newjerseynewsroom.com

BY SUSIE WILSON

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

SEX MATTERS

If you’re a parent who hasn’t talked with your children ages four to 11 about sexuality—and every parent should try—the best way to begin is to look at the subject through their eyes.

This is the sage advice I heard last week from veteran sexuality educator Deborah M. Roffman, and it was worth my time to cross the Hudson River to hear it. My daughter, who lives in the Bronx, invited me to a talk for parents at her children’s independent school. (My grandchildren are eight and 11 years old.) I accepted once I knew that it was being presented by Roffman.

As sex educators go, Roffman is among the best of the best. For 37 years, she taught sex education at the Park School, a private K-12 school in Baltimore. She’s led more than 100 sexuality education workshops for parents and teachers and authored popular books on the topic, including "Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent’s Guide to Talking Sense About Sex." Her next book, "Talk to Me First" is due out this July.

Roffman made clear from the start of her two-hour session with about 50 parents—mostly moms with a sprinkling of dads—that the early years are the perfect time for age-appropriate conversations. The need for parent-child communication has never been greater, she counseled, because children will learn from each other or through the multiple, persistent, negative and often exploitative messages that abound online and in the media.

From the nervous laughter and questions early on, my hunch was that not many of these parents had talked to their children about sex, and they were apprehensive about how to begin.

Assuring everyone that talking about sex with their children when they are young will not turn them into “porn stars,” Roffman soothed parents by saying that frequent, brief conversations are “protective,” “knowledge is power” and “kids grow up healthier and will postpone risky behaviors” if parents have had good conversations with them.

Then Roffman, holding a mike and standing close her audience, asked a simple question: “Are you the adult in your family?” With that established, she encouraged the parents to “listen up” and understand that the task is much easier if they look at sex “through children’s eyes.” This translates to keeping the exchanges age-appropriate.

“Children are sexual beings from birth onward, and sexuality is about identity, not genitals,” she said.

Ideally, conversations should begin when children are around age four, because they are beginning to figure out their surroundings and want to know, “Where did I come from?” (Or, as they might ask, “Where do babies come from?”) If answered by moms, the response is “from my uterus;” if answered by dads, “from your Mommy’s uterus.”

“Always use medically correct language,” Roffman emphasized.

The next question might not come until a year later: “How did I get out?” (The child may be thinking about how the car gets out of the garage and is interested in geography and transportation.) Quick and correct answer: “Mommy pushed you out.” Or to be a little more exact, “There are muscles inside Mommy that pushed you out.”

When children are around five or six, they might ask, “How did I get in there in the first place?” The correct answer:  “Deep inside Mommy there is a tiny egg, no bigger than a pinprick. Inside of Daddy, there is a tiny sperm. They came together to make you.”

Around age 7, children may ask the insightful question that can cause so much anxiety:  “How did the egg and sperm get together?” Answer: “Nature solved the problem by having the penis and vagina fit together like Legos.” Roffman doesn’t believe that parents need to use the word “intercourse” to describe the union of sperm and egg. This description can wait until children get a little older and have had their most basic questions answered. (Her discussion focused mainly on parenting among heterosexuals, which is why the answers concerned men and women only.)