Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Unzipping Sex Ed at Home: Building Trust, Curiosity, and Respect

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Not every parent or guardian has a Dr. Sue in their back pocket when questions about sex or sex health. And yet, kids are curious, their questions are valid, and the way adults respond can shape how they understand bodies, consent, and relationships for years to come.In this episode of Unzipping Taboos, we call in both compassion and responsibility: What does it mean to give children honest, age-appropriate answers without shame? How do we dismantle outdated, fear-based approaches and replace them with respect, trust, and curiosity? We explore how parents or caregivers can step into the role of safe, trusted guides—even if they never got this kind of guidance themselves.We also share practical tools and resources—like amaze.org and state-by-state curriculum guides—to help parents prepare for conversations that may happen anywhere, anytime: at the dinner table, in the car, or while watching TV together. At the heart of it all, we emphasize honesty, boundaries, and respect—because kids don’t just need facts, they need adults willing to listen and talk without shame.To find out how your state scores on sex education, check out the SIECUS State Profiles If you want to see an overview for the requirements for sex education for your state, including requirements for parental notification check out Guttmacher’s State Laws and PoliciesFor resources for parents/caregivers to learn how to talk to kids about sex, check out amaze’s websiteIf you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to explore the questions you've always been curious about, but don't always feel comfortable asking out loud. No judgment, no shame, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Before we get started, we have very exciting news. Unzipping Taboos is now partnered with JackandJillAdult.com, one of the top online adult stores. And because you're here with us, you get 20% off with code UNZIPPING20. So now that the business is out of the way, today we are unzipping. What to do when you don't have a Dr. Sue with these conversations. But before we do, Dr. Sue, our longtime badass, here we are.

Here we are. How are you? I'm excited about this one. Yeah, I think so. It's one I've been wanting to do for a little bit. You happen. Because when I find when I'm talking with some of my friends, I'm like, oh, oh, I know someone that could help you. So why not just make an episode out of it? There we go. With all of that, would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about your background before we get

started? Sure. So I have a PhD in human sexuality education and the major chunk of my career has been kind of in academia doing academia things. So I teach college courses, undergraduate and graduate. I've co-written a textbook on human sexuality and other textbooks just because why not. I've spoken at conferences nationally, internationally. I do all the academic things. But in my spare time, I do work in the community. And I'll essentially talk to anyone who really wants to talk to me. And I've had quite a few requests over the years to talk to parents because they want to talk to their kids about sex. And they just don't always know how to do it. So this is this is one i've done a few times um and i'm really excited to do it we've actually gotten a

show request about this in some way shape or form and then the other thing that i do is i also answer sex questions that people submit anonymously through my website and there have been there was one i had i think last year it was like how do i get age appropriate resources if i'm a parent so this is one of those things that is really important to folks for if you're a parent guardian and the favorite aunt, the uncle, the trusted adult in someone's life, I think this is going to be helpful. And I know how much of a struggle this can be for folks. So I'm excited to do this episode. But who's also excited to do this episode is Charlie. For those of you who do and don't know Charlie, Charlie is our Curious co-host who is always ready to unzip all the

taboos around sex, relationships, and everything tangentially related to that. But tell us more about you uh that's pretty much it in a nutshell okay cool uh yes i uh as our returning listeners know i am someone who has always kind of internally questioned things that i've been told i'm supposed to do as a woman in society in this in this world and because from my from my perspective i'm a humans. So I should be allowed to do all the human things, regardless of whether or not I'm a woman. So that's kind of where that all started. I have visceral memories of questioning these things when I was very, very young, from the time that I was very, very young. And that goes anywhere from like what we were learning in elementary school through all the topics and all the things

um navigating life and i have a general curiosity about um humanity and the psychology of it and how we can be how we can be better for each other to be there for each other because that seems really critical right now i feel like we should can that phrase so um so here we find ourselves and one of the ways that i think we can make that impact is our humble little podcast here so that's me in a nutshell there you go how did i get in this crazy nutshell i i invited you to this nutshell that's true it's very very true all right so Dr. Sue yes what to do when we don't have you and we need to find the words to have the

conversations and really this is um this came about because I have a good friend who um who was talking about this generally um and there were there were approaches that they were talking about that i was like ah oh don't don't do that it's not just that and then and then they were sharing with me that the the the family structure around um this the adolescent child in this case um i'll kind of do a head in the sand kind of thing when it comes to this kind of talk or it's very you better be careful because you don't want blah blah so kind of going into that that dysfunction of the death disease and dysfunction the everything we hate about a lot of what we had a sex eye which is like that mean girls like you're gonna have sex and you're

gonna die we all know that doesn't work and then parents and guardians turn around and do the exact same thing and i'm like a you know that doesn't work and b you hated it when it was done to you so why are we repeating this but yeah yeah well because they they as much as we know what we wanted when we were younger there's so many other things in our brain by the time we get to a place where we're tasked with this part of that um guardianship yep right where bills um job safety all of those other things and so it's like oh shit about this yeah okay well let me just default to what I know even though I hated it and we knew it didn't work right right so Dr. Sue I know that you um you had asked some of your circle

