Teaching Guide:
Talking With Your Teen About Sexuality

OBJECTIVES

Participants will:

increase their awareness of the importance of talking to their teens about sexuality; understand some of the reasons they may be reluctant to talk with their teens; determine what messages they want to send to their teens and begin to develop strategies for sending them; become aware of ways to initiate conversations about sexuality with their teens; understand the guidelines for effective communication; and begin thinking about some of the difficult issues they will confront in talking with their teens about sexuality.

MATERIALS

• copy of "Talking with Your Teen About Sexuality" for each participant
• pencil and paper for each participant

PRESENTATION GUIDE

This lesson is straightforward. For most presentations, you can simply go over the material found in the factsheet. This guide simply provides comments on how you might present the material, suggestions for eliciting participant discussion and descriptions of supplementary material and activities you may want to use. Don't feel like you have to follow or use everything in it. You know your audience better than anyone else, you know how much time you have to make your presentation and you have your own unique ways of presenting material you're most comfortable with.

INTRODUCTION

After introducing the lesson by going over the first two paragraphs, ask participants how they learned about sexuality. Ask if they talked openly with their parents when they were teens. Ask if they want their relationship with their child to be the same as the relationship they had with their parents. Asking these questions which encourage participants to think about their own teen years can be beneficial since it may remind them what it's like to be a teen and how difficult and confusing learning about sexuality can be.

You also may want to ask participants what problems they have talking about sexuality with their own teens and what goes particularly well. Encourage group members to share their responses and point out that participants can learn from each other's successes and failures. End this discussion by pointing out that some of the material you're going to be talking about may help them solve some of the problems they've mentioned.

If you think the group would be receptive to it, you may want to have participants complete a short, anonymous survey at the beginning of the presentation. Give everyone a piece of paper and ask them to indicate how old they were when they first had sexual intercourse and whether or not they were married at the time. Get someone to tabulate the results while you're talking or do it yourself if there's a break during the presentation. Towards the end of the program, summarize the results for the group and ask participants if they're expecting something different from their teens than they themselves did at the same age. This could provoke a valuable discussion either just before or just after you present the section on "difficult issues."

SEXUALITY AND THE RELUCTANCE TO TALK

Begin this section by making sure that participants realize that sexuality encompasses far more than the physical acts of sex. Point out all that is involved.

List and go over the reasons parents or guardians are reluctant to talk with their teens about sexuality. (If an overhead projector is available, use "Reasons for Being Reluctant to Talk" to make a transparency.)

GETTING READY

Begin this section of your presentation by pointing out that participants will find it easier to talk with their teens if they're prepared. Provide each participant a pencil and a sheet of paper and have them complete the exercise found in the factsheet. After you have finished, ask participants to share some of the things they would like to communicate to their teens. You can end the discussion by stressing the fact that the exercise should give them some idea of what they want to communicate with their teen and how comfortable they are likely to feel doing it. Also stress the point that they should get their partners to complete the exercise and that the two of them should periodically discuss how their efforts to talk with their teen are going.

GETTING STARTED

After you go over the material found in this section, you may want to ask participants to share examples of times they're been particularly successful in initiating discussions of sexuality and why they think they were successful.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

The best way to present the material from this section is to simply go over each of the eight guidelines for effective communication. (If an overhead projector is available, use "Guidelines for Effective Communication" to make a transparency.) As you go through them, be sure to give participants an opportunity to comment. After discussing all eight, ask participants if they can think of any other suggestions for effective communication.

DIFFICULT ISSUES

The purpose of this section is to get participants thinking about some of the difficult issues they may confront as they talk with their teens. Go over the material and be sure to give participants time to discuss each of the issues as you go along. Some of the issues may be controversial and there may be strong differences of opinion among participants. If this is the case, be sure to point out that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and stress the need for tolerance and mutual respect.

Be sure to end this section by stressing the point that having teens exposed to factual, comprehensive sexuality information outside the home can help parents and teens deal with some difficult sexual issues and encourage participants to support such efforts in their community.

SEXUAL INTEGRITY AND TALKING WITH YOUR TEEN

Be sure to go over the ideas in this final, short section of the leaflet. Emphasize the point that it's important for participants to talk honestly, sincerely, and about their own values with their teens.

If you're planning to offer the SIT program to local teens, mention it before you close. If you want to make any of the leaflets available to the parents, have them available or tell participants how they can obtain them. You can also mention that the "Talking with Your Teen About Sexuality" leaflet contains a list of suggested readings they may find helpful.

AUTHOR: Gary L. Hansen, Ph.D., Extension Specialist in Sociology, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Kentucky; and William W. Mallory, Fayette County Extension Agent for 4-H/Youth Development, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Kentucky.