It is incredibly clear to me that the safest kids, the healthiest kids are the ones that have accurate information about sexuality. That's age between 8 and 12 is a really wonderful place to be filling them with the information that they're bright enough to understand and the values that that are dear to your family. Before the internet, a classmate or a stranger teaches your child about sex, your child needs a trusted parent who speaks first. Today, Dr. Janet Rosenw will explain why these conversations should begin before puberty, what parents need to teach, and how age appropriate guidance can help children stay safer. Dr. Janet Rosenwig, author of Sex Wise Parent, has worked with child welfare and sexual health since 1979. She has led national organizations, taught in universities, and trained families nationwide. Dr. Rosenw, welcome to the Faith Mom Mentor. Thank you. Your experience reaches so far back to one of the nation's earliest child sexual abuse programs. What inspired you to write this book, The Sex Wise Parent? And what convinced you that parents, not schools or peers or the internet, must be their child's primary source of information about sex, safety, and healthy development? Fabulous place to start. Thank you. Uh I have been working in this field since 1979 and I have worked as you mentioned, you know, I have strong credentials in human sexuality. I have a master's degree. My first masters was in health and I specialized in sexual health and back then it was all about oh no don't get herpes and you know birth control was kind of new but I got recruited to work on the child sex abuse project by a man who figured if I hire one who understands sex and one who understands child abuse they'll figure out child sex abuse. And I've never looked back. And through all of my years, everything I've done from being a direct service counseling person to running national programs to running research programs, it is incredibly clear to me that the safest kids, the healthiest kids are the ones that have accurate information about sexuality. It's it's a protective factor above all others. And the best place for them to get that information is from their parents. My dream, my goal is every child can go out into the world with medically accurate, age appropriate information about sex in their bodies, all wrapped up in the values of their family and their faith tradition. So we take the accurate information which I can help share and we wrap it up in our own famil family's values, our faith tradition values. That's kind of their baseline to sexual health and safety and children will receive the messages about sex from everywhere and anywhere. The question is whether a trusted parent helps shape that message first and that's what your book is about. Your book gives parents a practical framework for reclaiming that role. A link to the sex wise parents in the description for parents who want to prepare before these conversations become urgent. Why is the idea of one big talk outdated? And when should parents actually begin having those small age appropriate conversations? So, I believe that dealing with our kids' entire body happens from the minute they're born. If we have the baby in the bath on the diaper changing table and we say, "Oh, mommy loves your little toes. Mommy loves your little knees. Mommy loves your little nose. And we skip everything in between the nose and the knees. We're already giving the kids messages that we don't talk about these parts of the body. So we we treat every part of the body in bath time. I'm washing behind your ears. I'm washing your genitals. We start as early as we can making it clear that we talk about all the parts of the body. And as kids develop, and I talk about this in the book, kids are going to develop a natural need for their own privacy, right? I mean, we know it's perfectly normal to breastfeed an infant, but a 10-year-old doesn't even see their mother's breast. What happens along the way? That's part of that normal healthy development. And what are the things we have to consider as a child grows and developed, as a family matures? And in this book, I I I have like questionnaires and exercises to help parents kind of make those decisions along the way. What does our kid need to know? How can we support them? And what's important at each age? And that's so important. A parent sometimes feels like that these conversations matter, but feels embarrassed or unprepared or even afraid she will say the wrong thing. What would you say to that parent? A couple of things. Um, I use the phrase in the book, find the courage to be uncomfortable, right? No, it is it is natural that one generation doesn't want to think about the other generation sex. You know, we don't want to think about our kids as sexual. We definitely don't want to think about our parents as sexual. It's just kind of natural that we want to keep sex within our own generation. But as a parent, we have to find the courage to be uncomfortable. We need to back that discomfort. getting rid of that discomfort up with accurate medical information. And I have a whole chapter in the book called Everything You Should Have Learned in High School and Probably Didn't that walks through parents through the anatomy, the physiology and language they can use with their kids. And once they're comfortable that they've got the knowledge, that they've got the language, I suggest they practice with peers, maybe a mom's group, maybe the book group at your faith-based at your church, you know, uses this book as their book club. And parents practice with each other. Kind of like throw out the question that you're most afraid of answering and practice answering it with w with other adults. So, you're not