so i went on the i went on facebook and i i posted like hey to my friends like knowing that i will repeat this on the podcast like what are the biggest challenges you for you forgetting that a large chunk of my friend circle are sex educators and so the majority response i got was like they're not as comfortable as i am or there was an ache factor for their kids that mom dad aunt uncle whoever it was was saying so you know so calmly like penis and vagina like there's an ick factor when you're that young um so a lot of what i was getting from my friends was like i'm super comfortable and my kids aren't what do i do and and some were like i'm super comfortable with your kids but not with mine like there is a line when it's about you and your family that could be

really awkward. But yeah, that kind of backfired a little bit. Backfired off. I forgot what my friends do. Yeah. So I think we're hoping to cover that range, right? Of friends that are super prepared and comfortable and what that dynamic could be with their kids and then the rest of us yes um so i think that i when i talk to parents i mean i think it's really important that they keep the same messages that we know about what works so i know i've talked a lot and i always try to slip it in the state of sex ed here in the country um but we know the comprehensive sex works and so comprehensive sex also works for your kids sex education yes sorry i just realized i'd left that word out composite sex education works we know that it

works we have studies we have the proof we know it works we know it leads to um a delayed initiation of sexual activity and if when they do become sexually active they use condoms or other protection to make sure they're not getting stis and pregnant like we know all those things i think the same things go to for parents and the big thing about for me when i talk about competence of sex k through 12 because inevitably someone goes oh you're teaching kindergartners how to do these things i'm like no no it's it's age appropriate so in kindergarten i'm teaching kids to cover their noses and their mouths when they're sneezing and to wash hands because that's basic germ theory and then as they grow we can start growing how we're talking about germs and

eventually get to stis and some hardcore data and information about it so i think that's the thing that i want parents to keep in mind is that you are going to have to adapt adapt your message to the age of your child like a six-year-old's question is not the same as a 16-year-old's question and that can feel overwhelming if you're like i'm not even prepared for like any conversation let alone having this 15 different times in 15 different ages can i tell a story about this yes okay so i serve as aunt sue for a plethora of children who are not blood related to me um basically any of my friends were like i don't want to answer this question call your aunt sue so i got a call from a friend of mine who said she picked up the phone she goes

is aunt sue available i'm like yeah for your six-year-old son sure um kid gets on the phone and he said do girls have a penis and instead of going into a body like i didn't like try to well we were on the phone so I couldn't like whip out pictures but like instead of trying to go into biology and how that happens my question back was why do you ask and he said my best friend she said she doesn't have one I'm afraid someone hurt her which is yeah like a beautiful sentiment of like protecting your friend and so I said no I said boys have a I'm keeping it really simple we know it's not as easy as this but you know boys have a penis but girls are born with with a vulva and a vagina they don't have penises and he's like okay and like threw the phone on the floor and ran away

like he just wanted to know his friend was okay and I and I think that's a really good lesson for parents that you don't have to explain it all like it doesn't have to and it has to be age appropriate and asking them why can help guide you and how much information they need and how to present that information I think that's so cute yeah that's so precious so cute um but I think that's the key um as you're listening to this episode is when they approach you with curiosity meet them with curiosity understand try to understand why they're asking as you just said understand what the motivation for the question is instead of just having that anxiety spike yeah and like okay great now i gotta do the whole thing i gotta get out the models i gotta get out the

yeah the plushy like and that's not necessarily it sometimes it's just as simple as i she said she didn't have one and I'm just worried of course then I was left on the phone screaming for someone to like pick up the phone but that's a whole nother issue but I think I think that's my hope for listeners with this episode is the curiosity piece because that can also help alleviate some of that anxiety that you may be having yeah like oh okay my kid is this age why are they starting to ask? Because then the other thing is you make it safe for those conversations to be had. You start building that trust and that conversational piece. And that's the thing. The sex talk is not a talk. It's a series of conversations. It's making the children in your

lives aware of the fact that you are a safe person to come talk to, that you're not going to judge them. I'm not going to say you're not going to laugh because I've had plenty of conversations where we laugh our way through it because it's just so awkward and it is going to be awkward like let me own that even me these are not my children and I do this for a living and they're still really awkward moments so I don't want to say that they're going to I take them seriously but we're not always serious in the conversation but it doesn't have to be like the sit down and here's here's what I need you to know it's it's a series of conversations where you just let them know that you're approachable that they can come to you with questions it's about create fostering

that relationship which i think most people want to do with the children they're in charge of they want to foster that safe relationship yeah i had a student we're gonna have so many stories today i had a student who for a paper decided she was going to talk to her nine-year-old son about sex like that she chose that topic that's what she decided to do so she sat him down across the table yes and for all of you cringing the way charlie was just cringing you can imagine how this went the nine-year-old had wanted nothing to do with it yeah and so she tried again in a very similar fashion it didn't work and this whole paper is about her frustration and i wish she talked to me about it so what i said to her after i read the paper was do you have a car and she said yeah and

