The new year starts with new resolutions!  This year I have decided to have three resolutions, and if I accomplish one I will consider my resolutions accomplished.  So here are the three things I would like to do:

1. Take an aerial dance class.
2. Finish my book (it’s 75% done…).
3. Be on radio/television and/or in a print publication three times.

Two of these are professional, one is personal.  Here is how these goals are going so far:

1. I have already, technically, taken two aerial dance classes - now it is time to sign up for a series, which is what I intended with my resolution.
2. I aim to accomplish my book-writing by writing/editing my book for one hour a day, five days a week.  Today was my first day back to work, and I wrote for a highly productive hour.  I foresee this being an easy goal this week, while my kids are in school, but my classes haven’t started yet.  We will see how it continues once classes start next week!
3. I’m talking with people who know how to make this happen - I certainly don’t!  But I think I’d be awesome on the radio, and I could probably pull myself together for television too.

As for my book - this is what I really wanted to write about this evening.  It is a book about how to talk with teenagers about sex/sexuality/romance and it is based on my ten steps to talking to teens about sex:

1 – Know yourself. What are your expectations, your hopes, and your fears about your teenager’s sexual and romantic development? You’ll have far more control over yourself and your interactions if you have a full understanding of these things.

2 – It’s not about you. Your child is, in fact, discovering sex for the first time. They don’t want to hear about you and your sex life or your path to discovering sex. They want to talk about their current exciting, overwhelming path. So let them! That’s how you’ll get the most information – and remember, that’s now the primary business of your parenting.

3 – Stop talking! As the parent of a teenager, you are in the business of trying to get information from your teenager, not give it. If you’re talking, you can’t hear anything your teenager is trying to tell you.

4 – Start listening! Stop talking. Start listening. Remember what primary business you’re in? And that can’t happen if you don’t really, really listen.

5 – You only get one question. You’d better make it a good one that can’t be answered with a yes or a no. Spend some time mulling over it. You can ask it when you’re sure it’s a good one.

6 – Do something else. Anything else. Many teenagers, especially boys, will have an easier time talking about sexuality and romance if you’re doing something “side by side” like driving, walking, or playing a game rather than sitting and looking at each other.

7 – About pleasure and pain. You have to talk about both. If you don’t acknowledge the pleasure associated with sexuality, you’re teenager will think you’re completely out of touch. And so you will be completely out of touch.

8 – Be cool like a cucumber. It is only when you manage to have a calm, loving demeanor that your teenager will feel comfortable talking with you. And remember – you’re in the business of collecting information. The only way to do that is if your teenager keeps talking.

9 – Bring it on! Your teenagers have tough questions. Some of them quite specific and technical. If you’re able to answer these questions with honesty, humor, and no judgment, your teenager will feel much more at home coming to you with increasingly difficult emotional decisions.

10 – Never surrender. There may be times you feel like quitting. Like the millionth time when you’ve tried to have an actual conversation with your teenager – about anything, much less sex! – and your teenager has once again completely avoided eye contact and has not even acknowledged your existence. But you can’t. You’re still doing some good, so keep going. Trust me.

I want to expand on these ten steps, guiding parents through opening up their conversations in a step-by-step approach that focuses on the long-term goal of physically and emotionally healthy adult sexuality.  It’s going to be a best seller and I’ll be on Oprah, I just know it!!  (Or…I would be…if Oprah were still on…)

You can e-mail me, leave a comment on my blog, or drop me a line on Facebook.  Thanks!  I look forward to hearing from you!

While I agree with these messages, I also think they are somewhat problematic because 1. They tend to focus exclusively on women, potentially leaving the viewers with the erroneous belief that the way men are portrayed is just dandy, and 2. They don’t provide any sort of solution to the problem other than yelling at the media to cut it the heck out.

