hard time I was discussing other things gonna be have a really, really hard time with sex. Why do you think that is? What is it about this topic that just makes it?

Dina Alexander
Yeah, why people are so freaked out? Ya know, because I remember one time giving a talk to a group of parents and saying why and asking the same question why are we it was probably after a recent terrorist attack and say why are we more comfortable talking about terrorist attacks and school shootings with our kids than we are about sex or masturbation or and then, and the consensus is typically, because we have our own hangups, about sex, it's usually related to that we have our own fears, a lot of us have had some kind of sexual abuse experience in our life. And not just moms. But dads too. I I'm a, I'm a believer that one in four women and one in five men have had some kind of sexual abuse. And even I'm in my 40s, I remember being surprised, as I was getting into this work talking to my parents, and both of both of them revealing that they had had something happened to them. And this was my dad, it had happened when he was a little boy in the 50s. And my dad, my mom, it was early 60s, we we kind of will think that this is just sort of a modern problem. It's like, No, those are things that have always gone on, unfortunately. But I really feel like that is part of it. And then sometimes even when we have teenagers, and I feel like this is especially an issue with parents of my generation of this idea of not my child, oh, not my child would never do this. And if you talk to any school administrator, they will tell you the same thing. That is the big fight that they have with parents typically, in a disciplinary situation, right? Not necessarily having anything to do with sex. But we have this idea that our little darlings with our just above such things or above, when instead of saying like, No, we're all human, we're all curious. And that's okay. Like, again, embracing the human parts of us that are good and awesome. And then just helping our kids along just like we would help them prepare for a career, just like we would help them prepare to clean their own house someday, why would we not help our kids prepare for a great sex life. But that also leads us to another thing that people are freaked out of the idea of their children growing up and being sexual beings. Instead, instead of just being like, Hey, I am. So why can't they be when they're adults, or when they're late teens, whatever. But that's, again, like one of those are the hang ups that I think we have.

Andy Earle
It's funny, though, just how much sex is just so everywhere in American culture especially feels like it compared to a lot of other countries, if it really feels that there's just so much sex in america and our marketing and advertising, and you're just bombarded by sexual messages in the media. And it's kind of it's kind of this funny juxtaposition where we have just, we're like it slammed on our throat all the time. But yeah, it's, we have a really hard time talking about we don't want

Dina Alexander
to talk about it. Yeah. Because again, like if you ask any group of parents, were you exposed to even 10% of what your kids are being exposed to now, and they will all be like that. You see this? Click in their face? Oh, my gosh, no, they have I was what we were exposed to was so much less was just such innuendo, it was so much smaller that it was the barely like the cleavage versus the full breast right. Just everything like that. You think about it, from the mall, to the billboards to I mean, even cooking shows, I remember a few years ago, watching a cooking show, and they were making chocolate chip cookies. And I remember the woman saying, I'm gonna make these chocolate chip cookies sexy. I'm gonna make them sexy. And I remember thinking, Why does a chocolate chip cookie need to be sexy, it's delicious. It's fabulous. But it's just like, again, it's such it's almost become it's part of our language. It's part of our jokes. It's part of our humor. It's literally the wallpaper of our lives. And then so I think I think also sometimes parents get into that, that feeling of oh, I don't need to, because they've seen this on TV or because they've heard something. They've heard it in the public school. They've heard they had sex ed so my I don't have to worry about that conversation where it's like, Are you kidding? Like, there's they the public schools are so overwhelmed and the little sex ed they're able to give and the little bit of relationship advice is so minor that that's where it's our job like that's one of those things we don't want to leave to other people to whether that's the school the churches, whatever, that's this is a great opportunity to help our kids have amazing future relationships. Yeah, calculus

Andy Earle
leave that to schools that that does that they're never going to use again. That doesn't matter. Sure, no problem. Let's go handle that. But sex is really important. You're going to do this all the time. Come on. Yeah.

Dina Alexander
I hope I I hope they will I hope everyone's having I hope everyone's having delightful sex lives.

Andy Earle
But I just think even among me and people I know my friends and how hard it is that I think everybody, we all struggle talking about sex, even in our relationships, or there's just some, like, hang up, I don't think it's just a parent, a parent teen thing. It's like, it's like we want to, we want sex to be everywhere. But then like, the kind of vulnerability involved with talking about it in a deeper way, is not something that we want to do. Absolutely.