in this by yourself. You've got your faith. You've got your community. what you need for many parents is kind of the accurate information and um you know the focus on twins which I know is an important group that you like to talk about is a really wonderful place to focus because kids you know at that age between like you know 71 8 and 12 their their frame of reference is still with the nuclear family right mom and dad are still probably the smartest people they know parents get a lot dumber when their kids get about 13, 14, 15. But while we've got their attention, that is such an important age to be filling them with the information that they're bright enough to understand and the values that that are dear to your family and your faith. Yeah. And I think what I hear you saying is the goal is not one flawless speech. It is becoming the safe, steady person your child trusts with questions that they know that they can come to you. And faith mom, if you're enjoying the content of this video, please like and subscribe because doing so can help another parent find trustworthy guidance before her child turns to a less reliable source. Why is it so important for those children to understand about privacy, boundaries, respect, and their right to speak up when physical affection makes them uncomfortable? Well, that right to speak up starts at at the toddler huggy phase. You know, there may be a grandparent that, you know, doesn't smell so good or I remember my son when he was little was scared of somebody with dentures. He had seen them take their dentures out and he thought they were now a monster, you know. So, we need what at any age we we need to respect the child's need to set boundaries and that their feelings are really more important than the grown-ups because the grown-ups, they're developed. When the kid hits that pre-teen stage, a couple of things are going to happen. They're probably seeing things in the media that they may or may not understand. We now know that more kids get their sex education from pornography online than get it from their parents or from from a qualified educator. We've got to stop that. And you know, kids are going to start getting ready for puberty. Changes are going to happen to their body. And if kids don't understand what those changes are, they're going to be frightened. And they need to know that this is nature's way of preparing you to take your place as a grown person. But you're not grown yet. And because you're not grown yet, that's where you insert your family values of what we expect from you with this growing body until you're grown. In our family, this is what we believe. In our faith tradition, this is what we believe. And that that age of that twins when the body is starting to change, when they're still paying attention to their parents, such a great time to give them information and values. And we've got some really good resources in the sex-wise parent that help families, you know, have like questionnaires that the parents can ask. How will we handle this? How will we handle that? Um at what age will we at what age will we, you know, um let kids, you know, use the bathroom by themselves? I mean, you know, three years old, four years old. What's our rules on doors opened or closed at bedtime? What's our rules on who wears what when they come downstairs to breakfast? in the morning. Those are the kind of conscious decisions that families have to make about their inf family values that we have to speak about so that everybody's on the same page. And the reason that's so important is sometimes if somebody's trying to kind of sneak around and do things that are harmful, well, if there's no rule, right, who knows if they broke a rule. So all of a sudden, if the teen older teenager starts coming down to breakfast in his underwear and it's freaking out the 10-year-old, well, if the family never had a rule about that, we don't know if that older kid is being aggressive or just doesn't know the rules. So specifying what we expect in our families, just a great place to start. Just clear language. Clear language just gives a child words, confidence, and a safer place to know what's expected and to ask for help when they feel like they're being violated in some way. And parents should not have to invent these conversations while anxious or rushed. And you mentioned the sex wise parent provides the questions, examples, and practical tools to help families decide what to teach and how to say it. Um, and I've linked the in the description that they can get more information about the book and prepare before a difficult situation forces the conversation. Preparedness is much better than not being prepared. And the sex wise parent definitely helps us prepare. What has changed for children online? and and why does parents look beyond just devices to understand that wider sexual climate in school and sports and youth programs, friends, homes, and and every other setting. I'm going to start by giving you an example from one of my colleagues, a dad who works in our field, has daughters, and when his girls were getting ready to go back to school this year, he said to his daughters, and these are, you know, I think one's nine, one's 11, he said, "When somebody shows you a naked picture of yourself, drop everything and call me immediately." Now, that's such a great example because we know of all the things that have changed the the influx of preponderance of AI and the ability to make deep fake nudes and to take any picture of anybody and take their clothes off and make them naked and spread it around. That has just become so common that for this dad, I loved it. He said, "Not if this happened, when it happened." So he normalized the fact that there's bad actors