Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1143: When to Talk to Your Kids About Sex? Dr. Julia Sadusky

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

Dr. Julia Sadusky is a licensed clinical psychologist in Colorado. She is also an author, consultant, speaker, and adjunct professor. Dr. Sadusky has done extensive research and clinical work in sexual development and specializes in trauma-informed care. She earned a bachelor's degree from Ave Maria University and a master's degree and doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Regent University. She has authored several books around human sexuality, with her most recent book titled, Start Talking to Your Kids about Sex: A Practical Guide for Catholics (Ave Maria Press, 2023).  Julia's latest book forms the foundation for our scintillating conversation. When should we talk to our kids about sex? What does "age appropriate" ways of talking look like? The importance of naming body parts. How to protect against sexual abuse.  Learn more about Julia: https://www.juliasadusky.com/about The Bible Recap: https://thebiblerecap.myshopify.com/products/the-bible-recap?utm_source=TITR-PODCAST&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=q1TBR_TITR&utm_id=TITR-Q124 Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in Raw. I'm really excited about this conversation with Dr. Julia Sadesky. Julia is a licensed clinical psychologist in Colorado. She's also an author, consultant, speaker, and adjunct professor. She's done extensive research and clinical work in sexual development and specializes in trauma-informed care. She has a bachelor's degree from Ave Maria University, a master's degree and doctorate in clinical psychology from Regent University. She's written or co-written several books, including her most recent book. The title is Start Talking to Your Kids About Sex, a Practical Guide for Catholics. Now, as we discuss at the very end of this conversation, this book is also very relevant

and helpful for Protestants. So don't let the, if you're not Catholic, don't let the subtitle scare you away. As you'll see, everything we talk about is very relevant,ed bodies. So we do talk explicitly. And I, hey, I don't want to give a warning because the whole point of why we talk explicitly is because we should talk explicitly with our kids. So I don't want to say if you're young kids on around, you know, maybe if you have young kids around that you haven't had these conversations with, that maybe put your buds in, listen to this and then turn right around and start having more open and honest conversations with your kids about this really important topic. So without further ado, please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Dr. Julia Sadusky. All right. Hey, Julia, thanks so much for being a guest on Theology in Her Eye. Well,

tell us briefly just who you are, what you do. And then I really want to get into this topic that you wrote a book about, how to talk to your kids about sex, because I get asked this question all the time. So I'm excited to learn from you over the next hour or so. But yeah, tell us who Julia Sadesky is. Yeah. So I am a licensed psychologist in Colorado. I've been here since about 2019 and I have a private practice here now. I've done work as a psychologist in sexuality and gender, tons of research in that area over the course of my career and have written a couple of books specifically on gender. And then this new book is a little bit more broad, just talking about human sexuality and faith and how to form children in a healthy vision

of sexuality. And so I speak, I write, I do clinical work, which is my primary passion. And yeah, that's a little bit about me. I was going to ask you what your favorite part of what you do is. Is it the clinical work? Is that what you love the most? Yes. Yes. It's the clinical work. I never would have thought I would have done anything other than that because I just wanted to be in a room alone with people doing what I do in therapy. And so it's been quite the journey to be able to do other things and super surprising to me. It takes a certain kind of person, right? think most people i know think about people doing clinical work or counselors you know they're just like every hour every a couple hours you're meeting

the new person that typically has stuff they're working through you know like it's not it's a weighty conversation and most people find that absolutely exhausting but there is a select few the chosen of humanity that actually is energized by that what What does it take to do what you do? Because I think, yeah, for me, that sounds like I could do that for about, I could do like one a day, maybe, you know? Yeah, I always say to people, my job is very different than most jobs on the face of the earth. You know, you're asking people to step into the depths with you on purpose. You know, I'm choosing to do that. So yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I found myself even as a young child kind of drawn to people and wanting to have deeper conversations

with people. And I always enjoyed one-on-one context or small group context to just go deeper. And I remember my first job out of undergrad was at a rehab and I was a behavioral health technician, kind of entry-level position. And I kept finding myself sitting one-on-one with people and just hearing their stories. And it was the final step for me that confirmed, yeah, this is what I want to do. And yeah, what does it take? I mean, I think it does take a lot of discipline in listening to my body. I have a therapist, you know, who shows up for me and, you know, just being able to find ways to step in and out of the intensity of people's lives, which, yeah, is definitely a discipline. How do you not take, I don't want to use the wrong language, but like their problems. I don't know.

Can I say that? How do you take someone's, the stuff they're working through? How do you not take that with you? Like say you, you're meeting with somebody and maybe they're wrestling with suicidality. They're just, they got so much going on and it's like, oh my word. And then, hey, I got another meeting. So we're done and, you know, move on. And like, how do you do that?

Then go home and like live a normal life. I think that's the biggest question people have. Yeah. Yeah. That's the number one question people ask me. I, so maybe it's surprising, but I don't know that there's a way to just not be impacted by people's stories. If there is, I have not found it. And it's been more characteristic of my work that I actually want to be impacted by the lives of the people I walk with, which means there are days where I come home and I'm carrying the weight of somebody's suicidality, as you mentioned, or know that somebody's weighing a difficult decision that week. And it's on my mind and it's on my heart.

And I would say prayer has been really important for that, you know, surrendering the people I walk with to God as a spiritual discipline, going into activities that are distracting for me. You know, I used to live with a family with kids. So going home and when you're around kids, be outside, shift my awareness into a different direction has been helpful because yeah, I'm not the kind of therapist who is not impacted and, and it's not always clean to be able to step out of it. I would say it's just kind of my honest take. Gosh, my, my, my, my, my high view of you already just went higher. That's an amazing response. That's, golly. I can imagine, yeah, that it has, I'm sure, drawn you closer to Jesus. I mean, because it's very Jesus-like, right?

To sit in people's pain and stuff they're working through and to almost let it bother you in a good way and yet not cripple you in a bad way. Somebody said if you have almost too much empathy, you'd make a good therapist for that hour. People would love it. You would just be in there weeping with them. But you just – it would be like sprinting and trying to sprint through a marathon. You would just collapse after a couple miles. Right, right.