i said try having conversation in a car there's no direct eye contact he doesn't have to look at you you don't have to you shouldn't be looking at him if you're driving it's nice it's relaxed it's not the only thing that's happening it's not like this i need to sit you down and she's like well we didn't get through all of it. We got through more than when I just like sat him down like I was interrogating him. So thinking about how you're presenting the information, but it's a series. It's the series of just like, hey, checking in or like, hey, did you see that thing on TV we were watching? We should probably talk about that or whatever it is. It's about creating a relationship, not just disseminating information. Yeah. Yeah. It's a bit different than some of the

other ways that that you have to parent around different things in your child's life or in your yeah in your child's life um the other thing I want to point out at the top of the show I'd give an example of a friend of mine and that the family kind of has a head in the sand when it comes to this I want to say that that's really common that is super super common that's not isolated to that family that is um so if they listen to this episode i don't want them to feel like i'm picking on them because i'm not it's it's just a great example no i'm not okay i'm absolutely not like truly no judgment because you know i don't have children so i can't imagine right what that that's got to feel like as you're anticipating when you have to do these things or have these conversations

But I do think with today's episode, if we're saying, okay, age appropriate, and it's all an evolution of the conversation. Yep. So it's starting young. It's communication. It's talking about how you can protect your body and, you know, things like that. If you don't want to hug somebody, you can say no, and that's okay. Stuff like that. And I think that's where the – no, no, because that's a great point.

And I think that's where the challenge comes from is that if I'm trying, and I think we should be teaching kids body autonomy without using those words. Right. Because kids aren't going to understand bodily autonomy. Because kids at that age aren't doing crosswords and they don't know the word autonomy. But I think we can talk about things like bodily autonomy or model it. I think that's one of the first things we should talk about, you know, that people that we don't want touching us in certain places shouldn't be allowed to. And I know you want to do an episode about how we message that. so that'll be coming up in the future as well um but it's really hard if i'm talking about your

body and i think there are limits to this i'm already contradicting myself but hold on okay dr c finish one thought there's just so many thoughts um it is really hard for parents to sit there and talk about bodily autonomy and then the contradiction of no you must go hug that aunt or uncle who bothers you and so i think that for parents when they realize that they're being hypocritical it's they'll default to that well what i say goes and you have to hug that person who makes you uncomfortable um so i think that part of the challenge of talking about this stuff is that it calls out some long-held beliefs that people may have about appropriate behavior that you must hug all the family members who want to hug you but why and so and so that could be

really hard because suddenly it's being slapped in your face that you're trying to talk to your kid about bodily autonomy but now you're removing their bodily autonomy and so for you that cognitive dissonance may be like i'm i'm the parent i'm right do what i tell you i do want to say that i think there is a limit to bodily autonomy for children i'm sure i'm going to get hate mail for this but as a parent it's also your responsibility to keep kids safe um so you do have the right to not always ask permission about things that are being done to them like going to the doctor getting shots health care like we don't have to run whether or not you want to go to health care past the seven-year-old because I've had people say that well I'm not going to

take my kid to the doctor because they don't like it I'm like well yeah there's for me there is a line that as a parent you are supposed to be taking care of your children and so sometimes you do have to do things they don't want to do I don't want to get vaccines well I do because I like the stickers you love this I do love the stickers everyone who knows me knows I love the stickers but I don't love the process but I love the results and I love the stickers so even for me like if you give me a choice between anything else and getting a shot like i'm probably gonna do that anything else so i do think it's important though that we we keep in mind and this is my opinion i know professionals who don't share this that we should give all children bodily autonomy

over everything but i think there's a point where as parents you you have to make some decisions like no you we are taking off that diaper because it's dirty and disgusting it needs to be changed i don't care how comfortable you are in it like you're probably right there's some of this that is is habit forming you know like teaching children hygiene and taking care of yourself and staying healthy and all of that and then so yes there are i i am with you i think there are iterations of this yes but that's a lot of evolve into an autonomy discussion right but that's but that's where it can get confusing because it's like well well now i'm contradicting myself and so it's just easier to go back to i'm right do what i tell you to because i i did and so i think

for some parents, there's a lot of layers to this that may feel super uncomfortable because it makes you question what you've been saying. It makes you question your own beliefs and your own actions. So I think there's that challenge. Can I keep going with challenges for parents? Absolutely. I think one of the really big challenges for parents is that they don't know what they don't know. I know we were talking about this before we started recording. If I had children right now and I didn't do the job that I had and they were asking me questions about external and internal condoms I'd be like the fuck are you talking about there's condoms like what like why are we putting words in front of it how is it an internal condom great and then

and then you'd be like you mean like a male condom and you're gonna be like no we don't gender condoms only if I went through my class would they be saying it that way but I mean when I when I was when I was your age when I was a kid we didn't learn about syphilis because it was essentially not not really an issue and now it's like all over the country and so if i'm a parent and my kids are asking me questions about things they've learned like internal external condoms hormonal iuds larks long-acting reversible contraceptives diseases like that we never learned about i feel like it can be really overwhelming for a parent i had a parent say can you please explain to me what gender fluidity is i'm like absolutely but