First, we are fooling ourselves if we think that men aren’t suffering from inappropriate media images along side women.  Men suffer from eating disorders, are bombarded with unattainable images, and have strict stereotypes perpetrated about them just as women do.  Yes, stereotypical images of women are degrading and sex-focused while stereotypical images of men tend to be based on things like strength and personality, and I would rather than strength and personality than be degraded and sex-focused.  But a narrow stereotype is a narrow stereotype and by ignoring the negative impact of the media on men we are perpetuating that stereotype.

Second, why all the hate with no real suggestion for action or movement forward.  The trailer above says, basically, “Waaaa!  The media is yucky and should stop being yucky!”  Folks, that’s just not going to happen any time soon.  The media - advertisements, music lyrics and videos, movies, YouTube, etc. - it all responds to us.  What we pay attention to and follow up with dollars is what is going to be produced.  Rather than crying about the mean-old-media-machine, we need to take a look at ourselves, and we need to ask our young people to do the same.

Systematically teaching children, teenagers, and young adults how to analyze the messages they are being sent is the first step.  We need to teach our children how to analyze the media they consume (or gets blasted at them regardless of their choice) in the same way that we teach them to analyze literature.  This isn’t hard, but it needs to be done by someone who knows pop culture and isn’t afraid of it.  The teacher should even enjoy pop culture so that students don’t feel like their tastes are being degraded or looked down on.

I hope that Miss Representation, when it comes out, will suggest something like this and have concrete suggestions for how we can respond and support our young people in identifying their own values rather than passively accepting the ones handed to them by the mass media.

I had a mother of two young teenage boys in my office this morning, bewailing the very typical actions of her sons.  By all accounts her sons are good kids - they (generally) listen to her and (eventually) do ask she asks them to.  They aren’t in trouble at school, generally get A’s, and really enjoy each others’ company.  But they still know where her buttons are and exactly how to press them.

Far too often teenagers seem to be custom-ordered to drive their parents nuts.  This may be, in fact, because they are evolutionarily programed to do exactly that.  This month’s National Geographic has a fabulous article, titled Beautiful Brains, about adolescent brain development and how to best interpret the things we know about adolescent development through an evolutionary lens.  (That link goes to the full text as I publish this post, but I’m not sure how long it will last in that location.)

Adolescent brain research has revealed that our brains continue to develop through adolescence and long into adulthood.  There are some critical parts of the brain that tend to develop in middle- to late-adolescence, however, most importantly to this conversation is the development of the frontal lobe.  This allows the adolescent to weigh costs and risks, make (and stick to) long term plans more effectively, and more.  This piece of information about the developing adolescent’s brain has led to a typical narrative of adolescents that the National Geographic article defines like this:

The slow and uneven developmental arc revealed by these imaging studies offers an alluringly pithy explanation for why teens may do stupid things like drive at 113 miles an hour, aggrieve their ancientry, and get people (or get gotten) with child: They act that way because their brains aren’t done! You can see it right there in the scans!

This view, as titles from the explosion of scientific papers and popular articles about the “teen brain” put it, presents adolescents as “works in progress” whose “immature brains” lead some to question whether they are in a state “akin to mental retardation.”

My own strong distaste for this typical view of teenagers is what got me into psychology, education, and adolescent development in the first place.  As a teenager I railed against the idea that I knew myself less well, had a decreased capacity for long-term thoughtful consideration, or was generally less capable in any way than anyone older than me.  It still drives me crazy when older individuals discount ideas, thoughts, and input from young people as though the number of years someone has been alive is a magical feature that, all by itself, bestows wisdom and skill.  Teenagers are not half-baked adults.  While this is an important concept to understand, it is even more important that older people utilize it when interaction with young people.  Treating someone as not-quite-fully-formed will not win you any fans among the younger generation.

The National Geographic article goes into good detail about how brains develop and how we should view that development through the lens of human evolution in a way that is far more appropriate and respectful to the life-stage that adolescents are in.  Based on a re-visioning of this process,

a few researchers began to view recent brain and genetic findings in a brighter, more flattering light, one distinctly colored by evolutionary theory. The resulting account of the adolescent brain—call it the adaptive-adolescent story—casts the teen less as a rough draft than as an exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature wired almost perfectly for the job of moving from the safety of home into the complicated world outside.

