Logan Levkoff and Jennifer Wider, M.D. made it clear in their “Heard in Rye” workshop, held March 11, that talking to children about sex and sexuality is still vitally important and yet still difficult for many parents.
By Sarah Varney
Logan Levkoff and Jennifer Wider, M.D. made it clear in their “Heard in Rye” workshop, held March 11, that talking to children about sex and sexuality is still vitally important and yet still difficult for many parents.
Despite Google and other online sources, most children have questions that parents should be able to comfortably answer. “Most children want to know that their bodies are normal, that they’re like their peers,” said Levkoff and Wider, co-authors of “Got Teens?: The Doctor Moms’ Guide to Sexuality, Social Media, and Other Adolescent Realities.”
The two women, both of whom grew up on Long Island, began their presentation by sharing some of the embarrassing moments they experienced as adolescents and teens.
The most important thing is to “always be factual and use anatomically-correct language. ‘Down there’ is not a body part,” said Levkoff. Helping your child understand and resist the double standard that boys and girls face when it comes to dealing with their developing bodies is also extremely important, she adds.
In order to talk about sex and sexuality, children have to know the correct names. “No one even tells us the right words and girls get cutesy nicknames. This gets reinforced constantly, even on Oprah, which gives me hives,” added Levkoff. She urged audience members to challenge language and gender stereotypes when it comes to sex. “Boys and girls are not equal. Boys can do it and be elevated in status but girls are called names,” she said.
It’s also important to try and remember one’s own experiences dealing with sexuality as a teen, even if it brings up painful or embarrassing memories. “We often forget that the experiences we had when we were young are a big part of who we are today. We forget to go back and show our children images of how we were,” said Levkoff.
And there isn’t just one sex talk, there should be many sex talks, added Wider. “Doctors typically spend 36 seconds or less talking about sexual health with young people,” she noted.
Ironically, Levkoff’s father is an OB/GYN physician, but even he felt uneasy talking to her about sexuality. “My father would grunt,” she said. However, her parents insisted she became a peer counselor for sexual education. Her first lesson was learning how to put a condom on a banana.
According to Wider, recent studies show that teens who use condoms the first time are twenty times more likely to use it the next time.