Wow. Well, let's jump into your book. So you recently wrote this book, uh, start talking to, start talking to your kids about sex. I love how it's in the command. Um, what led you to want to write this because you don't have kids, right? You're not, uh, that's right. Yeah. So what, what drove you to want to write this book? Yeah. So it's, it's such a funny story. I was actually talking with Ave Maria Press, the publisher, about a totally different project. And so I was pitching something around sexual orientation to educate

Catholics. And I wrote that proposal. I wrote the sample chapter. You know how it goes. All the things were in. And their meeting got delayed a month, the publishing meeting for that book project. And so in that month, I had gotten probably five or six calls from close friends asking questions about young children and how to respond to questions they were getting or experiences in the home, you know, playdates that kind of went wonky at some point. And they kept saying, as I would script things for them, here's what you can say. Here's how you can pick up that conversation with your kid. They kept saying to me, why isn't there a book on this? Why isn't there a book on this? And so

as I sat with that, it's happened before where that has been said to me. And I'm like, well, I guess I could write a book about that. And so I prayed about it a little bit. And then I started to really think about the work I do with people who have survived sexual trauma in childhood. And I've always been struck by how there are certain proactive things we are not doing in Christian context that we could be doing that would buffer against sexual abuse. And so it was really the convergence of those two pieces, friends asking me questions about early childhood development, pondering what could be more helpful in this space to buffer against some of the harm against children today. And so those two things came together and I emailed the editor and said, wait, I want to write another proposal and

wrote a sample chapter in about an hour. So it really flowed out of me. And that's how it came to be. Let's go real quick, big picture stuff. And then I would love to walk through, because I know you talk about different age stages throughout the book. Let's go big picture. What are some big picture things that any parent with a younger, say they have a one-year-old kid. So they're not having these conversations probably yet, or maybe they are. I'll let you talk. But they're thinking long-term, okay, I'm going to do this right. What are some big picture things you would tell that parent to some big picture do's and don'ts in terms of having these conversations with younger kids? Yeah. So the first thing is, and I start the book this way,

is what are the things that get in the way of well-intentioned parents having conversations with their kids in developmentally appropriate ways? Because I sit with a lot of parents and have many friends who will say, gosh, I want to do it differently than how it was done for me. I want to be able to respond in a calm way,

but I actually in the moment don't. And so being able to help parents look at their own stories and say, what were the messages that I got about sexuality through the absence of conversation or what happened when there was conversation? What did I take away from that? And recognizing really for parents themselves, oh my gosh, these things are going to present some type of barrier for me. So what are going to be my blind spots or what are going to be the things that really put the heat on me? Because if you can plan for some of that, you start to realize, oh, these are my strengths, these are my areas of comfort, and these are the things that feel hot button to me. And maybe there's room for parents to work with a therapist on some of those pieces or to have a close friend that they can start to talk about this or their spouse that

they can talk about this with. And so that's really the first thing is, why are we as well-intentioned adults not able when the moment comes to really intervene. The second thing is being able to take ownership over what we've already done or not done, right? So you mentioned the one-year-old. At that point, not a lot has happened in this space. There is one thing you can start doing, and this is kind of hilarious to me because really it's for the parents. It's not for the babies and kids. But at bath time and when you're changing their diaper to be able to start to name their genitalia out loud. It's something that in sex therapy we do actually as we're training as clinicians, we practice saying genitalia out loud and not laughing or not, you know, letting shame

get in the way, not blushing. Because as a clinician, you have to talk about these things quite a bit with people, especially if you're a sex therapist. And so I use that type of intervention for parents to say, okay, yeah, when they're one and you're cleaning their genital area, you can say, oh, I'm going to clean your vagina now. I'm going to clean your vulva area. And all of that is simply for the parents to help reduce shame, increase comfort. for the parents to help reduce shame, increase comfort. And just like we teach kids other body parts, teaching them initially about those parts of the body so that there's less shame around that. Is that, so that's, that's the purpose is, is if something's not named, then it's very easy to be that thing that's not named to become a source of shame later on. And has that been shown like, has that been shown clinically and through studies

and stuff? I mean, it seems intuitively correct to me. It's like, yeah, if you can't even talk about something, then that's going to be like, oh, this must be a bad thing, you know? That's right. So it's actually the number one buffer against childhood sexual abuse is if parents teach their kids about their genitalia, the names, the accurate terms for genitalia is protective against abuse in childhood. And so, and then what, right, if your child does experience an unwanted sexual experience, how do they talk about it with you? Because they're already going to feel shame about the experience.

And then if this body part has never been given language or has never been given any type of attention other than don't touch that or don't talk about that or don't point at that, right? It carries a connotation that is an additional barrier. And that's something that, yes, through research we can know, but also through clinical practice. It's something that anecdotally a lot of people say is my parents never talked about this area of the body. And then when something happened to it, I was really left to my own devices and I got the sense it wasn't okay to tell anybody about it. That's fascinating. I mean, it's, it's, I've never heard anybody say it just like that, but it's so intuitive. Like I think everybody listening is like, Oh yeah, I mean, it totally makes sense. Like, um, so that, are you saying that's like,

so let's go zero to two. Is that kind of where you want to start naming body parts? Um, and then that's beyond that zero to two, there probably nothing more you need to do at that point. Well, so then, then we get into right, like three to five, three to seven. And again, for people with learning disabilities or other pieces going on developmentally, it wouldn't quite map this way, but for kind of neurotypical kids,

you're going to start to see something called exploratory play. And this is broader than just around anatomy and genitalia. Kids start to play games in a sensory way, right? That their sensory experience, touching things, making sounds, all of these things becomes ways that they're learning about their environment. And we start to see kids do the same thing with their bodies. They start to notice their changing body when, you know, things move around or when they touch different parts of the body, they're curious about it. And this is where we start to hear kids playing games like doctor and kind of noticing, you know, a little boy touching his penis and saying, oh, my gosh, like, look, what's that? Why is that moving?

Why is that sticking out? Or a little girl pointing at a boy's or her own and saying, oh, mine's different from yours, right? Or mom, why do I look like you and not dad, right? These kinds of more typical developmental pieces. And so these are moments that parents tend to get really reactive and scared. And a lot of times what I hear from families and what we know from research is that parents, again, will respond the way they were responded to. So if an adult as a child touched their own genitals or somebody else's out of curiosity and they got slapped, right? Well, you might do the exact same thing

to your kid or throw their hand away, that kind of thing. And so actually part of the book is also just coaching parents through what is normative exploratory play? And how do you set boundaries with kids about that? So it's not just, oh, that's normal. So you don't do anything. You just let them touch each other and touch themselves. No, it's like, how do you actually coach the parents on engaging, setting limits with the kids in a kind of warm, winsome, calm way? And so there's a lot of scripting about that as well. How do you, so when you say boundaries, you're saying like innocent, curious, touching of somebody else. And then how do you not shame them for doing that, but

also protect the boundaries? Say it's your kid that's doing that again, very curiously and innocently, whatever. So how do you go about, yeah, how do you go about setting boundaries without shaming them? Yeah. And it's both for them touching somebody else's body without permission and without that being appropriate. And also for themselves, right? There are differences between public environments and private environments. And so coaching through that. So what's an example of that? Let's say you're at church on Sunday and one of your sons is, he's four and he's just playing with his penis, right? He's just touching it and kids do this. And, you know, you could in the moment just remind him and say, you know, do you want me to hold your hand? I can tell that you're kind of distracted. I can tell that you're kind of distracted. And later then, right?