It’s a great and informative article from start to end, and I highly recommend you read it in its entirety.  However, if you can’t take the time to do that, here are a few of my favorite quotes:

Some brain-scan studies, in fact, suggest that our brains react to peer exclusion much as they respond to threats to physical health or food supply. At a neural level, in other words, we perceive social rejection as a threat to existence. Knowing this might make it easier to abide the hysteria of a 13-year-old deceived by a friend or the gloom of a 15-year-old not invited to a party. These people! we lament. They react to social ups and downs as if their fates depended upon them! They’re right. They do.

Culture clearly shapes adolescence. It influences its expression and possibly its length. It can magnify its manifestations. Yet culture does not create adolescence. The period’s uniqueness rises from genes and developmental processes that have been selected for over thousands of generations because they play an amplified role during this key transitional period: producing a creature optimally primed to leave a safe home and move into unfamiliar territory.

We parents, of course, often stumble too, as we try to walk the blurry line between helping and hindering our kids as they adapt to adulthood. The United States spends about a billion dollars a year on programs to counsel adolescents on violence, gangs, suicide, sex, substance abuse, and other potential pitfalls. Few of them work.

Yet we can and do help. We can ward off some of the world’s worst hazards and nudge adolescents toward appropriate responses to the rest. Studies show that when parents engage and guide their teens with a light but steady hand, staying connected but allowing independence, their kids generally do much better in life. Adolescents want to learn primarily, but not entirely, from their friends. At some level and at some times (and it’s the parent’s job to spot when), the teen recognizes that the parent can offer certain kernels of wisdom—knowledge valued not because it comes from parental authority but because it comes from the parent’s own struggles to learn how the world turns. The teen rightly perceives that she must understand not just her parents’ world but also the one she is entering. Yet if allowed to, she can appreciate that her parents once faced the same problems and may remember a few things worth knowing.

Here are the very basics about herpes: There are two strains: HSV1 and HSV2.  Typically HSV1 is thought of as oral herpes and HSV2 is thought of as genital herpes.  I spoke with a pharmacist yesterday who had only this level of knowledge, which suggests to me that this is the place where it starts to get complicated.

If you want to skip the details, drop down to the bottom of this post - I have a few bullet points that summarize the rest of the material relatively effectively.

While both of these herpes strains have their site of preference, as noted above, either can be present around the mouth or around the genitalia.  This means there is oral HSV1, genital HSV1, oral HSV2, and genital HSV2.  I am going to talk about the two strains (HSV1 and HSV2) separately and address both potential sites of infection for each strain.

Before we get to the specifics of the different strains, here are a few more details that we need to know: Herpes is a virus - this means we cannot cure it.  We do have anti-viral medication that can reduce outbreaks and shedding of the virus (which makes the individual more contagious), but the individual is still contagious even while taking an anti-viral.  Once you contract herpes of either sort, you have it for the rest of your life regardless of whether you have outbreaks or not.  In fact, 2/3 of all people who have herpes do not have outbreaks!  Combine this with the fact that STI testing usually does not include a herpes test unless the individual specifically requests it, and you have a situation where transmission is incredibly common!

HSV1

HSV1 typically expresses around the mouth and is often referred to as cold sores.  Most people don’t think twice about having cold sores around their mouth - while annoying, they’re just considered part of life.  But let me be very clear about this: cold sores = herpes.  A vast majority of the population has oral HSV1 - most people contract it as a child.

When HSV1 is an oral infection, it can reoccur relatively frequently depending on the individual’s immune system response, stress level, etc.  However, outbreaks tend to decrease in frequency and severity as the individual ages and their immune system becomes more effective at reducing the viral load in the body.  Cold sores are not generally considered a reason to alter sexual relationships or experiences.  However, HSV1 can and is transmitted sexually just like HSV2, either through kissing or oral sex.  HSV1 is more typically transmitted from an oral infection to a genital infection rather than genital-to-genital transmission.  When HSV1 is a genital infection, there is often only one outbreak.

