Best age to start discussing sex and human development
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Human development and sexuality education becomes critically important when our young people have figured out that sex and romance are ultra-important to adult and teenage world, and that happens around age ten. That's very confronting for a lot of parents. It does not mean that our ten-year old boys and girls are ready to be talking about sex, but they do need to be talking about puberty. They do need to be talking about what's about to happen to their bodies, what's about to happen to their feelings, and what's about to happen to their relationships. It's a way for us to meet their internal experience. Through overheard conversations, cultural messages, advertisements, magazine headlines, our kids are being inundated with sexualized material. We market to them sexually. What we don't often do is meet them with an education about what that is, and they're all talking about it. So we want to be involved and engaged in that conversation now so that years later when they're making decisions, we're invited in. Otherwise they grow up away from us instead of in front of us.
See Jonathan Nadlman, MFT's video on Best age to start discussing sex and human development...
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Jonathan Nadlman, MFTPsychotherapist
Jonathan Nadlman, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice since 1995, and has been counseling adults, couples, young people and their families for twenty-four years. For the past seven years, he has been teaching Human Development and puberty as a rite-of-passage at many independent schools. Jonathan was the supervising therapist at Pacific Hills Middle and High School for six years. In addition, he is a facilitator of rites-of-passage workshops for adolescents teens and adults. When he is not working, he can be found trying to change wood into art, learning his djembe, or in the garden with his wife and seven year old daughter. Or on occasion, if there's a swell, riding the California surf.
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