How to talk with your kids about sex: Help Your Children Develop a Positive, Healthy Attitude Toward Sex and Relationships - Softcover

Chirban, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0849964458 ISBN 13: 9780849964459

Verlag: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Equips parents to teach their children how to make sexuality a safe, healthy, and sacred part of their lives.

How parents address sex—their openness, the context, and their attitudes—will impact how their children view their own sexuality and self-worth. Dr. Chirban helps parents know when, how, and how much, and stresses the vital importance of their role in sex education. He uses humor, compassion, and real-life examples to prepare parents for healthy and ongoing conversations that equips their kids to own their own sexuality and provide an understanding of the larger issues of relationships, love, commitment, and intimacy. In addition, parents discover how helping their children grasp these veiled yet critical keys to a fulfilling life deepens their own connection with their children.

With specific helps for children from birth through young adult, Dr. Chirban provides context for what needs to be communicated at each stage of their development as well as tips for the inevitable surprise questions. In addition, he tackles complicated issues such as pornography, relationships and the Internet, sexting, and homosexuality. Most important is the emphasis on strong family values and spirituality as it relates to sexuality.

Previously released in 2007 as What's Love Got to Do With It?, this revised book adds new insights from today's culture that make it even more relevant to parents and families.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. John T. Chirban has taught classes about relationships, sexuality, and spirituality at his alma mater, Harvard Medical School, for more than thirty years. In addition to teaching at Hellenic College and Holy Cross, he has served also as professor of psychology and chairman of the Program on Human Development for more than thirty years.  He is in high demand as an international lecturer on family and spirituality speaking frequently before professional organizations and national societies, and as a guest consultant for magazines, newspapers, and radio shows. Since its inception, he has served on the Advisory Board for the Dr. Phil Show, where he is a frequent guest. He has also served as director of Cambridge Counseling Associates for more than thirty years, serves as a Guardian Ad Litem, in Massachusetts, where he has specializes in helping families through divorce.

Dr. Chirban lives with his children in Carlisle, Massachusetts.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

HOW TO TALK WITH YOUR KIDS ABOUT SEX

By John T. Chirban

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2012 John T. Chirban, Ph.D., Th.D.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8499-6445-9

Contents

Foreword: Dr. Phil McGraw........................................................................................xiPreface: Before We Begin: A Personal Note to Parents.............................................................xvAcknowledgments..................................................................................................xixIntroduction: In the Age of Sexual Un-Innocence..................................................................xxi1 Learning to Really Talk with Your Kids: Warming Up for Good Communications.....................................32 Defining Sex: Integrating What You Believe and Value...........................................................273 We're in This Together: The Role of Family in Your Child's Sexual Development..................................534 Listen Up: Responding to Your Kids' Questions in a Balanced Way................................................735 Infants through Primary School Kids—Being Natural (Birth–Age 8)....................................996 Preadolescence—Having the So-Called "Talk" (Ages 9–11).............................................1317 Adolescence—Dealing with Sex in the Air (Grades 7–College / Ages 12–21)......................1618 Helping Your Child Build a Healthy Life—Body, Mind, and Soul.............................................1839 Sorting Out the Issues.........................................................................................21510 What's Love Got to Do with It? The Relationship Between Sex, Intimacy, and Love...............................251Appendix: A Basic Checklist for Supporting Your Teen's Healthy Sexual Growth.....................................277Notes............................................................................................................281Index............................................................................................................285About the Author.................................................................................................289

Chapter One

Learning to Really Talk with Your Kids: Warming Up for Good Communications

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing. —Henry S. Haskins

Let's consider two sets of parents who each think they have clearly addressed sexual values with their children following very different approaches to see what can be learned from their stories.

John and Mary: Monitoring Her Moves

John and Mary decided the subject of sex would lead to too many questions or sexual behaviors. Therefore, they monitored and censored their daughter Kathy's social activity from infancy through adolescence, keeping her out of contact with anything having to do with sex. From age 3 she was in carefully structured gymnastics and dance programs and was not allowed to watch TV without a parent, but she kept busy with school, family events, and sports.