And it's best with kids when they're playing with you or you're kind of doing something together instead of sitting down, staring them in the face and saying, we need to talk about what happened at church. But just, you know, if they're helping you clean some dishes in the kitchen or whatever it might be and just around, you can say, hey, I noticed you were touching your penis at church today. What do you like about doing that? And you're just opening the conversation and the kid's going to tell you, oh, it feels funny or it feels good to me or I don't know. I don't know why I like doing that, right? And the parent can say, well, you know, that is a part of your body that

we want to keep really clean. And so if we touch our hands, which have germs on them, on that part of the body, it can actually cause germs and has a kind of infection. So we're not going to touch that, especially in public, but we'll touch it when we clean it. We touch it when we are in the bath, when we're wiping it, when, you know, to go to the bathroom. Other than that, we're going to keep our hands in our lap. So you're kind of framing it in a positive way. Here's what, and you're always telling kids, here's what we do with our hands. And here's what we do with that part of the body.

You're starting to already teach the function of it, right? What's it for? Well, it's not actually for play. It's for other purposes. And so you're just starting to set that framework at that point. Okay. So this is the three to seven-ish range? Mm-hmm. That's right. At that age, I guess this is getting into another question. You're not talking about

the sexual function of genitalia, or are you? Let me ask you that question. When do you start talking about... This is probably the number one question I get. When do we start talking about our kids? About sex, I number one question I get. Like, when do we start talking about our kids about sex? I'm in the title of your book in an age appropriate way. Like I don't want to introduce categories too early. And yeah, I think most parents now, well, a lot of parents now are realizing we typically wait too long. Our parents waited too long, you know, sit us down. We're like 17 to have a sex talk. It's like so awkward. It's like, and now with the internet and everything is so much like they're hearing about stuff so much younger. So it's like, it has to be younger, but what does that look like? So what, yeah, what is the age appropriate way to start talking about

sex with your kids? Yeah. So we, we honestly don't have any research to tell us when you start actually having that conversation. Really, what you're basing it on is exposure to technology, social media, peers who would be talking about it. Because the way I frame it in the book is that you do not want to be the last person setting a framework for this conversation. You want to be seen, if you're a parent, if you're a mentor in somebody's life, as a resource, right? A source of wisdom, just like we want people to see God as a source of wisdom in this conversation. And so if you're the last or, you know, 10th person to have a place at the table, what's going to happen is what we've seen happen,

which is kids have one awkward conversation with their parents at puberty and they never want to talk about it with mom and dad again. but you're also beginning to anticipate as kids get a little bit older, seven, eight, nine, you know, once they're in school, that they're going to hear these things from their friends. And so I'll tell you this story. One of my friends got this book and had it sitting on her table. And one of her kids came up and said, mom, what's sex, right. And she's about eight. And so that's the first conversation. So when do you do it? You do it when the child asks that question at eight. So the first conversation and what did the child hear from mom? Well, sex is actually one meaning of that is that there are two sexes. There are men and there are women. And that's one definition of sex. There's other things it means, and we'll talk about that as you get older. But one thing

it means is you know how you're a girl and dad's a man and I'm a woman? That's sex. So you can see that just keeping it really precise. And then, hey, if you hear other things about that word, you'll probably hear friends talk about it. You'll hear teachers at some point talk about it. You can always bring that home and just tell us what you're learning about sex because we can talk about that more. So you're priming the kid to bring those conversations back into the home environment and helping them know they are going to hear other things about sex and what's going to happen. A kid's going to say, oh, sex is when two people get naked and they do bad things or whatever they say. And then you want that kid coming to mom and dad and saying, hey, I heard another thing about sex. Let's talk about that. Oh, actually, there is another meaning

of sex. Remember, we talked about that, right? So you're just planting these seeds. And the biggest thing is showing calm because if the kid can sniff out that you are freaking out, they will protect the parent. We see this all the time from young children, especially empaths. If they can tell their parents are uncomfortable or angry or overwhelmed, they will log that and say, you know what? It's more important for me to have the attachment with you than to talk about this thing. So I'm not going to put my mom and dad through something uncomfortable. That's interesting. Wow.

I've not heard that. So you kind of let the kid, again, I'm thinking, let's just say five to eight-ish, five to nine, when they're starting to be in more public settings or around other kids or getting out in the world a little bit. You're kind of letting their curiosity drive the when and how, would you say? Like, if they're not asking, they're all playing. Like, you know, I think of different kids. You know, some kids are just super curious really early. And it's like, gosh can they're just really curious other kids are just like you know i don't want to stereotype boys and girls but like in in in my situation is you know like it was it was that you know and like my you know boys are just like just running around the on the ball field you know playing around and

stuff and they're just they're just not really interested where girls seem to be a little bit more uh interested You're letting their interests kind of guide the when and how is that rather than fortunate? Okay. To some extent. Yeah. I mean, I think at the same time, right. If you have in many families, you have kids of different ages. And so you do have to be also helping the most curious kids know what to do with the information they're getting from you, because if they're curious, they may also feel confident in their ability to know things. And so, you know, how this can be with kids is they'll then be the resource to all their friends and want to, you know, I get to tell everybody. And so you're also helping that child know that, okay, you know, you're curious about

this. We're going to talk about this. This is actually something that we get to talk about, the two of us. And with, you know, if you're married to another person, your other parent, we get to talk about this in our home. We don't talk about this with younger siblings. We don't talk about this with friends. Why? Because that's a conversation I want to have with them, just like I've been able to have important, special conversations with you. So you're bracketing it with the kids who are more curious now with other things like young boys, as they get older, they will start to notice things like erections, right? And, and so if you're noticing that you're going to, you're going to step in, even if they're not bringing that up. So, so if you notice them having an erection, you may, again, not, not really say

anything in the moment, come back to it later when everything's more calm and just say, hey, I noticed that your penis was sticking up. Did you notice that? Does that happen sometimes for you? Oh, what do you think of that? And then you're getting, again, you're always getting their reaction first because they're going to tell you more if you don't fill the space. And then coming in as a parent and saying, oh, that's actually really normal. That's happening because blood is rushing to that area of your body. Sometimes it happens for no reason. Sometimes it happens for a reason. And we can talk about that more as time goes on. But very normal, if it ever is painful to you, if you ever notice like swelling there that,

that scares you, we can, we can talk about that. So you're just, again, pointing them back, helping coach them in the least intrusive way. And then you're asking them at the end, what, what other questions do you have? And they may say none. And maybe in your experience, you know, your, your boy wouldn't, wouldn't have any other questions. Like I'm onto the next thing. you know, your, your boy wouldn't, wouldn't have any other questions. Like I'm onto the next thing. But then they know who to go to when they do have questions and we're assuming they might at some point as things start to develop more. You're just kind of normalizing the conversation, right? Is that, I hear you saying just like constantly just nor that this is just a normal, you know, like what's for dinner. And I had an erection, you know, like it's just kind of, so it's not an awkward thing

when more questions arise. If I can, I do want to, so even in that situation, and I don't, I mean, this is the Algin Ross. We have a very long leash on how specific and graphic we want to get. But I don't want to, you know, go further than we need to. But even something like that, like, I mean, there's a really specific sexual function with what's going on there right like but you're saying you don't need to get into the nitty-gritty details of why all his blood is rushing to your penis whatever i mean because you can just kind of there there is it okay to be more general because i think that's the tension people are

like gosh how specific do i get i don't want to i don't want to be the prude parent you know and like not even talk about it you know whatever But then also, how specific do I get? Do I start talking about what the sex act looks like to a 10-year-old or whatever? Or is that going too far? How do you... Yeah, it's so challenging. And I think part of it is for parents to attune to your specific kid, right? So I've had some parents who their kids are homeschooled.

They're not on social media, and their peer group is pretty able to filter out a lot of content. So if they're eight years old, they're not likely to be exposed to much of anything at that point if they're not accessing devices. You know, gone are the days where they're going in to get magazines, right, that have pornographic content or that kind of thing. So, so it's a little bit different in, in every case. However, once you start to hit eight, nine, 10 for boys and girls, they're going to start to notice, you know, probably crushes a little bit more. They're going to start to have erections more in response to stimulus, right? Whether it's they, you know, I've had clients

who say, you know, I was climbing a tree and I've experienced an erection from just the touch of the tree. And I wish somebody had told me, you know, at about that age, nine or 10, that that could happen because it scared me. And it also felt really good and it felt really confusing. And I definitely didn't bring it up to my parents because they had never talked about that before. And so anyway, I think what we're trying to do is once we get 8, 9, 10, and that's really the second book of this series, the talking with your teens about sex, is about that age 9 to 10, where you do start to describe function. where you do start to describe function, do you ever wonder, and this is the question, you know, do you ever wonder why it is that blood rushes to your penis at that time, right? Or for young girls as they get older, you know, discharge of the vaginal area, do you ever wonder about that? And that's where you start to say, well, that actually has a really cool purpose. And if your kid is curious, and you get to say, what questions do you have about that? Or you can say, have you ever heard

about sex? Have you ever heard about, what do you know about that? What have your friends said about that? What have you read online? Because some kids will already search things up even without you knowing or looked in an encyclopedia if they don't have social media. All the homeschool kids going through the encyclopedia. Yeah, that's dating us, right? It's like, do they have this anymore? But yeah, whatever it is. So, you're pulling that thread. What do they know? And then you can start to say, well, actually, the purpose of that is it's what helps a woman become a mom and a husband become a dad. And you can speak to the procreative dimension of that. You can speak to the unitive, right? That when people become adults and when some people get married, many people get

married and sex actually becomes the highest way that they show love to one another. So again, you can keep that general and then you can show diagrams. I mean, the second book has images of diagrams that you start to point out to kids as they're in puberty. And it's a little different than the approach that I've seen in recent years, which is you give your kids a book. I kind of like the idea of you being the one communicating it and showing I can have this conversation. Even giving a kid a book, I think in some ways can say, go do that yourself. I don't know how to talk about that with you. And I would love for parents by the time puberty comes to feel

really free to say, oh, I want to be the one that explains this to you. Look, this is the male reproductive system. This is the female reproductive system. Remember how we've talked about how penises can become erect? That's actually on purpose for the sexual act. And again, you can get as descriptive as you need to with an older child about that. So you're talking right now, you're still in the prepubescent stage, right? You're 8, 10, 11. I mean, you're not talking 13, 14. By then you're having full-on sex talks, I'm sure, right? I mean. Exactly, exactly.

And it may depend on the kid, but really at the end of the day, by that time, my sense is that the parents who take this approach, their kids are wanting to talk at puberty about things they're noticing at school, online, misinformation about sexuality, you know, even in today's culture, you know, BDSM stuff, kids are going to, I want them to go home at 13 and say, I heard this thing at school about, you know, are they hearing about, are they hearing about BDSM stuff in school? Like, yes. Yeah. It depends on the school, but yeah. And with pornography, right. I mean, they've seen, you know, I think average exposure for pornography is seven to nine. And, you know, you figure that algorithm by the time you get to 13, 14, you can see a lot of things. So,

so that's what I hear about, right. I hear about the kids who are telling me what they wouldn't tell their parents, which is, this is what I heard. This is what I saw. What is that? You know, through anime, those kinds of things as well. This episode is sponsored by Kuva, an innovative streaming service that helps you understand scripture the way it was intended to be understood, complexities and all. Kuva helps you dig deep into scripture, original languages, and the biblical context with series, documentaries, roundtables, and much, much more from experienced Christian leaders and teachers. For instance, they have

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Let's talk about, because you've dealt with a lot of abuse survivors. So how do we guard against that? What can we do as parents? Let's just maybe go back and you can start at any age you want. And you've already hit on some of it, you know um reducing shame and body parts from the early age um boundaries and so on but are there other things parents can do to help prevent abuse from happening because it's so it's really it's just it it just breaks my heart this is an understatement when i hear the percentages on this you know like oh my god what i mean what it's

something 20 to 30% of females will experience unwanted sexual advances by the time they're 18 or something like that. I mean, that's a general is, is, and boys is not too far. I think it's one in four, one in four girls. And, um, and what's interesting is, you know, I think it's like 20% of that group, it will happen before the age of seven. And then the majority will happen between seven and 12. So think about that, right? Even before you're typically having your sex talk, your kids are getting, and the way I frame it, which is not entirely, it's quite a reframe. It's like they're getting an education from somewhere. And what I hear from abuse survivors