out there, right? And especially when we're talking about adolescence because adolescence, their brains aren't totally developed. And something a 12 or 13year-old thinks is really funny to the other guys is devastating to the person whose picture that was. One of the most important things I believe is that when somebody has a picture of them, real or fake, you know, play, you know, distributed, what what causes them the distress besides having been, you know, betrayed is how ashamed they're going to be when people see that picture. If we can change the norms in families and in communities that we never blame a victim. If every tween would learn, we do not laugh if someone shares a naked picture of your friend. We do not laugh if someone, you know, shares a naked picture of someone in school. We treat them as the victim they were. we could as a community get rid of that shame that the victims feel and really take away one of the worst effects of the kind of online exploitation that's going on now. That is so helpful for you to say that protection involves more than just checking a phone. Parents actually need to understand what's going on, the people, policies, and environments shaping their child and speak so clearly. preparing the child for what will probably inevitably happen so that when it does happen that child can be aware and know what to do because sometimes I think a lot of the a lot of the um child just being caught off guard and they don't know what to do and then they're embarrassed so they don't want to talk about it. I think that is a real big problem and your sex-wise parents prevents that because it helps do the preparation, helps the parent be prepared and then in turn the prepared parent helps the child be prepared and that prepared child is more confident and has the language to be able to address it appropriately with the appropriate official. Right? And even if they don't have the exact language, they know that they can go to the parent and that together the parent will help them through it. We've also got when you talk about sexual climate, I've got like checklists like you're about to send your child to camp. What are the kinds of questions you can ask? You're about to send your child even to nursery school. What are the kind of questions you could ask? is how people treat issues around sexuality in your child's entire universe are going to come back and affect the way they feel and what kind of feelings they bring. And we want people to bring healthiness. We want them to bring safety. We want them to bring love to their sexuality because that's what they'll grow up and build a family on. So, it's just really important to help keep them healthy that way. And I have all kinds of resources in there for parents. That's so good. And what is one practical change that you're hoping that parents will make after hearing this conversation and getting your book? I'm going to give you two if I can. Yes. One is to educate themselves about human sexual development and then take that knowledge and think about how they could transmit it to their kids. And the other one is on a totally different level. Um, I think families should could have rules that all cell phones charge in mom the parents' bedroom overnight because when kids have access to their phones overnight, that's where they go places they shouldn't and they're vulnerable to bad actors. So, when they're real specific, charge all the phones in the parents bedroom overnight. No phones in beds with kids. And on a larger frame, educate yourself about anatomy and physiology and psychosexual development. It's not that hard once you have access to the information. And use this book through every phase of your child's development because we talk about stuff from birth through sending them off to college. And it's all right there in one package. Yeah. And a parent, a mom's confidence grows when she prepares before her child asks those hard questions. Do not let the internet or a crisis set the agenda. The link to the sex wise parent is in the description. Get your copy. Work through its questions and build a plan so your child knows you are a safe, informed, and trustworthy person to come to. Where can the faith mom mentor community connect with you and continue learning from your work? Well, thank you for asking that. They can find me on Facebook at a sexwise parent. They can find my website sexwiseparent.com and I have lots of resources and things there where they can take things where they'll be able to, you know, find even additional material from what they can find in the book and um they can communicate with me through the website. I'd be happy to take and answer questions or they could email Dr. Rosenswags sexwiseparent.com. Okay, Dr. Rosenswag, thank you for helping parents understand why they must speak and how they can begin. Moms, your child does not need a perfect speech. Your child needs a parent who is willing to learn, listen, and speak with truth and in love. begin these conversations before the world begins them for you. You begin them. In the comments, would you tell me which topic would help you most? Body language, boundaries, online safety, or understanding your child's environment. and then share this video with your spouse or a trusted mentor so you can prepare together. When trusted adults, use clear language and reinforce those healthy boundaries, children are better equipped to recognize harmful behavior and ask for help. The links to Dr. Janet Rosenwag's book and resources are in the description. And to keep preparing, watch the next video about teaching your child healthy boundaries, and I'll link it right here. Until next time, keep knowing God deeply and teaching your tween faithfully.