HSV1 can be transmitted regardless of the presence or absence of a current outbreak, regardless of the safe sex measures, regardless of antiviral medication, and to either another individual’s oral or genital area.  Of course an individual will be more likely to contract HSV1 from their partner if they are having an outbreak, if there is not a condom or dental dam in use, or if the infected partner is not on antivirals.

Moving on to HSV2, which is closely tied to HSV1…

HSV2

HSV2 typically expresses around the genitalia, but it can be an oral infection.  HSV2 is less common than HSV1 because so many people contract HSV1 in childhood and this gives them an increased level of immunity to HSV2.

When HSV2 is a genital infection it can have a frequency of outbreak similar to oral HSV1 and is dependent on immune system functioning just like HSV1.  As an oral infection, HSV2 is less likely to reoccur as frequently, just like a genital HSV1 infection is less likely to reoccur.  People are much more likely to get type-tested for HSV1 or HSV2 when the outbreak is genital and are also much more likely to take antiviral medication when compared to oral outbreaks, regardless of the type.

The same transmission issues apply with HSV2, only focused more on genital-to-genital transmission than oral transmission of any kind.

HSV1 and HSV2 are incredibly similar - you can’t distinguish the two under a microscope.  Regardless of their similarity, HSV2 carries an intense social stigma that HSV1 simply doesn’t have.  My hypothesis is that this is due to three factors: 1. anything about our genitals squeeks Americans out and raises the gross factor immeasurably, 2. lots of people have oral herpes and we know this because we can see, but we can’t see how many people have genital herpes, so we stigmatize it, and 3. there is a common misconception that oral herpes and genital herpes are different even though they’re not.

So let me stress a few final points:

• Most people have herpes, but just aren’t expressing it and never have.
• A full STI panel rarely tests for herpes, so if you want to know, be sure and ask for it specifically.  However, you won’t be able to get type tested unless you have an outbreak.
• That means the people who you have a good talk with about their STI history probably don’t know if they have herpes.
• Herpes really isn’t that big of a deal.  Yeah, you’ll have it for life.  But people don’t freak out when you call it “cold sores,” so why freak out when you call it “herpes”?  They’re the same thing.

Leave questions in the comments!  I’ll try and get to them.

Negotiating conversations with your child about their online social media usage can be tough. I was at a friend’s house yesterday and she was complaining about how the three teenagers in her house always turn the computer monitor just enough towards the wall that she won’t notice when they visit Facebook, and other distracting websites, when they claim to do be doing homework. One of the teenagers in my friend’s house was standing in the living room with us and looked distinctly uncomfortable as his mother complained about him to me (her friend and his previous sex ed instructor). Neither I nor the son were really sure exactly who she was talking to – was she asking my advice about appropriate parent/teen interactions around media usage, was she looking for her son to apologize and spend less time on FB in the future, or something else entirely?  It just wasn’t clear.

Most, or maybe even all, of my overheard and recounted conversations between parents and youth about social media are ineffective. The problem, I think, is that most parents have an inherently different understanding and approach to social media when compared to the young people in their lives. Bridging this gap in understanding can be hard to do, but it is the first crucial step in allowing useful conversations to take place. Because it is typically the parent who wants to have the conversation in the first place, it is the parent’s job to reach out and try to understand their kid’s approach to social media.

To read the rest of my post, along with specific recommendations for parents on how to navigate this relationship, take a look at the post on Kiwi Commons.

I also encourage you to take a look at my fellow experts and their websites - they are all interesting and worth your time.

HERE’S A QUESTION THAT I’M LOOKING FOR GUIDANCE ON.  How the heck does one negotiate the constant presence of EXTREME pornography in the budding sexuality of a young person?  I don’t mean all porn.  I don’t mean mainstream porn.  I’m a consumer of porn myself.  And I have absolutely no concern about the continuum of sexual orientation and gender identity.

