THE talk and such..

[MamaGoofy]

I don't have a teenager but one day he will become one. A thread about dating made me think of this so I figured I would put it out there.

1) When will you have THE talk (regarding sex) with your teenager/child?
2) Will you skirt around the topic or be frank with them and answer their questions honestly?
3) Will you talk to them about contraception such as birth control pills,condoms, etc?
4) If you have a teenage daugher, will you allow her to get birth control pills? Why or why not?


As mentioned I do not have a teenager yet. However, dh and I have discussed this already. We will be very open with our children regarding sex. We plan to answer all questions no matter how embarassing or uncomfortable. We want to keep the lines of communication open with our children so they feel comfortable talking to us about anything. To answer my 4th question, I will have to say that if my daughter comes to me and is responsible enough to tell me that she wants to have sex then yes I will definately take her to get on the pill. I will of course talk to her about the risks involved with having sex and that nothing is "fool proof" other than abstince but I have to be realistic. She will be a teenager and more than likely want to have sex. I would rather her be on the pill and protected than to end up being pregnant at 16. My mother was really open and honest with me regarding safe sex and she put me on the pill at 14.

[Joan]

We have a 12 yr old. We've been having "the talk" for years! He first asked about where babies came from around 5-6 yrs old. I was so shocked that I said something like "i'll have to get back to you on that one". I did get back to him, kept it simple and honest. Then in 5th grade he had sex-ed and asked us questions that came up from that (what is a wet dream, when am I ging to go through puberty, what is a erection, etc.) We just talked casually at the dinner table. Me sitting there mute while Pete handeled most of the questions!

As far as birth control, we will encourage him to abstain at least through high school. He knows about the different kinds of BC (from sex-ed). My thought is, if he is old enough, confident enough to have sex, he needs to be mature enough to buy condoms himself.

So far, we have had honest, frank, and open discussions about so many topics, sex included. I think 'the talk" is an ongoing process. I'm sure we have more to come!

[Brandi]

I hope our talks will start early with some basic things and then progress openly from there - basically what jojo was talking about. I want our kids to be able to talk to us about anything so I don't want to be wishy washy - I want to tell them the facts. They will either find out on their own and think you lied to them or hid things from them, or they will have incorrect information that could be bad also. I always want to be honest with them so that they can trust me. If my teenage daughter came to me and wanted birth control pills, I have no idea what I would say. I really think that I would say NO. I believe that by going to get them for her, it would be like I was saying it is OK, when I don't believe that at all. Although, I don't want her having unprotected sex. That's going to be a question that I don't think I can answer until it actually happens. I would never ever have asked my mom to do that for me. I don't think it's ok anyway to just take the pill. You can still get so many terrible diseases - I think it's best to use condoms. You can still get nasty diseases even if you use condoms, so I think abstinence is the only ok route. Again, we will have to see what happens when the time comes.