How to Discuss Sexuality with Your Teen

When discussing anything at all with your teen, the most important first step is already having an open channel of communication with him or her. If the most you ever usually converse about during the course of a day is the superficial "What's on your plate for the day?" or "How was school?" without actually following it up to show you care what's going on in their lives, you're likely to get a poor response to an actual 'talk'. Communication is clearly the most important thing to have with your teen.

Let's face it. Most teens don't want to talk about sex with their parents. Don't expect to sit them down for 'a talk'. You're already making the situation awkward. Don't expect to go the whole nine yards in your sexuality discussion with your teen the first time you talk to them about it, especially if you've never mentioned anything like that before with them. You stand a better chance of the teen realizing what's going on, clamming up, and tuning you out until it's over with because they don't want to hear about it
Mentioning bits and pieces of information about sexuality in passing are likely to grab your teen's attention. Your emotions to how you convey it may be even more of a shock. It's the "wait, did mom/dad just say that?" and "ok wait, how'd they know about that?". Just think of it as if you were talking to them about a boyfriend or a girlfriend. If you've never so much as asked how their significant other is doing, how else would you expect them to react if you asked something private, or in this case something sexual? If you dump that on them all at once, you're going to get an indignant "NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS" response, and you can forget about asking again any time soon. If you're already open with each other about that sort of thing, there's likely to be a lot less resistance to talking about it or anything more serious.

If you completely botch your first attempt at discussing sexuality with your teen, the level of communication you have is going to determine whether or not you get a second shot. It's going to make the difference between your teen knowing it's coming and suddenly not wanting to be available to talk anymore, and having the teen laugh at how you botched it but appreciate where you're coming from. The teen may even respond back just so as not to hear you botch it up again if you weren't going to let it go.

Bottom line: Talk with your teen. Period. If you don't have an open channel of communication between you and your teen, you can't realistically expect to discuss anything that the teen may shield as being too private or too intimate to talk about with mom or dad. Once you get beyond that, it's all just a matter of chatting it up and dropping hints that it's something you're interested in mentioning.