My issue comes from finding my 12-yr-old surfing http://extremeporn.com a while back.  Go take a look at that site for a moment, would you please?  I mean, a serious look.  Maybe watch a video, if you’re willing.  I don’t mind consenting adults engaging in this behavior, but I’m concerned that if THIS is the porno content that my 12-yr-old sees early on in her own personal sexual explorations, will she believe that it’s THE NORM to be bound and tortured and shocked and de-personified and objectified?

R

Dear R,

Yes, that is a pretty extreme porn site, and not really an ideal introduction into porn. However, many young people are introduced to porn in not-so-ideal circumstances, and they turn out just fine.

Will your daughter think the acts portrayed on that site are typical sexual activities that she will be expected to engage in? It seems like you’ve averted that issue right out of the gate, which is great. Backing your statement up with some good, comprehensive sexuality education would be ideal if you can find it in your area.

Technologically speaking, you’re also right on target. If a young person wants to access porn of any sort, they will be able to work around any safety net the parent has put in place. These safety nets are great to keep kids from accidentally stumbling on something they don’t have any interest in actively searching out – but as soon as they want it, they will be able to find it. This is true in any family, not just a tech savvy one.

Requiring transparency on the computers in the house is a great first step to help your daughter navigate the technological world – but even more important is building the kind of relationship where you can have open and frank conversations with her about anything she stumbles on or actively seeks out. To that end, your non-angry reaction to finding her browsing history was great!

The thing is, none of us really wants to talk with our parents about our sexual or pornographic interests, and that particularly includes 12 year olds. In order to expand your daughter’s understanding of the topic, I would recommend you buy her a copy of Heather Corinna’s book S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College. (I think this book is a little young for college, and I’ve used it in my middle school sex ed classes. Of course take a look at it to make sure it’s a good fit for your daughter. If she is surfing porn at that level, I think it’s probably right on.) And then find her a great sex ed class. Many Unitarian Universalist churches teach a very comprehensive, highly acclaimed sex ed program. New York City is now requiring comprehensive sex ed, although I’m not sure what the quality will be, particularly as they’re getting started in the first few years. You can hire me to come and teach a weekend retreat class to her and her friends. Comprehensive sex ed can be hard to find, but it is well worth the time and the financial commitment.

Hormonal birth control has a number of serious potential side effects.  Sometimes doctors or nurses talk with young women about these issues, and sometimes they don’t.  I can’t say why a health practitioner wouldn’t go over these details, but it is disappointing that they often don’t.

Here is a list of the side effects from one British website:

• Nausea, vomiting, constipation, or bloating
• Irregular menstruation and spotting
• Breast swelling or tenderness
• Decreased libido
• Weight gain or loss of appetite
• Mood swings, anxiety, nervousness or depression
• Changes in vaginal discharge and vaginal infections
• Headaches, dizziness and fatigue
• High blood pressure and cholesterol
• Acne or permanent discolouration of the face
• Fluid retention
• Bone density loss
• Hair loss or changes in hair growth
• Enlarged ovarian follicles

I want to highlight one of these issues in particular.  Tucked somewhere in the middle of that list (by which time your eyes may have already glazed over and you may have stopped paying attention) is: mood swings, anxiety, nervousness or depression.  These are not responses to medication that should be taken lightly, particularly by a young woman who is about to embark on the process of becoming sexually active.

There is conflicting evidence about how adolescent sexuality and depression relate, but there is some suggestion that these factors are related.  It seems that sexually active teenagers who are in mutually supportive, satisfying relationships do not suffer from increased rates of depression.  However, sexually active teenagers who are not in relationships may be much more likely to suffer from higher rates of depression.  If a young woman begins to be sexually active without the emotional protection of a relationship and also starts taking hormonal birth control at the same time, she may be at a substantially higher risk for depression and other psychological problems due to the increased correlates.  I might also be concerned that even for a young woman in a supportive relationship that the decision to start taking hormonal birth control at the same time as she is beginning to be sexually active in a new and more intense way may increase the hormonal balance in her body.