can I ask where it came from? And her kid shared a TikTok with her. And I took a moment and I'm like, can you just appreciate that your kid shared that with you? And like, they trusted you to, because the kid didn't understand the concept either. And I don't know how the parent got around between like them submitting the question and it was a live event I was doing. And I don't know what they said in the meantime to like fill the silence, but I'm like, that's amazing that your kid sent you this and said i don't know what this is and you know essentially we never learned about it that's an amazing relationship you have with your child um so i think a lot of it for parents is this they don't know what they don't know i mean if i had my way if i could control

education in america if your kid was starting sex ed let's say october 1st you would take the same sex ed class starting a week before so you knew a what they were talking about so you could be prepared for questions that may be coming to you and you could clean up any questions or get information that you needed so that you were right on top of it because i think that for a lot of parents saying i don't know is yeah it's terrifying yeah and so i think that for parents and in some cases they don't know what they don't know until their parent until their kids are asking them questions and they're like i don't know what you're talking about which is amazing to me because i know i was going off on this tangent before we get started the number of questions small children

ask their parents on any given day like there was i was hanging out with a friend of mine who had a small kid and the kid was like mom why isn't orange and orange and i'm like how do you how do you even explain that like it's the cut and then the why yeah why why does thunder come after lightning how does water come out of the tap the amount of questions people have to and i'm amazed when parents have answers to that but if you have always been in this role where you can answer things and suddenly they're asking you questions and you don't know the vocabulary that can feel really scary and overwhelming and so i do think that there is a responsibility for parents i'm giving you homework and guardians and trusted adults i'm i think it's important for you to be

educated on the things that may be different from when you were in sex ed and and that's part and i know you're like well how do i know what how do i not how do i know what i don't know right is that right did i get that right yeah you did you did unfortunately you may not know until the question comes up but most of the school districts i've ever worked with always make the curriculum they're using for sex ed available for people to look at ahead of time take them up on that offer look at it. Flag words you don't know. Look them up. Talk to the teacher. Do some due diligence ahead of time, but then also learn how to say maybe, oh, I have never heard that term. How about we look it up together? Or, hey, that's a great question. I'm going to run to my computer and submit it

to Dr. Sue and Charlie. But I do think there's a responsibility for parents to kind of learn some of what's changed in sexual health since they were kids. And that's a task you got to do. And I want to be cognizant with all of that, that we do know that things are changing day by day, state by state. So that's the other piece. If you don't know what you don't know, at least know whether or not there's going to be a curriculum in your district or where your child is attending and what that curriculum is. Because if you're in a state where, or it's a school where the main message is abstinence, then you've got, then you've got a little bit of homework to do on your end to, to make yourself a, a trusted kind of advisor for your child in this space. Because there are going to be serious gaps. Yes. The curriculum. so as a as a prize for listening this far into the conversation or just reading the description

we're going to include for you i have a handy dandy chart that i that i give parents um because i do answer questions cross-country i have a handy dandy chart i'll kind of include in the um in the description that has a here's what's required in your in your state um and here's what's not so we're going to give that away this free information that's available to everybody don't get pissed at me when you read it by the way because you may found out that your state does not actually mandate that education be medically accurate yeah yeah trust me it pisses me off too so um when you see it and you get pissed off i mean feel free to share your pissed off-edness with me but just know i don't write state law so yeah but we will include that and

that that may be really helpful for charlie what you were just saying like you need you have a I think you have a responsibility to know what your kid's getting and not getting. Yeah. Yeah. And understanding the messaging because some of us can remember how impressionable we were in some of those little sound bites that we still hear today. So just be mindful. The other thing I want to point out, and I think this is a spot to do it,

is that if they're, if they have a question, or if they're curious about something, and they're going to find it somewhere, you're going to find a way to find an answer. So that's the other piece that another reason why I wanted to have this, this episode, particularly to help parents, guardians, trusted adults, become that trusted adult. so that you can if they are finding those answers you are that place where they can come and be curious and be like this is what i saw is that is that right or so that they're not they're not discovering in the shadows yep i think is what i want to say yeah that they they they need context for what they're learning and to get a deeper understanding than whatever video

they're watching or website they ran they ran like worked to what they went through two paragraphs if we're lucky like a lot of times you're getting information without a larger context and you can help you can help with that context and what that means and i think that's that's even more of a case to have this evolutionary approach to these these conversations like starting young with age appropriate things, understanding that when, um, when people like Dr. Sue and I say sex ed, we're not talking about how to have sex. We're talking about communication and our bodies and understanding the world around us and perception, partly perceptions and, and all of those things. So making it, um, building that foundation and building that trust and meeting their

curiosity with curiosity, I think is a really powerful way to become that safe person to have conversations because also you want them to be comfortable if something happened and that they know that they can come to you and just be like, ah, something happened. I'm overwhelmed. I don't know. I don't know what to do, where to go. how to process yep and and that brings me back to the conversation you were starting with about that the friend family that you know where they're just digging their head in the sand that's actually

