Every second in America 30,000 people are watching porn, and every day 40 million people visit porn sites. Online porn sites get more visitors each month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined. About 1/3 of all web downloads in the United States are porn related. 1/3 of kids say they've seen porn by the age of 12 and the negative impact of this can be seen in teen pregnancies, low self-esteem and depression. My First guest, Gail Dines is a specialist in the study of pornography, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at Wheelock College in Boston. She is also the author of “Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality”. Gail says developing sexual templates in children are vulnerable to the negative impacts of early exposure to pornography. It's not just girls who are vulnerable, boys too can be traumatized and create unhealthy ideas of what sex is supposed to be, including violence and misogynistic scenarios. Porn talk is the new sex talk and we're going to find out from Gail why we must have this talk with our kids. Gail says if we as parents don’t talk to them, somebody else will. And potentially, that person could be a predator. Then we welcome Pattie Fitzgerald. She's the founder of Safety Ever After, a child safety educator, family coach and former preschool teacher. She penned the book, “No Trespassing: This Is My Body”. Pattie says we need to start teaching our kids about boundaries and ownership of their bodies when they are as young as two years old. She stresses that if don’t teach kids to own their bodies, they’ll grow up to make assumptions and be vulnerable to porn addiction and feelings of shame and low self-esteem. She wants to teach children that they are the bosses of their bodies. Pattie says 90% of children know their abusers and 35% are within the family. She reveals her simple “Stop-Go-Tell” method for children and how it can empower them to say no and stop an unwanted and possibly dangerous situation. Pattie says parents who come to her for help don't just want tips on how to talk to their children about pornography and sex; they want her to write the whole script. Many parents are very uncomfortable having this conversation. But after listening to this episode the hope is that you will feel empowered and walk away with some useful tools on how you can talk to your child about pornography and sex and teach them to have the confidence to create boundaries and make the right decision when it comes to their bodies.
https://www.instagram.com/stage29podcasts
https://twitter.com/stage29podcasts
https://www.facebook.com/Stage29Podcasts/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices