Parenting Pointers: Talking About Sex

Dr. Janet Rosenzweig, MS, PhD, MPA, is a research associate for Prevent Child Abuse America and a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Penn State, her PhD in social work from Rutgers, and her MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. From 2001 to 2007, she was the executive director of Prevent Child Abuse NJ. She lives with her husband in Yardley, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the new book Sex-Wise Parent: The Parent's Guide to Protecting Your Child, Strengthening Your Family, and Talking to Kids About Sex, Abuse, and Bullying. She's answered a few questions and provided a great deal of information about this topic that I'll be sharing with you across a few points.

There's obviously so much information parents can and should impart to their children about sexual awareness, but what do you think is the most important principle to keep in mind and why?

The most important principle for parents to keep in mind is the importance of being willing and able to discuss issues around sexual healthy and safety in the same context of health and safety in general. In Sex-Wise Parent, (Skyhorse Publishing, 2012), I offer a chapter called Anatomy and Physiology for Grown-ups, recognizing that many young parents have not access to quality sexual health information in their formal education over the last decade. That information needs to be coupled with an understanding of what children want to know at different ages, and what they can understand.
Along with the ability to provide age-appropriate accurate information, parents should keep in mind that the emotion they display during a conversation communicates as much as their words; kids may remember the embarrassment as clearly as they remember the words. In Sex-Wise Parent, I coach parents to practice with their partner or friends, so the words come easily when talking with their kids.


The book's subtitle brings up bullying. How common is bullying that occurs in conjunction with sexual abuse?

I encourage people to think of sexual abuse as bullying taken to its grotesque extreme. Both bullying and sexual abuse involve a perpetrator who is solely concerned with their own gratification while completely disregarding the effect their actions have on their victim. In Sex-Wise Parent, I coach parents on ways to instill empathy in their children, starting with instilling the Golden Rule in little ones to encouraging older kids to stand up for bullying victims.