Talking to Kids about Sex

The sex is unavoidable.

It's there, on your street corner. It's the billboard, the condom wrapper, the outfit that just walked by. It's the ad on the side of the bus, the lyrics bellowing from a passing car. It's in your living room, screaming at you from television and computer screens, teasing you from magazine and book covers, daring you to look. See. Desire. Act.

It's the images bombarding your kids from every direction, day and night, whether you like it or not. It's the curvaceous female vixen in the video game, the padded bras on hangars in the girls' clothing department, the teen themes delivered by adult actors for tween audiences...on the Disney channel.

How and when do you initiate the conversation about sex with your kids? How soon is too soon? When is it too late? And where does one begin?

Enter Sharon Maxwell, Ph.D. and her straight-shooting, practical and practicable how-to book entitled The Talk: What Your Kids Need to Hear from YOU About Sex.

This is not a book about sperm and eggs and fallopian tubes - the scientific explanation of human sexuality that has dominated sex ed curricula for decades.

Instead, this book charges at the pink elephant in the room - sexual desire and the power of sexy - and teaches parents how to engage in meaningful, responsible, empowering sex talk with their kids. Fearless Dr. Maxwell holds our quaking hands as she offers up eleven principles of ethical sexual conduct to get us thinking in the right direction:

1. Your body, and the decision about how to use it, belongs only to you...
2. How you choose to use your body and how you choose not to use your body become part of who you are...
3. Any kind of sexual behavior that involves another person is an expression of intimacy...

[from Maxwell, The Talk, Appendix 4]

She hones our focus on the hypersexualized culture in which we live, and gives us the tools to talk to our kids about the stuff that really matters, including:

• the power of sexual energy and desire - and why self-control is important
  
• sex and the internet - what parents and kids need to know about surfing and sex talk online
  
• the way sex is used as a commodity in our culture
  
• the value of intimacy and personal responsibility
  
• your own personal code of ethics, without being preachy
  

It's all good, people, and not a moment too soon. Are you ready to talk to your kids about sex?

The Talk is available for purchase online at Penguin Group and other retailers. I received no compensation (except for a copy of the book) for writing this review.

In a Blue Room: A Lullaby for the Senses

[Image courtesy of Harcourt Children's Books]

In Jim Averbeck's gem of a children's book, In a Blue Room, young Alice is "wide-awake past bedtime" and bouncing in her room, unable to sleep until her room is blue.

"I can only sleep in a blue room," says Alice. "Blue is my favorite."

But Mama brings fresh lilacs and lilywhites into Alice's bedroom, and soon enough "Alice twirls around, plops down, and breathes deep."

The reader does too, breathing in Averbeck's words and illustrator Tricia Tusa's evocative images like a sweet, fragrant, calming breeze.

Masterful Mama brings many things into Alice's room - none of which are blue, to Alice's dismay, but all of which prove to be an irresistible feast for the senses: hot orange tea that cools in a brown cup; a silky-soft, warm and cozy quilt of red and green; the soft chime of yellow bells on black strings.

Click! goes the light as Alice fades, and like magic, her room and everything in it - flowers, tea, quilt, bells - are blanketed in beautiful, soothing, pale blue moonlight. The perfect goodnight.

I have read this special book to both of my children (ages 7 & 9) - never at bedtime, mind you - and they were immediately transfixed. Was it the image of a girl bouncing wildly on her bed? The idea of a child being wide-awake past bedtime? The fact that this "blue room" was actually yellow?

Yes - probably to all of those things. They were hooked from page one and absorbed every carefully chosen word and accompanying whimsical illustration on every page.

They were intrigued, perhaps also by the notion that darkness doesn't have to be scary. Rather, it can be magical and transformative...blue, not black.

And blue? Well what could be more soothing? And just in time for bed.

For more reviews or to buy your very own copy of this newly published children's book, click here.