better than what i've seen some other parents do which is threaten their kids if you get pregnant it's never about stis no that's right which is way more prevalent than unintended pregnancy um but if you get someone pregnant or if you get pregnant basically i'm not helping you and you you can get the fuck out of my house right like you just did the exact opposite of what good sex ed looks like or good parent-child communication around this what i think let me own that what i think good parent-child communication looks like because now there is not a single chance in hell this kid's going to come to you when they either a their period is late or b they get told that they not that they they got someone pregnant they're not coming to you because you've already

threatened them so it's i mean i i hate the idea of just burying your head in the stand and just giving the you know you don't want to die but it's better than the thing i see all the time which is that that threatening of if it does happen don't bother coming to me and you're on your own these are children they're still children they're adolescents which are still technically children well i think that's um that's a great segue into risk assessment right when we were all kids we had this, it'll never happen to me. I mean, every human goes through that on some level because our brains are developing. Yeah. And that's the thing I always try to explain to parents and to teachers. I just did a training this summer with people who are going to be

teaching high school students. And I have to keep reminding them that high school students' brain are still developing. They process not only information differently than we do as grown adults, but their assessment of risk is different. They're processing information that part of their brain is not fully developed yet. So while they are processing information and risk, they're not doing it the way we do. And so when we try to talk to them like, well, you don't want these bad things to happen to you. They're like, well, they're not going to happen to me. So why are you talking about this yeah when i talk about risk you know when you ask me as a health educator or a sex educator about risk i'm thinking about the things that we don't want to happen after sex so

either the relationship ends because the person got the sex that they wanted or someone feels inevitably hurt or hurt or pressured um and then the things see when i say risk and unintended things everybody's always thinking pregnancy and stis but there's also an emotional attachment that may have formed um you know and then the person breaks up with you like i don't want those things to happen either but so when we're talking about risk and i'm thinking about you not being emotionally ready you being hurt if the relationship ends unintended pregnancy exposure to stis they're thinking that the risk is if i don't do this my partner is going to leave me if i don't do this my friends are going to make fun of me because i'm the only one who hasn't done it yet

you know i'm gonna be bullied and bullying is a huge problem anything that makes you different man it's always amazing that we survived high school and middle school it's amazing that kids today are surviving and some of the media some of them aren't yeah yeah um but anything that makes you different think back anything that made you different in middle school or high school made you a target and so if the thing that's that's that's different about you is that you're not engaging these behaviors, that risk where I'm trying to talk to you about the emotional commitment and what this may mean long term. And you're thinking, I don't like my partner who I love is going to leave me. I don't mean to. Sorry, I shouldn't minimize young love. It's cute. And

sometimes it lasts rarely, but it does. But your assessment of risk is different than my assessment of risk. My ability to think long term is different than their ability to think long term. And so we have to understand as adults that we are not talking to a brain that functions the way ours does. It's one of the reasons we don't get each other. Our brains don't function the way theirs does. Theirs doesn't function the way ours does. They can't understand why we don't understand what seems obvious to them because our brains are functioning differently. And so it's about making yourself someone they can talk to while they start to work through things in a way that makes sense for them even it makes absolutely no sense for us right right and that's that's the key

it is you are you are giving you are helping provide tools for them to do these practice these assessments doing this kind of personal analysis um and and again being that person where they can say yeah but if i don't what i'm worried about is being picked on for still blah blah blah and if you're still for still not kissing somebody for still not whatever and if you just go back to hold those boundaries i taught you what they're hearing is is that they're not being heard right so yeah it's sorry i didn't mean to cut you off there no you're good you're good that's exactly it um so i think we've what what are some how can we help provide just some guidance and some framing here can i take one step back and talk about one more thing that scares the crap

out of parents absolutely so i think one of the things and this also goes for drugs and alcohol i think one of the things that scares the crap out of parents is that fear and it's legitimate fear that they may ask you about what you did at your age because i hear this all the time when i'm we were when i talked to to parents like not so much about alcohol and smoking although sometimes smoking um not so much about alcohol use because that's more of a family use um kind of thing because if you're drinking with wine with dinner it's just an obvious thing that you're doing but parents tell me that when they're talking when they want to talk to their kids about not smoking or using drugs that they're afraid that the kid's going to be like what did you do when you were in

high school didn't you smoke or i've seen pictures of you you know smoking right and i i think that for parents is a fear that the kids may ask like about their their behaviors when they are that age and i think there's a learning opportunity there um to say hey you know i made some decisions maybe i wasn't so comfortable with because i wasn't really thinking long term um you can also say that's that it's not about you it's about them i find most i find more often that student that kids will ask questions to adults about drug use than their sex lives that's icky like you don't want to think about your parents having sex yeah so I don't I I have never run into a parent who was like well my kid asked me about my first time and I'm like because that would be I think a