When I met Kathy in therapy at age 16, she was very self-conscious and had a number of physical symptoms that doctors diagnosed as emotional rather than physical in origin. Kathy said her parents were "terrified" of her developing sexuality and of the fact that she was "growing up." She had had limited contact with boys, as she had attended an all-girls religious school and hadn't interacted with boys her own age since elementary school. She felt especially sad that she hadn't been asked to the junior prom. Kathy's disappointment over not being asked to the prom was compounded by the fact that she had never experienced an actual crush on a "real guy" but had only fantasized about boys.

Kathy had been essentially quarantined from sex because her parents were afraid of the pain that Kathy (or perhaps they themselves?) might feel in confronting sexual issues. They intentionally tried to shut off her sexual energy and, in the end, shut down what Freud properly called her "life force."

Paula and Martin: Sex Is Natural

In contrast, Paula and Martin anticipated "normal" sexual issues with their daughters, so they attempted to head off the subject with a very different approach.

Ellen was their third daughter. Both parents were academics and boasted that they were solidly realistic about sex. They regularly stated that "sex is nothing to be afraid of " and talked about it a lot at home, so Ellen got the message early on that sex was okay. However, though she understood that "healthy" sex was a "fact of life," Ellen never actually talked with her parents about what healthy sex really meant and how it related to her daily life. Sex was so casually accepted, in fact, that when Ellen was 16 years old, her mom brought her to her doctor, ordered the Pill, and didn't say anything else about it. Following this cue, Ellen had sex with several boys during high school. She even remembers accompanying her older sister to an abortion. At the time, her mom commented, "These things happen." Ellen was led to believe that "going for the abortion was no different than going to the dentist." While she appeared sexually uninhibited, Ellen admitted what she had was "fake sophistication." She was confused and unhappy about her sexual freedom and felt she was missing dignity, honor, and self-respect in her sexual relationships.

* * *

In both stories, we see how powerfully parents' attitudes affect the sexual development of their children, even when they don't address it directly. Messages were sent, received, and absorbed based on the parents' conscious and unconscious beliefs and fears. The parents were shaping their kids without taking time to check in directly with the kids on their actual needs and experiences. Though these sets of parents had parental styles on opposite ends of the sexual spectrum, the results were similar: both girls grew up disconnected from their own feelings and were left confused and uncertain about their sexuality. What we can see from these stories is that sex involves a genuine connection of parents with their children. An obvious point, maybe, but one commonly missed. Even when the messages are loud and clear that doesn't mean we're getting through.

While both these couples dealt with sexuality for their kids, we don't get a sense that either of them really communicated with their kids. So how do we talk with our kids about sex? What do we actually say?

Do you think these parents were attuned to the experiences, feelings, and needs of their daughters? Did they listen and convey that they cared about what their kids were feeling? In these cases we don't get a sense of how the kids' thoughts and emotions figured into their own sexuality. And when a discussion is one-way, it can't really be called a discussion. Neither set of parents were attuned to their kids and neither involved their kids in the discussion; both attunement and involvement are necessary to ensure that the vital issue of sexuality is thoroughly addressed.

ATTUNEMENT: DEEPER UNDERSTANDING

"Attuning" means gaining understanding with your child—not just of him or her. Attuning is "tuning in," empathizing, resonating, caring, and "getting" how your child puts together the world around him. Attuning means being there to help.

While most parents acknowledge sex as a reality of life, their approaches to talking about it run the gamut. Many parents provide too little information, leaving...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Thomas Nelson Publishers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0849964458
• ISBN 13: 9780849964459
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Reckitt Benckiser Deutschland GmbH; consumerhealth_de@reckitt.com; ; Darwinstrasse 2-4; Heidelberg; 69115; Deutschland