is my first experience of sexuality was with a perpetrator. Like, what does that mean to me? You know? And it's so painful for people. And so, yeah, I think, and this is such a passion of mine, totally separate from the work I do more broadly in sexuality and gender. But gosh, in Christian contexts, we can do better. And how do we do better, right? And that's what you're asking. And yes, so accurate language for genitalia, teaching those boundaries

around touch. Like the way I frame it in the book is family rules. Like what are our family rules? And one of our family rules is we don't keep secrets. So we may have surprises. Surprises are okay, but secrets are not. Why? Because I know enough about perpetrators from my work to know that that is something they will say to kids. This is our secret. So as soon as that priming is happening, right, in a perpetrator kind of dynamic, I want that child to remember what mom and dad said. We don't keep secrets. And to go to mom and dad and say, oh, so-and-so said this to me. Because it doesn't often, it's not often the case that unwanted sexual experiences are one-offs. I mean, sometimes it is, but it's usually people the family knows. And it's usually people who are in some type of way grooming and building a relationship

with these kids. So another thing that you can do to prevent abuse, which feels so small, but it's so important and a little bit awkward for parents is you do not force your kids to show physical affection to people in certain ways. I was going to ask that. Go hug, go hugger, whatever. Nope. Yeah. And this is not a place to shame parents listening who say, oh, I've done that my whole life. I've forced my kids. But the first I learned about this was I was running a trauma survivors group. And we were talking about that idea of politeness and how

they all got the message that they had to be polite when somebody asked something of them with their body. And they remember being told to hug or kiss or sit on the lap of a family member who was going to eventually violate them or had already sexually violated them. And they got the sense that my parent wants me to do this because the person wants me to do this. And what I mean by that is that when a person says, give me a hug, the parent says, give them a hug, give them a hug. And the kid is learning. It's my job to do what they're asking me to do. And my parents redirecting me to do that. And so they would learn, oh my gosh, like I'm just doing what I'm told. And

that's good. Actually. It's good to listen to the adult when they say sit on my lap, when they say to do these other things, even if I feel uncomfortable, I'm not supposed to listen to the discomfort. So what do you do? Right. To not be rude to people. And especially, I mean, so many people don't know this stuff at this point. And so you're not shaming people. You're not snapping at somebody and saying, you know, how dare you ask that of my kid. If you hear somebody at a family gathering say, hey, give me a hug. You can say, oh, in our family, we can give hugs. We can wave. We can smile. We can do lots of things to say hello and goodbye. So what do you want to do

to say hello, goodbye to so-and-so, right? So you're saying say that in the moment, like in the moment, grandparents, give me a hug. You're like, oh, yeah. And so you turn to your kid and say, do you want to give a hug or do you want to give a hi or bye? Like, what do you want to do? Exactly. Exactly. What do you want to do? Do you want to wave? Do you want to smile? Do you want to give a high five? Do you want to give a hug? Whatever you want. Because it's not bad for kids to give hugs to people. That's not it. But you're teaching a kid that if they, what you want, right, for that developing adult is for them to learn that I get to check in with my body and what it's telling me, like my fear response, my discomfort, my disgust response, what it's telling me about this person. I want to grow confidence in my gut. And that's the thing that gets pushed past when it's, you have to do this because we want to look polite or we want to look like we have respectful kids who do what they're told, which what I hear from parents is some of what the fear is, is I don't want to come across as

my kid being rude. And so I force them to do these things and I want them to show affection for a person who's important to me. And you can also do that proactively. Again, I mean, this is ideal is that if you're going to a Christmas this year and you know you're going to see family members that the kid does not know very well and is not familiar with, you're teaching them, hey, remember, we're going to see so-and-so. We can do lots of different things. You can go up and give them a high five. You can give them a hug if you feel comfortable. You can smile. You can wave. Just remember, sometimes people ask for hugs. You don't have to give a hug, but you don't have to be rude about it. You can just wave or do something else. Right. And then just remember, you know, we keep doors open when

we go over to people's houses and you know, if anything happened that that's makes you feel scared or weird, even with family, we want to know about it. And those are the things that are right over or on the play ride, you can talk about that's cuing in that kid and priming them without saying some people sexually abuse people to a four-year-old, right? You don't have to say that, but you're trying to get at the emotional experience they're going to push past if they don't know what it's for. That is a hard balance of helping your kids to be sober and aware that, yeah, there's bad people out there. And I want you to be alert. I want you to be, but without being terrified of every person that they're all pedophiles, you know, running around like that. Such a hard balance, you know, and I don't. you don't want to project that onto kids, the paranoia of people. And some parents do. Some parents who have experienced abuse will project onto their kids fear. We don't have sleepovers

because bad things happen at sleepovers would be a way to do that, right? So there's ways to talk about. I might agree with that. I don't know too many sleepovers that produce all kinds of moral like great things at the end, you know? Yeah. I know. I talk in the book, like you can, you can just skip sleepovers and be fine. Here's how you explain that to a kid. Like we don't do sleepovers. That's just a family rule. You sleep in your bed, in your own home. You can go over to people's houses. But again, once you get into these categories of good, bad danger, uh, it can, it can lead to this kind of arousal in a kid where they can become more vigilant in a way that is not necessary.

The hypervigilance doesn't actually prevent harm, right? But being sober does, being aware of your body does. We didn't do sleepover. We just nipped that in the bud at the beginning. And I don't think we produced a bunch of fear, just like, yeah, we don't do that from the very beginning. So they just kind of never asked. They just, you know, when they got invited, they're like, yeah, sorry, we don't do that from the very from the very beginning so they just kind of never ask they just you know when they got invited they're like yeah sorry we don't

we don't do that that's right well and see preston like even back of my sleepovers oh my gosh like i there wasn't one time when it was like i walked away like not being exposed to something or just like you pump a bunch of hormone crazed kids full of sugar and lack of parental oversight. And it's just not going to go well. I'm sorry. Right. I am with you on that. Yeah. With that, with those percentages and the ages going back to the one in every four experience and unwanted sexual contact. I mean, some of that could be unintentional, right? Somebody could not be intending anything, but just doing something, you know, the classic biden sniffing girls hair or whatever you know like it's like i just kind of what boomers do sometimes you know they just like i should not

just boomers but a lot of people do but i mean there's different generations where like yeah just like hey go get the hug do this whatever that's just no one's intending it but i think now we're looking back and seeing like well some of that is making is making people feel uncomfortable, even if you're not intending that. So some of it's intentional, some it's not, but I'm still, Julia, help me get my mind around this high percentage. And does that mean that there's a much higher percentage of people are pedophiles or struggle with whatever pedophilia desires or whatever? Like, is that, I mean, we typically think like that's such a rare thing, you know, but is it not that rare? And why is it not that? Like, what's going on? I don't. Well, so, so I think of it less in the realm of like, and this is right. We've often thought,