little weird why they were asking um my thing is kind of recognize that you may have you may be in these situations where you're being asked about your own behavior and my suggestion is always be a politician like don't answer the question don't answer the question that was asked answer the question you want to answer or just deflect. You don't have to, but don't be like, I'm not answering that unless you want to say, Hey, that's a boundary for me. And I don't want to talk about my personal, my personal experiences. We're talking about you and that's more important right now. Or you could talk around it if you want, but be prepared. Some of those questions may come up, but you can also put down some boundaries. But I do think the parents are

terrified of that happening but again i think it happens less with it happens less with with sex than it does with drugs like i don't see any kid being like hey you know when you couldn't get laid did you use a vibrator like i don't think that question's coming out anywhere so yeah um there may be questions if you are don't identify as straight and your kid may ask you questions about like how did you know it was time to come out and i think that's actually a great question to answer if that's you um so there may be an opportunity for you to share what you're comfortable sharing with but i just i think parents are so afraid of that conversation that they avoid they avoid it they stick their head in the sand they don't want to have it so i just want to throw that out there

as well i think that's that's important i'm glad you did so how to talk what are some what's some framing I think we've given some but if it we've we've also done a lot of talking and given a lot of context so what are like some important um tenets other than trust and make it make it foundational and keep it's a series of conversations like how what's some framing for some of these conversations yeah and I think it's hard because I think I think it depends on how the conversation and get started if if a child comes to you and asks you a question i do think like what you said about being curious i think that's really important ask them why they're asking because i think that gives you a framework for how you want to move forward um i had a friend's kid i had an answer

question he was in ninth grade and the question was why do we hate gay people and i'm like okay like like where is this coming from because that's going to frame how i answer is this coming from you think you might be gay did you see some kind of violence against folks like where did it come from so i'm like that's a really good question it's a little complicated like why are you asking if you're okay telling me they'd watch some hiv video from like the 1980s and it was oh jesus yeah like and and this was only like 10 years ago so that that video has got to go first of all um and so i answered that question and i layered a few more things in there that I wanted to like lay some groundwork because I had his mom really didn't like these conversations

so I had a lot of them um but for me that being curious like why do you want to know like what can I do to tailor this this is like primary how we how we communicate how do we tailor the information to the person we're talking to which means has to be age appropriate it needs to be appropriate for why they want to know and so I think a good question when you get a question is to ask some background if it feels comfortable yeah um i think grounding your conversation with them and things that are important to you for me if i'm talking to children it's about respecting teaching them how to respect themselves and their boundaries and then also respecting other people's boundaries um i think that's a lesson we teach this in kindergarten right if that's your toy

i don't get to walk over grab it out of your hands well i probably did but i got reprimanded whatever i was a bad kid um but i think we can start with that and i think that idea of your body you get to control it and respect it and respect others i think that's a basic concept that needs to be built on especially as kids are going through the pressure of of middle school and high school and maybe being pressured to do things they don't want to do i think it's important that you share values with your kids that are important to you those may be based in religion they may not be based in religion um so i think it's it's reiterating the things that are important for you as a parent and you'll notice none of these are about sex really yeah being honest talking

openly respecting my boundaries respecting your boundaries those aren't really about sex but i think they're a great place to start um giving information in a way that's not judgmental and and just just going on that journey with them but i think that for me if i'm if a parent's like okay what's the first thing i do i'm like you just make yourself an approachable adult you respect their questions don't ever laugh at a laugh with a question but not at a question um but i think that's the way to start i think the way to start is to create that that relationship where the child will actually approach you because if you have never been approachable and you sit them down and go okay we're talking birds and bees and body parts there's you're not going to have the outcome

that you want yeah um yeah let me i've been talking i'm i'm thinking i'm wondering so so a lot of this is about if they approach you but like i know um having nieces and nephews when you're little when you're a little little and you discover something about yourself and then so like I'm thinking of like little boys always kind of playing with everything that dangles off their body exactly exactly and you as a parent are like oh like how what are some things there because I think i think where adults get lost is they're coming at it with their context right so like they'll hear a joke in maybe an animated movie that is very much intended for them and then they'll be like oh my kid can't watch this your kid has no context for that for that joke perhaps

yeah i know a lot of kids tv shows and movies where it's like it's written for the kids but there's a line above the level where like it's written for adults yeah yeah like i like i go back to when i was little my favorite movie one of my favorite movies was the best little horror house in texas i had zero clue zero clue i just saw dolly parton in fucking amazing dresses amazing dancing and amazing songs yeah that's that's what that movie was for me yeah and then and then you rewatch as an adult and then i watched it as an adult i was like oh holy shit yeah so i think that's the thing to remember too as an adult is the kids depending on their age they don't have the same contact context so they're not thinking about it the same way

yeah that you are yeah so maybe that that can remove some of that fear that the adult may have yeah and you know like oh i gotta go all the way back to the beginning and you can check in with them and i i think that media especially if you're watching it with your kids can be a great opportunity to have a discussion if you're watching something if you're both watching the same thing and something happens you can pause it assuming it's not live tv you can pause it and be like hey there's a lot in that scene like anything you want to clarify you know anything you want to talk about and they may not have picked up on anything and they were like no can you hit play like but I feel like that was really confusing for me or I don't understand what that was or