Dina Alexander
And then again, with screens, they enable that kind of that same awkwardness of okay, I'm not going to talk about it. Kind of like if you have a texting relationship with someone you're dating. And let's say a lot of your conversations are just happening in texting, or maybe the majority of your sex perhaps is casual sex hookup sex, think of again, like that just discounts so much intimacy, so much of that vulnerability that, again, is just to me that's like a piece of humanity that you're missing out on. That's a great, amazing thing for us. And but our culture definitely pushes us in the sense where we kind of ride that stream with technology that it's it's not just that we're missing out on little conversations, or having less face to face conversation, we're missing out on that. Those huge pieces of friendship and kindness, and intimacy that is definitely affecting people, whether they're old, middle aged teenagers, in their 20s, whatever all of us are, we're having very different relationships than say people were having even 20 years ago.

Andy Earle
Well, that's interesting also, because, well, you have been revising all of your books recently, and re re releasing all your books on sex talks. And that got me really curious on what what the updates are? Or what going through this latest round of additions or changes? And how do you think things have changed even since you wrote the books are how they evolve for you for the

Dina Alexander
first set of books. So they're called 30 days of sex talks, and we have them for kids ages for parents of kids ages 12, plus eight to 11, and three to seven. And we wrote the first set, they came out in 2015. So we had worked on them, basically since end of 2013, throughout 2014. And in that sense, even then I feel like even the difference from 2014 to now that kids are they don't they don't have the luxury say of being as even as innocent as they were, then that there the bombardment is even more we have again, then the percentage of kids who had smartphones was still somewhere between 30 to 50%. And now we of course are up around 80 to 90% of teens having smartphones, somewhere in there, which it doesn't have to be that way. But that's a whole nother podcast discussion. But again, so there is that difference of the saturation of yeah, just different sexual content being made aware also the difference than say it was 10 years ago, be even up at that time, the porn industry was still mostly focusing its attention on on men and boys. And in the last five years, we have seen a big shift where that industry is definitely targeting our girls and women. And again, even if you're way into porn, and you love porn, and you think it's great, you have to admit, kids are not ready for that kind of content. They don't understand the difference between gymnastics and real life sex, they don't understand how their own bodies will feel they don't some of them still, they don't understand that no a when a woman typically is not going to orgasm while somebody is actually pounding into her. Right we have, again this disconnect. So we have parents not talking about it. Our kids talking to each other at school, still the same kind of bragging going on the same locker room chats, their body count whatever. And but we have parents not chatting about it and then learning their learning ideas from porn. We'll have also in the last decade have seen an increase of peer on peer sexual abuse. Some people attribute that to porn, some don't. But they are a lot. They're acting those things out. We again we're we predators are not just adults preying on our kids. There are kids that have learned to prey on other kids. We have, of course, a lot of increase of sexting and sending nudes. All of those things affect our kids sex lives and their self esteem. Same thing with social media again, because we have even more kids on social media. We're having a lot of comparisons made we have those that curated life on your phone that your daughter or your son knows that they could never live up to. So we know that self esteem is highly related to whether or not a person has sex or not. And when they do have sex that affects it. It impacts sometimes for good sometime aims for worse, right? So we have those who are just again, in our books we updated. There's a lot more information for parents a lot more questions. The thing, the feedback we always get for parents is that our questions are not just basic, like, oh, okay, we're gonna just talk about penis and vagina. It's like, there's so much more to sex, so many even even other types of sex than just classic penis vagina sex. So we have a lot more questions that are insightful for parents to really think about. Okay, how do you feel about this? What do you think is the ideal because something again, we don't have to talk, like every parent, like you said, is nervous about this topic, awkward. But my point always is, is you don't have to start with the awkward conversations, start with those easy ones talk about healthy relationships, ask your kids, what is your ideal partner look like? How do they behave? What do you think a healthy relationship even looks like? Who are some of the healthy relationships in our life that you might want to model after? Because it may or may not be mom and dad, right? And that's okay. But again, helping them get comfortable talking about some of these issues with you. And then that's where you can move in to those, those topics that maybe you're not as comfortable with. And but again, always, my hope is always that parents will realize, even if you're feeling nervous or uncomfortable that your kids are worth it, that it's worth getting over your nervousness, your hangups, even if that even if you've had trauma in your past, that we have an obligation to our kids to just educate them as much as possible, so that we can't make the world an easier place for our kids. But we can help our kids be ready for the world that is around them.