who are the pedophiles and how do we identify them? And surely we'll know who they are. So the, so the first thing is to know that again, if most people abusing children who are adults are friends of the family or family members, people the parents know and trust already. That means we're not as good at picking up these individuals as we thought. So part of it is that we have to contend with there are more people with sociopathic tendencies and intention to harm vulnerable people than we care to admit and in our communities. Yes. Now, do we know the percentage of that? No, I would say that we tend to think of pedophilia as rare. I think in my clinical work, it would be a rare presenting challenge for somebody to

come in and talk about it. So we don't have good data then on who's who. Do we have data on percentages? Is it 1%? Is it 20% of humanity or is it, we just don't know. I could look back to the DSM, but my guess is those rates are based on who presents to treatment and that would not be, that would not be representative because usually people go to treatment because they've been caught. So, um, and, and certainly, I mean, it would be very rare that I meet with somebody

who was harmed by a person who was an adult when that client was a child and that person went to jail or that person, again, because most of these kids do not talk about this. They do not tell anybody until they become an adult. And so it's very unlikely that we would know perpetrators. it's very unlikely that we would know perpetrators. And then of course, in Christian contexts, we have this fear of scandal and of gossip. And so we can look past things that seem uncomfortable because we wouldn't want to talk about a person and assume something's wrong there. So there are ways in which that can bracket and protect some of these people. Now, here's the other thing, though, is some of this can happen peer-to-peer, right? An older child, a step-sibling, a cousin, a babysitter. So it's not

all people with pedophilia, right? It's people who have their own disorganization and their sexual development in some kind of way. So this can be an older child who was exposed to pornography early and saw something there and tries to recreate it with a younger child who may not develop into a pedophile, but may develop into a person with a pretty severe sex addiction, for instance, or something like that. So that's another assumption we make is that we would know who the person was who had pedophilic thoughts, which I would argue we would not in most cases. Many people have been duped in that. And then we also that we would be able to protect against those things because these individuals are adults. We would snuff them out and that it's not going to

be your cousin who came over, you know, for that summer and was so polite and was so kind. No, no, they would be odder than that. They would be weirder than that. And that fails to account, I think, for the exposure to pornography early. That is another catalyst for kids acting out what they've seen, or kids who have experienced their own sexual abuse and then are simply trying to communicate that actually through showing that type of behavior and playing out that type of behavior with somebody else. I've heard, and it makes sense, and it's actually frightening, but like that churches and Christian environments are actually attractive for people that want to groom kids because it gives you a lot of not only access but a lot of times churches yeah they think the good of people or whatever like somebody comes

in you can kind of easily dupe people in these contexts i don't know like is that true that this is kind of a that the churches can be a draw for pedophiles, people wanting to groom kids? I mean, I don't want to freak everybody out. I also want to say, I don't know, keep your wits about you and have really good policies. And don't just let everybody have anybody without a serious background check have access to kids. That's right. That's right. Yeah, we're slowly catching on to this, but Sunday schools, daycares,

school environments, you know, uh, coaches of sports teams are people who, uh, get to, uh, by virtue of their role, have a closer accent access and proximity to kids. And if a person is, um, experiencing pedophilia and is not interested in managing that in a healthy way, they will seek out those environments. Absolutely. And I hear about those things from people with those experiences and the people harmed is that they put themselves in positions of authority, where they're going to be able to have access to children in an easy way, and where they're going to have opportunities for one-on-one exchanges. And this is where we're starting to see, again, in different organizations like Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts,

like, okay, we're going to have two adults present with children. We're not going to do this one-on-one. In the Catholic Church, we've seen this with priests where it was, oh my gosh, how wonderful that this priest has been mentoring my child and all the altar servers, right? And it's like, it's totally embedded in the community that this is a good thing. And I even talk in the book biases against people of, we assume males are perpetrators. And so babysitters who are girls, we don't think that they could harm a kid because they're a woman and women don't do that. Well, some women do perpetrate. So, you know, being aware of those blind spots and being able to, one of the things I mentioned is if an adult seems to think that they have a right to your child

and that you ought to trust them with your child, and they don't feel like they have to earn that they have a right to your child and that you ought to trust them with your child. And they don't feel like they have to earn that. And if they seem to like your child more than you do, then that is something to just take note on and to be aware of. It's not, obviously that means they're a perpetrator, but no, you're just kind of paying attention, eyes wide open. And that's, I want us as adults to be awake to where we are in society and how unwell we are on, from a sexual perspective, that there are more people who will engage in inappropriate kind of sexual expression. I think than ever before. In my understanding, the early exposure to pornography seems to have a bigger part to play than we would care to admit. That is, I mean, that's a key point, right? I mean, early, and pornography, as I understand,

keeps getting more and more violent and aggressive and BDSM-ish. And like, it's just, it's, it's, it's bathing humans at a very young age in very unhealthy sexual practices that has to tweak or that has to affect our sexuality on some level. Right. I mean, that's, so then the 17, 18, 19 year old kid who's been, you know, marinating and stuff for several years, like, I don't know, like that's statistically, that's got to produce some really negative behavioral effects. I mean. Oh yeah. I mean, I've heard of people, you know, people who are not pedophiles, people who are, yeah, just kind of healthy enough sexual adults who have been super curious after being exposed to pornography that had bestiality about bestiality and have had these kind of intrusive thoughts of like, do I want to have sex with an animal? And they're like, no, I don't. But now I have this image in my mind. And so you take what is a natural curiosity, right? That God gives us for all facets of life, including sexuality. And then you take a distortion and a twisting of that at a very young age.

