How to Talk to your Kids about Sex with Dr Lanae St John

Today we are going to talk about sex! Who doesn’t love talking about sex? Right?!? Well, the reality is that many people certainly enjoy sex, but actually talking about it is something that becomes awkward or uncomfortable for them. For today’s interview, we are going to add an extra layer to that level of awkwardness and talk about how to talk to you kids about sex.  Yes, its time to talk about how to have The Talk. 

My guest is Dr Lanae St John.  She is a board certified sexologist. Dr St John helps individuals and couples get comfortable with their own sexuality through coaching sessions, workshops and lots of free, informative , and even some fun exercises to try with your partner.  She also has a side of her work that focuses on how to help parents get comfortable talking about sex with their kids. Her book, Read Me, A Parental Primer for the Talk is a comprehensive guide to understanding so much about developing sexuality and also how to conduct quote unquote, the talk. 

In this interview, Dr. St John and I cover so much. Here’s the highlights

1. Why “the Talk” is a series of conversations over your child’s lifetime.
2. What is the right age to talk about touching?
3. What you miss out on if you leave your child’s sex education up to Google or other kids. 
4. Her very clear and helpful Five Building Blocks of The Talk – this is the topics to cover.They aren’t all covered at every age, but they are a guide to know how the conversation will grow over the years. 
5. The importance of explaining pleasure. 
6. The ever so important topic of why and how to talk to your kids when your notice their body changing and growing into puberty
7. Discussing and knowing the differences between healthy touch and unhealthy touch. There is definitely healthy, age-appropriate exploration, even though it seems stories of molestation run rampant.  I wanted Lanae to help us understand how we can even start to gauge that. 
8. How to talk about body image, self esteem, hygiene with grace and a preservation of your child’s self-esteem. There are times when you will be reassuring your child that what’s happening is normal, and there are definitely times in life when you may need to point out things about them (for instance poor hygiene or when the reach the time in life when they need deodorant), where care and tact will need to be employed. 
9. Our last topic is just how to actually start the conversation, this conversation that lasts throughout your child’s life.

For the non-parents who found this (and listened to the episode)- well, first, off, thanks! I don’t have kids either, I found this informative and I'm sharing this episode with my friends to help them with their kids. I hop you do too.. 

In case, you found this episode or post because you are looking to get more comfortable with talking about sex with your partner,  Dr. St John can certainly help you out there too. As I mentioned in the beginning of the episode, she definitely works with adults.  I’d encourage you to go to her website TheMamaSutra.net – I seriously spent about an hour on it the other night, downloading some free guides(see links below) and reading through blog posts and advice questions. A couple of the freebies available on her website are how to get a little bit more playful with your partner and also a guide to exploring your own genitals.  The guide to On one hand, it can help you, the adult get more familiar with your own body parts in case you need to tell a dr about something, but it can also help you, again in using the correct words when talking to your kids about their body parts.  We can never have too much information when it comes to good sex and taking care of our body.  I do hope you enjoyed this epsidisde and y