like why did that person do that thing to that other person that's a great place that's a great teachable moment and I think that's the other thing for parents to keep in mind is that it's not conversations are not going to happen on your timeline I mean you could put your timeline in you can absolutely start those conversations when you think they're appropriate but it's also going to be events that happen something they saw happen in real life something they saw in mass media something that they heard and suddenly you're in the middle of having conversation you weren't prepared for it's okay to just start the conversation because it's a series of them it's okay to start the conversation when it happens and come back and if that means you're

taking a break and looking up terms or thinking about how you want to phrase it that's okay but it's it is one of those things it's not like i'm going to sit down with you on thursday at 5 p.m and explain everything to you because something could happen on tuesday you didn't expect or like someone put what was that sorry yeah no I'm sorry I was gonna I was interrupting you um but yeah I'm gonna put weekly sex ed talks on the calendar at 5 p.m yeah on Thursdays at 5 knowing that on Monday they may have seen something that they don't understand so yeah these things are gonna happen I mean it's great if you have a timeline it's great if you have things you want to make sure you say and if there are you know if you definitely want to talk to

about how to be safe before they're sexually active if you want to explore the idea for older teenagers about putting them on hormonal methods of contraception before they're sexually active you know there's some planning there you got to go to the doctor you got to do those kinds of things but a lot of this is going to happen spur of the moment you know you pick your kid up from school and they're like we talked about penises today and you're like oh crap i wasn't ready um so i i just think yeah i think it's i think it's realizing that there's a lot that's going to to be out of your control with some of the timing and the messaging that happens and that that's unsettling for some parents again if you've always been the one who knows everything and now it's

you're being surprised by something that that can be a little unsettling and that's okay and it's also okay to be like i'm a little uncomfortable with this but let's talk through it or i'm a little uncomfortable with this can we come back to this after dinner um showing that human side of you can sometimes be really helpful too if your parenting style yeah i think that's a big yeah yeah and the dynamic i think we're for this conversation we're assuming a lot of um good intent yes which is a mistake we make often which is funny because i don't do that in the real world ideal conditions but we do we do recognize that there aren't ideal conditions and so um i think one of those resource the resource that we're gonna share in the description about what

what is required in your in your state will be helpful yeah and we we are our show is a resource yeah i'm also we're gonna put in the what in the description a link to one of my favorite resources for parents which is amaze.org it has videos that you can show your kids but also video for parents of like hey this is weird what do i do i think they're a great resource they do have multiple languages for some of their videos but not all and i highly suggest you watch any video all the way through before you show it to your kid to make sure i mean once you make something it's a little out of date so making sure that it reflects your values but there are great sources out there um and and we'll put the link to amaze.org in the description as well yeah

we'll pause there can i go back to that we never talked about the boys and their dangly parts yeah i i diverted it to context so yes please i wanted to do that yeah and i think that that's a great place you know if if your kid's rubbing himself or whipping out his penis around the house because it feels good to touch it and girls may find that like rubbing against things feel good when they're younger how you react is going to dictate how they internalize it so if you're like no that's dirty they now learn that what feels good is bad and that's i think that's a dangerous sentiment to to teach them um conversations could be hey we don't do that in public that's a behind closed door kind of thing or hey i know that probably feels really good but

the bank is not the right place to be doing that right it's a very specific story there as you can guess um or hey like you're rubbing on your teddy bear that's not something we do in the family room while we're all watching tv like the behavior is not bad and it is it's very normal for for young kids to masturbate because it feels so good yeah and they don't know why and they don't know why and then if you start screaming at them or smacking their hand to stop them it doesn't stop the masturbating from feeling good now they feel guilty about it and i don't think that's something i mean there may be some people who think we should be making people feel guilty i'm not one of them i don't think you are either shame no yeah so i think i think it's in our intro

so i think that's a really good place to be like hey no that feels really good but that's that's a private time kind of thing that's a behind closed doors kind of thing that's not in public it's not in front of your family nothing wrong with the behavior just not there's nothing on the behavior itself just the timing and the place yeah and i the power of saying that instead of being horrified and slapping their hand and being like what's wrong with you they're not going to stop masturbating they're just going to feel immense amounts of guilt right um so yeah i think treating it like it is which is a normal part of the human experience is to feel sex sex feel sex that is not that's not what you meant no um but to feel things that feel good

and to want things that feel good and to be curious about sex and have thoughts about sex like all of that's normal it's a normal part of the human experience so making that normal with boundaries that work for your values yeah yeah and and that when we're talking that is so important for that foundation that we've been talking about um because saying hey i know that feels good that's a private time kind of thing versus slapping the hand or um or projecting your embarrassment onto them that that is all that's all developmental yep and that gets built upon yep and and then that informs how they engage with each stage of their development around um around growing up and around sexual health and sex yep and i i know we've talked