And kids do not know how to cope with that. And they are often left to cope with that alone. Do we know is bestiality on the rise? Is that percent? Is that? I don't know. That's a category. I know I deal with a lot of stuff. I think people aren't going to admit it. Yeah. I mean, I think the people who tell me have never told anybody about how that comes up in their sexual awareness and thoughts. There's so much shame around that. But I think that people are all kinds of experiences that they just don't know how to make sense of. And I think to myself, I would, you know, could that kid, how do I help parents be the type of parent who that kid could come to and say, I saw this thing online and I saw this animal having sex with this human and I can't stop thinking about it. Like who's the parent across from that kid and how do they become a parent that that kid wants to talk to? That would be to lay that thick of a open relationship where the kid can

come to the parent knowing they're not going to be shamed, but they're going to get coached through this thing they're wrestling with or whatever. This goes back to the very beginning of everything you're saying, like to lay these thick foundations of reducing shame so that avenues of communication are open, not if, but when they have disturbing thoughts or desires or, you know, they hear a conversation or see an image or something. Um, man, um, I do want, we haven't even touched on, um, same-sex sexuality and, and, and, um, gender dysphoria related questions. So how do you, um, let's go back to prepubescent and your child is, let's just, let's, let's start with same-sex sexuality. They're expressing some kind of same-sex desires, interest, curiosity. At that age, from what I understand,

it could be a genuine early manifestation of same-sex sexual desires that may be with them for life, you know, or, or it may just be typical heterosexual curiosity exploring or whatever. And especially from what I hear, and I would love for your thoughts on this, but with girls where they may experience the kind of like turn off from boys a little bit, you know, but they like boys, but they don't, but then they would much rather get a hug from a girl than a boy kind of thing, you know, and experience some kind of positive body response that's not necessarily the product of a, in a same sex lifelong kind of desire. So I don't know, I'll help us navigate that world with a, again, I'm talking like prepubescent when, when parents are noticing these things being manifest.

Yeah. So, so the idea, uh, in the first book is really, it's just one chapter on all of these experiences. And I'm trying to help parents signal an ability to talk about same-sex attraction and to talk about gender distress or gender questioning in a calm way, right? So a non-reactive way. If all that kid hears prepubescently is a kind of flippant remark when a commercial comes on with a gay couple, then that kid is going to learn something from that interaction about mom and dad's ability to meet them there. So whether it's a transitory experience of attraction, as you describe, right? I felt warm inside when I hugged this other girl, or it's a persistent orientation. What we know in Christian context, and this comes out of Mark Yarhouse's research with milestone events, right, is that kids are

not telling their parents until much later in Christian context than they would in secular context about same-sex attraction. So by the time they're disclosing it's 17 or 18, well, they're experiencing first awareness between 10 and 13. So that's a big gap where they're going to make a lot of decisions about who am I drawn to, do I date, before they ever bring parents in. So my mind was, how do we help the parents talk about LGBT people more broadly in such a way that would show readiness? So, and then in the teen book, I actually spend a whole chapter talking about attraction for this reason, because teens are not dating today. I think 20% of teenagers have a dating relationship. So

teens are not really dating, but they are experiencing attraction. And usually what parents talk about and spend time on is dating and sexual intercourse and all of that. And so we're not actually coaching kids on the very thing that they're experiencing pervasively, which is attraction in most cases. Right. And so I try to talk with parents about talking with kids to normalize attractions. You will experience attraction. You know, many kids, if they're exhibiting any type of, I don't know, like behavior or interests or preferences that might lead other kids to label them as gay, that would probably be the most common thing prepubescently is kids are hearing at school, oh, Johnny called me gay, or Johnny said I'm a lesbian, or Johnny said I'm a boy because I like boy stuff. You're starting to kind of hear these things.

And so parents being able to, number one, account for norms, like we have boys and girls, and there's a lot of ways to be a boy, and there's a lot of ways to be a girl. norms, like we have boys and girls, and there's a lot of ways to be a boy and there's a lot of ways to be a girl. And then give the simplest explanation for gay. Gay is a word that adults use to talk about people who experience attraction to the same sex. You're going to experience attraction. Maybe you already do crushes on people. Those are things we can talk about in our home. Those are normal. Attractions happen to everybody at some point in their life. And, you know, and we're, we're here to learn about that. Who do you have attraction to? What do you notice about attraction? What's it been like to have attractions, right? So these are the things that we're often skipping because everybody seems to think that that is

something teens ought to just know how to make sense of. And then when they make sense of it, all kinds of ways, parents come in reactively and say, no, no, you're not really that. This is just a phase. And, you know, that's, that's what we want to avoid. So, so, so is it the same with same sex sexuality? Is it, is it kind of the same thing? Like you're, you're basing when and how to talk to your kid on their curiosity and interest, or do you, do you want to introduce that a little early so that, yeah, so it's not reactive or yeah, what's your? Yeah, I think, you know,

I do think our culture is kind of helping move this along where, yeah, if we're reactive, we're behind. I mean, I think even of one of the people who reached out to me when I decided to write this book was a friend who walked into a public library with her kid. And there was a book, you know, boys can be girls and girls can be boys. And she texted me and said, my daughter won't stop asking about that book. And she's, you know, three or four years old. Right.

So I do script those types of things. I mean, I think we're looking for teachable moments with kids. So if you do see gay characters on a TV show, it's a teachable moment. So you could just skip that. Or you could say, oh, like, what do you notice about those people? I think those people are two men and they're married. What do you think about that? What have you heard about that? Do you have any friends at school who have talked about that? And so again, you're always trying to get information first, just curious, what have they already heard? Because that's going to tell you developmentally what the incremental step they're going to need is from you. And it doesn't, I mean, kids don't store a lot of this stuff, but they do store your tone and they do store how you talk about this group of people. And that's a missed opportunity in Christian context a lot of times, is if all they're storing is the disgusted look on the parent's face, then that's what they're getting from that.

It doesn't matter what you say about, oh, we believe this group of people are made in the image of God. I mean, because sometimes parents say that, but their face kind of shows them something else. And I think increasingly we're going to have opportunities with family members who are in same-sex partnerships that you can talk about. And I love posture shifts work where they talk about position and posture, right? I actually think that's a really helpful, simple framework to use with kids that this is our position on marriage and this is our posture towards our cousins who are in this relationship. Is it, I always hear, you know, there's a famous statement that kids won't remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel. Um,

yeah, it sounds, it's kind of a, is that kind of true though? Like I'm thinking that's tone, that's posture. Yeah. Yeah. Cause when, when, when kids fast forward, when kids come to see me at the, you know, adolescent phase of life and they life and they're attracted to the same sex or they're asking questions about gender, I don't have to ask if they've told their parents. In most cases, they haven't told their parents willingly. Their parents have found out or they haven't told their parents and parents don't know. And when I ask what kept them from telling their parents, they don't talk about what their parents said most of the time. They talk about what their parents did on their face when people in this community were brought up in any kind of context.