So what’s the solution?  Well, there are a few of them.  First, young women who would like to avail themselves of the option, should have access to hormonal birth control a year or two before they become sexually active.  This will give their bodies a chance to regain hormonal balance before sexual initiation.  Second, I think it is almost impossible to stress the effectiveness and utility of condoms.  Because they are the only effective means of preventing STI transmission, they should be made accessible to all young people, along with effective training on how to use them.  Condoms do not have the same potential hormonal problems that hormonal birth control does.

Basically, hormonal birth control needs to be treated with more respect and awe than it is.  Altering your body’s essential reproductive chemistry is a big deal, and it necessarily affects the whole body, not just the reproductive system.  To be clear: I am a huge - huge! - fan of hormonal birth control.  When it works well for a woman it allows a level of reproductive control that is just magnificent!  We just need to understand that this level of control usually comes at a cost, and sometimes that cost is just too high

As I was sitting her, pondering what to write about, I realized that I have tended not to blog because there are just so many, many things that I could, that I should write about.  Here is the short list of things I was considering writing about today:

• Ms. Universe Pageant dresses and costumes
• Severely reduced abortion access and my lecture on abortion in general this morning
• The musical Spring Awakening
• My conversation yesterday morning with a lovely mother from Mexico about sexuality education in the US and Mexico

This is often where I find myself rather stumped on how to move forward in my blogging.  There are so many topics, so many events, so many issues to talk about that I end up spending all of my time thinking deeply on these issues and very little of my time blogging about them.  But I’m done!  I have a new promise to you, my dear readers, that I will just pick something already and write about it three time a week.  (Okay, so today is kind of a cheap blog post, maybe tending towards that overly-meta place that blogging can sometimes go, but I find that publicly stating my goals generally helps me meet them.)

As I’m pondering what to write about…does anyone have a special topic/question that you’d like me to address?  Has something happened recently in your household that you’d like support on responding to?  Here’s your chance to send me a question and I’ll answer it here in the next few days!

Now I’ll admit, cussing doesn’t bother me as a parent in the least.  I might be surprised if my kids (6 and 10 years old) cussed because they haven’t before.  As a response, I would try to give them guidelines on times when it would be wise not to cuss (around one of their grandmothers in particular) and I would want them to know that other people may perceive them differently if they cuss so that they can make informed decisions about their word choices.  But ultimately?  Their words, their decisions.

However, all parents have things that bother them.  Little things, big things, red things, blue things, we have buttons and our children and teenagers generally know how to push them quite effectively.  When our buttons are pushed, it is important that we take a moment and rather than respond to the surface communication or interaction that bothered you, try to understand the message that our young people are really trying to get across.  It is particularly when our buttons are being pushed that we respond by pushing all the way through that immediate reaction to a place of insight and calm.

My conversation from this morning about cussing is a particularly good example of this.  The father responded to the words his daughter chose to use, rather than responding to the underlying message.  When I asked him what his daughter was trying to say, albeit in words that he found distasteful, he was able to summarize her feelings quite effectively.  She was frustrated with the higher level of demand she was experiencing in high school, but she wanted to navigate it herself rather than with her father’s assistance.  These are very real feelings that deserve respect and attention, but the dad did not directly respond to them (although he had contemplated them internally).  I suspect that his daughter left the interaction feeling like her dad did not understand her or her frustrations because he focused exclusively on her words rather than her meaning.  But that wasn’t true, he did understand!  If he had been able to respond in that moment to her meaning rather than her words she would have benefited greatly.  I hope that he returns to the conversation - or at least the implied meaning in the conversation - soon.

When are buttons are pushed, around cussing, sexuality, peer group devotion, identity development, and so many more issues that young people experience, these are golden opportunities for insight.  So take a deep breath, listen with all of the insight and knowledge you can manage, and let go of the details of the way your young person is bringing their questions, emotions, and reactions to you.  Your relationship will be all the better for it!