Andy Earle
When you talk about having 30 days of sex talks, does that mean? How do you do that? A lot of days, I mean, every day for 30 days or good just you have to, if

Dina Alexander
you really want to, I mean, we most people break it up into, they don't do it in 30 days. But that's again, where we've taken the topic and broke it into 30 small parts. And any parent can flip through our book and they will find one or two or three or four or more. Okay, I've done that top. Oh, okay. Oh, I didn't know I should have that talk. Okay, there's a talk on consent. Let me find out because that is something that they do cover in public school. But are they covering it? How you like, Are they are they putting responsibility on both boys and girls, all those conversations that to really find out because it's always fascinating to me when I talk and when my kids would tell me what they were learning in health class, or what they were hearing in the back of their own classes, what they're talking about with their friends, it is utterly fascinating. And if you can get to that place with your kids, where they are comfortable telling you those things, you're going to learn a lot, they're going to teach you something and you're going to grow your relationship that was again, the biggest best side effect, let's say of writing these books, and giving them to different parents and people to try out, right was every single person came back to us and was like, Okay, I know, you said that this should just be like a five or 10 minute conversation, it should just be simple and easy. But my kids came back with all these amazing questions. And we were talking for 45 minutes to an hour. And I was like, yes, exactly. You told your kids, it's okay to talk about these things. And to, I'm a good source, and I'm gonna listen, and I'm not going to judge you or act shocked or embarrassed that I will that you're able to handle it in a calm manner that you are interested in them. And that was something that all of us experienced was a little more bonding, a little more connection and closeness with our kids, because we let them know, you can talk to me about tough topics, not just sex, but anything other things going on in our life, right. So that's where that's always my goal. For families with this, you never have to do it in 30 days, you do not have to cover all 30 topics. But you will benefit from every topic because there's something that will make you think about your own life that will make you think about the culture and what your kids are, are taking in by osmosis. Or by seeking certain information or certain media out. It's, it's again, like even if a person were never to buy my book, you're not going to regret having these conversations with your kids or starting that though, that process of letting your kids know, I'm willing to talk about this. I'm willing to talk about things that maybe I was uncomfortable with in the past or that I am now comfortable with getting uncomfortable or whatever all of those things are. You're never going to look back and be like, Oh, I told my kids too much about sex. You're never gonna say that. You're never gonna go oh, I educated them a little too much. Oh, like again, it's it's not gonna happen. You're gonna be like, okay, yeah, no, I'm glad I Hold them that I didn't do it perfect. Every person screws up everybody, don't worry. And that was another big funny side effect from all of this because we would give it to therapists. We've talked with tons of different parenting experts. And every single one has has a story where they screwed something up, or they screwed one of these talks up, or they said something that you that they were embarrassed about, that they were not calm enough maybe about when their kids told them or revealed something. And it's like, that's okay. None of us are going to be perfect at this no one.

Andy Earle
Hey, we're here with Dina Alexander, talking about how to talk about sex with our teenagers. And we're not done yet. Here's a look at what's coming up in the second half of the show.

Dina Alexander
Most girls, when they're little, let's say they don't even know that they have two different holes. They don't realize that they have a one that they pee out of, and they have their vagina. And at one time, I was giving a talk to a bunch of moms and I had suggested to them that they give their daughters a mirror to look at their private parts, you could tell half the room was like oh my gosh. And then that's again, a great thing for us as parents to think about is why am I uncomfortable with that? One of the big mistakes is parents waiting too long thinking that their child has no interest or doesn't know or so just starting early. If you can start before they're teenagers, please do but even if say there's deeper topics, no pun intended that you want to be able to even have those conversations, right? Instead of thinking about okay, a lot of kids are engaging in oral and anal sex these days. I need to talk to them about that and what that means in a relationship. And are there dangers are we've seen also, in the last decade a huge increase in HPV, and it's not just girls it is boys. And that is from oral sex. Think of how many relationships now are starting through a phone right, like so I have a son in college right now. And he's gone on four or five dates. And that has all been through an app. But my daughter is married at 23. One that's very young, but to she met him through an app, we have no idea yet what it means for an entire culture to be functioning and doing a majority of their conversations through a phone.

Andy Earle
Want to hear the full episode, head over to talking to teens.com/register for a free trial of our premium podcast, you get exclusive access to loads of great content with no obligation and your membership supports the work we do here at talking to teens get started today with a free trial over at talking to teens.com/registered Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.