This document contains a series of questions and answers parents can use to review important aspects of sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape. It is intended to be a catalyst for parents to introduce this important topic to their teens and to start a discussion that hopefully will continue past the end of the exercise. The information in this exercise …
Family Time Movie Theater: Healthy Realistic Relationships
Good luck finding movies that portray healthy, long term relationships. Everything is drama and dysfunction or drama and romance. These are a couple of movies that actually portray relationships in a fairly accurate and healthy way. Because they are not romcoms (i.e., romantic comedies) or filled with violence, your kid might not watch them by choice. You may have to …
Family Time Movie Theater: Teenage Boys and Dating
Finding good movie role models for teenage boys in dating relationships is not easy. There is so much emphasis on the strict adherence to guy rules (which are bad for emotionally intimate relationships), the overly romanticized characterizations of boys and girls who don’t expect much from their boyfriends. Here are some movies with better guy role models. Pretty in Pink …
Emotional Intimacy: Some Things Your Son Needs To Know
There are a lot of ways teenagers can learn about healthy romantic relationships. Most media representations are focused on titillation and sexual licentiousness. Romance in movies is mostly characterized by idealization, infatuation, lust and one dimensional people (think Twilight, The Hangover, Iron Man, Spider man and 300). Relationships in music lyrics emphasize hedonism, sexism, the objectification of women (and men) …
When Your Teen Tells You They Are Ready To Have Sex
Kids begin to be sexually active in significant numbers beginning at 15 (Guttmacher Institute). The average age American adolescents lose their virginity is 17. By 18, 61% of kids have had sex. Where are kids getting information about when, where and how to have sex? Unfortunately, it is from the internet, advertisements, performers, celebutants, pornography and the music they listen …
Talking About Teenage Love, part 3
Shaping expectations. How you talk about love and relationships will have a significant influence on what your kid expects out of their beloved. Young love-ers are romantic idealists. Their model for love will be fairy tales, cartoons and a naïve, superficial view of dating and dating partners. (We won’t even get into what happens if they have already been watching …
Talking About Teenage Love, part 2
Once you have given some thought to what is meant by love, young love, intimacy, lust and romantic love (see previous column) you are ready (?) to you use that information to help your kid have a better understanding of love in the context of intimate teenage relationships Let’s start with the kinds of strategies for talking to a teen …