about this before in other episodes probably in the sex ed one when i have students tell me they never learned anything about sex i'm always like that's not true maybe formerly you didn't yeah but when a topic came up at dinner and it was shut down when you were watching tv and you got asked to leave the room when you touched yourself because it felt good and you were screamed at you were being taught about sex it just wasn't formal education but we as kids one of the things we do is we model we we mimic we mimic what people around us do and we learn whether or not we acknowledge that that's education everyone got sex education it may be that we learn that sex was bad and we don't talk about it but that was still sex education um so i think it's important

to keep in mind that they're learning from you and your reaction and if you over let's say you you overreact let's say you're out your kids rubbing themselves and you're horrified but it's also because you've had a long ass day and you're on errand number 25 and the car wouldn't you know it is i think it's okay for you to be like hey i want to talk to you about what happened not not that you were doing that though i do think that should be done in private but i shouldn't have yelled at you like that and i'm sorry it is still a private behavior you can still maintain those boundaries it is still a behavior i just i didn't i wasn't really reacting to you i just there was a lot of stuff going on um and apologizing which is a very clear demonstration of a respect for

boundaries and very clear demonstration of how you want think communication should happen because every conversation with you have with your kid is communicating what you think is appropriate right tone volume language yeah the parent-child relationship is modeling and mimicking yes yes there's one last thing i just want to throw in because i think we're about to wrap up if i'm reading the room right i think so because when people are like do i really need to talk to my kid about that i'm totally going to throw my parents under the bus because they don't listen to our podcast so why not so when people say why should i talk to my kid about sex my answer is a very flippant my parents never did and look what i do for a living so if you don't want your kid

to turn out i was given a book what's happening to me and told to ask if i have any questions yeah i mean now it's like now i talk to my parents about everything like i had a box of sex toys like this thick it was tiny no it was time it was a kid's book with pictures i don't like a novel oh no this was a kid's book with pictures um but now like i i had i had to something shipped and I had it shipped to my parents house and I'm like hey like mom and dad you're gonna get a box of sex toys just so you know like now our conversation is very different because of what I do so me doing this is not the worst thing but they're going to ask questions and they're going to find answers and if you don't do it for them they may very well make this their

career so so people are like hey that's what I want them to do I want them to be Dr. Sue and charlie i was gonna say i don't know why well i know why i know why you're minimizing you and your accomplishments but i i at his career but it but it's exactly what you said before it was and i completely forgot what it was oh it was i'm gonna find the information one way or the other right you know especially as a kid both my parents were educators um for me it was all about educate you know this is what i learned like learning things is important and when i wasn't getting it from them i was going to find the information on my own which is exactly what you were saying before i just decided to make it my entire life's work you made it a lifelong mission

to always find the information yep so maybe so maybe i don't know if the moral of the story is talk to your kids so they don't turn out like me or i don't know whatever you take from it what you want that's a fucking new yorker hey forget about it and if you want your kids to turn out like dr c anyway that doesn't mean don't talk to them yes no i i think that i it's funny because i think about it now and how i've become a resource for like the friends my friends kids and yeah um and how i've become a resource for anyone who's listening like i i'm i joke about how i was brought up but there was a real sense of like we don't do this and now i'm happy to say i flipped that a lot in our family that we have very awkward but maybe very awkward conversations

for other people very very openly now um but yeah it's just about learning it's just about learning the whole way through learning curiosity unzipping taboos unzipping taboos because you don't want to continue to contribute to those no i mean i would love for the day that you and i had to sign off this podcast because we had nothing left to educate people about i don't think that's ever gonna happen probably not but that's the dream the dream is that i have to find go find something else to become an expert in or i can talk about things like pleasure and like happy stuff yeah yeah okay i'm done all right well dr c thank you so much um i i really wanted this out there um for what you don't what you do when you don't have a dr c words and

conversations and of course you can always send in a question and we'll answer it for you if you if you can find if you can wait for it to come out because we are in a backlog um you can always submit a question to us we're always happy to do show ideas that you folks want to hear or leave a comment on any episode um this or any other episode we we do read those and we do respond to them in in line so much faster response time than waiting for you but we do want those topic ideas and things that you want us to um help you unzip around sex and relationships so with that everyone I want to thank you for joining us on today's episode of Unzipping Taboos. We hope today's episode sparked new thoughts, will open up conversations worth having, helped

you find comfort and confidence in the conversations that need to be had. And remember that your curiosity, as we said throughout today, is the key to breaking down these barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. I can think of, I mean, all of our episodes go to this, but I feel like today's that episode. That's the sentence right there. Curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. So if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who

you feel might need to hear this. And if you've got a question or a topic, as we said, please reach out to us via the link in the episode description. and a huge thanks to jackandjilladult.com for supporting Unzipping Taboos. Don't forget, you can get 20% off your order with code UNZIPPING20. We want to give a very special shout out

to Allie O'Brien for incredible theme music. Thank you so much, Allie. And until next time, keep the conversation going, keep unzipping those taboos, and everyone, take care. I'll see you next time.