And that tells me everything I need to know about what we can do better. Yeah. All the forwarded emails about boycotting Target or all the outrage on social media. This is actually helpful because I'm trying to wean Christians off of letting the culture war categories and mediums dictate their view on these things. Because you can go on Libs of like yeah you can go on like you know libs of tiktok or you can watch what is a woman the documentary or you know some of these things that are are actually capturing real opinions and stuff but it's it's it is the most fringe

the most outrage the most whatever and it's like if that becomes your main lens to what you view this stuff yeah you're gonna be i'd be outraged if like my education on stuff was lips of Tik TOK and Matt Walsh, you know, it's like, and I can turn it on and say, I don't think they're necessarily inaccurate. It's just so ski. It's just so selective that it's just warping your narrative on the whole situation. And then when the topic comes up, it's, you're thinking of some, you know, crazy university professor that is just saying wild stuff. Or you think of some doctor that's, crazy university professor that is just saying wild stuff, or you think of some doctor that's transitioning 13 year old girls or something, you know, some, it's like, yeah, I don't want to put my head in the sand, but also we need to be very vigilant

not to let those culture war categories be the primary lens in which we view these things for this, for the reason you're saying, because then when our kid actually experiences same sex attraction or their friend does or whatever, they're, they're freaked out to bring them home to you. I mean, they're not going to like, you know, they're going to go somewhere else to talk about, you know, how to navigate this conversation with, but. Right. And the conclusions they draw are going to be really different most times from the conclusions that would be offered in a Christian context. And of course, right? Because we have signaled a reactivity and I would say kind of a belligerent approach that signals to them,

I don't want my parents in this conversation. And then lo and behold, they make conclusions that maybe you would not hope for them as a Christian parent. Well, so if the hope is to offer a framework for sexual ethics that is, you know, coming from a traditional sexual ethic, well, there's a lot we can do better. And the number one thing I've been saying to parents recently, to your point about social media and the reactivity that is cultivated there there is we talk a lot right now about the impact of social media and rhetoric and culture on our teens' understanding of human sexuality. What we don't talk about is the impact on parents from the media that parents are watching. And so what I say to parents as a gut check is if you are leaving your exposure to social media, the news, documentaries, angry, scared, overwhelmed, disgusted, you are not being equipped to show up as a parent.

You are being equipped to show up as an activist. And maybe you're called to that, but most of us aren't. And so how do you bracket out information that leads you to have that type of emotional reaction that will not equip you to do your primary job, which is raising a generation of kids. And if you do have that activist posture, it's going to have a reverse effect than what you want it to have. Because if you think every trans person is like trying to bust into the, you know, every male, biologically male trans person is trying to bust into the female bathrooms or trying to get their way into the women's sports, whatever. Then when they, when they actually have trans friends at school and when they forgot their lunch and their trans person gives them their lunch or goes out of their way to demonstrate

kindness and love, they're gonna be like, well, wait a minute. This isn't, this isn't matching up. Are my parents lying to me? Is this not true? And they're going to have a, almost a crisis of like categories here. And they're going to go with the person that's relationally close to them. So if you don't, yeah. So it's going to have, and so many people I know that end up going much more progressive in their thinking. It's because they had a really positive relationship, you know, people who aren't actually LGBT, they had a really positive relationship, relationships know, people who aren't actually LGBT, they had a really positive relationship relationships with LGBT people that didn't match the kind of stereotype that they're getting from the culture war. And they're going to go with, yeah,

they're going to side with who's relationally close with them. So yeah, it's if all you present is a caricature, they're going to believe the real embodied person. They're not going to believe the caricature at some point. Right. Oh man, Julia, there's so much more to talk about. So yeah, I've already kept you over an hour. So your book is Start Talking to Your Kids About Sex, A Practical Guide for Catholics. I guess I didn't even ask this question given the subtitle. So you're Catholic. This book is A Practical Guide for Catholics. Is there something uniquely Catholic about the book? Because I and masturbation and different denominations can have different perspectives

on the permissiveness morally of masturbation, for instance. And so there might be a distinctively Catholic contribution in that section of here's how Catholics would think about masturbation, right? Or certainly certain Protestant denominations think differently about gay marriage. And so that would not map cleanly the book will come from a Catholic perspective on marriage. So, right, things like that won't always cleanly apply. But in the books where I do offer something that's coming from Catholic theology, in particular, you know, Pope documents, that kind of stuff, I'm telling the reader, for Catholics, this is how this plays out, just to try to distinguish. And then I try to just use the word Christian more broadly when I'm talking about things that universally we all

kind of land in the same place on. And so, yes, very applicable. I've even had friends and family who are not Christians who have read the book and have told me it's so helpful for them. And it's interesting for them to read a Christian articulation, even while a lot of the principles are applicable to just about anybody. So yeah, don't let that scare you if you're not Catholic. It's meant to be and Greg helped me keep it ecumenical in a way that I hope will be helpful to a lot of people. Yeah, because I would imagine most people reading this book will already have a traditional sexual ethic. So they would share that with the Catholic church. Maybe the only one that I could think of is maybe the masturbation because the Catholic church, do they have a, is it like all masturbation is immoral? Is that the stance of the Catholic

church? Whereas Protestants would be much more diverse on that. Okay. That's right. So other than that, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, in Catholics, among Catholics, there will be people reading who don't agree with some of that. And so, yeah, but I think that's the one that I saw most glaringly as a distinction in between Catholics and different Protestant denominations is masturbation. Yes. Are you allowed to put on your clinician hat and give your opinion on that question? Or do you have to side with the Catholic stance on the morality or immorality of masturbation? Or is your clinical

response the same as the Catholic response? Yeah. Or I don't want to put you on the spot. Maybe we can talk offline. I don't want to get you in trouble. No, that's a great question. Yeah. So I'm aligned with Catholic teaching in just my own personal understanding of masturbation. And yet I do, in that section, I think I do what a lot of Catholic writers in sexuality don't do, which is illustrate why people turn to self-stimulation and what are the psychological benefits of that for people. Why? Because with anything, if there are people reading who agree with a Catholic vision of masturbation and want to cultivate an environment where that's not a behavior somebody is going to, you have to know what that behavior is for. You have to honor it.

And that's something that a lot of people in Catholic contexts who speak on masturbation don't, I would argue, don't do a great job of because it's just this blind no. This is something we don't do when we know that most people do self-stimulate in Catholic context and outside of them. And so for me, it's if there are psychological benefits to refraining from masturbation, then how do we actually help people move toward that? Well, it's not going to be doing what we've done, which is just saying, no, this is bad. Don't touch yourself. And that's that. Well, that's a good place to end. Kind of an odd place to end, I guess, but a good place to end. Thank you so much, Julia, for your ongoing work in so many areas in this conversation, but especially this book. Again, it's Start Talking to Your Kids About Sex, a Practical Guide for Catholics, and I'm going to add, and for Protestants as well.

So thank you, Julia, for being a guest on Theology in the Raw. Absolutely. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.