Becoming an Approachable Parent
Teen Talk Tuesday #23
Parents Are Looking for Scripts
When it comes to “the talk,” parents often ask me for specific scripts.
How do I talk to my child about sex?
What do I say about pornography?
The questions usually arrive with a sense of urgency, as though somewhere there exists a perfect arrangement of words capable of protecting children from every awkward conversation, risky decision, and uncomfortable sexual reality they will encounter.
But after 15 years of studying adolescent sexuality, media, and parent-child communication, I’ve become convinced that parents are often solving the wrong problem.
The issue is rarely whether you know what to say. The issue is whether your teen believes they can talk to you at all.
Most parents already understand this intuitively. If your teenager was worried they might be pregnant, had experienced sexual assault, was questioning their identity, had stumbled across disturbing pornography, or simply found themselves heartbroken after their first serious relationship, would they come to you?
Parents answer that question with confidence, but teens answer it differently.
Approachability Is More Important Than Expertise
When researchers ask adolescents why they avoid talking to their parents about sensitive topics, the answers are remarkably consistent. They worry about disappointing their parents. They worry about getting into trouble. They worry about being judged, misunderstood, or lectured.
In other words, we need to learn how to listen to our kids talk about sex, not just learn what to say to them about sex.
This distinction matters because sexual health is not achieved by education alone. It is a process of relating to others. Although we typically research sexual behavior on an individual level, sex primarily involves two people deciding to engage in some type of sexual behavior together. So, whether that means your teen will be negotiating condom use with a short-term partner (e.g., who will buy it, who will put it on) or negotiating satisfying sex with a long-term partner (e.g., discussing what they like, asking what their partner likes), learning how to comfortably initiate and execute sexual conversations is a life skill that is better mastered sooner rather than later.
In other words, one of the ways teens become comfortable having sexual conversations now or in the future, is through practicing working through the embarrassment with you.
Which raises an uncomfortable possibility: perhaps what teens need most is not a parent with perfect answers, but a parent who can tolerate imperfect conversations.
The Biggest Obstacle Might Be Our Own Discomfort
We must learn to tolerate uncertainty. To resist turning every interaction into a teachable moment. To sit through opinions we dislike. To accept that our teen’s world is different from the one we inhabited at the same age.
Perhaps most difficult of all, being approachable requires humility. Many parents believe that they are shaping their teen, but teens shape us too.
Teens expose our own fears. Our assumptions. Our unfinished business. Our tendency to confuse obedience with connection. They force us to reconsider what we thought we knew about relationships, identity, technology, and the rapidly changing culture surrounding sexuality.
If we’re paying attention, parenting becomes less about managing a young person and more about growing alongside one.
Humor is an Underrated Skill
It seems like the world these days is one dumpster fire bummer after the next! It may seem trivial to discuss sexual experiences, when we have such important human rights issues to address.
Perhaps the joy of sex can be a reprieve? Sex should be fun and even if talking about it is embarrassing, that can be fun too. So, it’s okay to laugh a little and to try to use humor when possible. Don’t get me wrong, unintended pregnancy, STIs, and sexual assault are serious issues; but dating, romance and sexual behavior can be quite funny.
If you step back and look at the big picture from the awkwardness, to the noises, smells, cultural customs, there is a lot of laughter to find in it all. Laughter will help you and your teen both get comfortable about sex and the conversations can flow from there.
Teen Talk Tips
These should feel less like interrogation and more like invitations. The goal is to create opportunities for connection, not to make them feel like they need to prove themselves.
1. The Movie or TV Show Conversation
“What’s your take on that [situation, relationship, ending]?”
That’s it. Not:
“Can you believe they did that?”
“Do you think that was responsible?”
“What lesson should we learn here?”
Just genuine curiosity.
Whether the scene involves dating, sex, consent, breakups, pornography, or relationships, start broad and let your teen decide where to take the conversation.
2. The “Help Me Understand” Conversation
“So you wouldn’t ship them? Who would you ship?”
Trying and failing to use slang communicates humility. It tells your teen:
I don’t assume I know everything.
Your experience matters.
I’m willing to learn from you.
Approachable parents ask questions they don’t already think they know the answer to.
P.S. Shipping/shipped is a term used to describe matchmaking or a good relationship….or at least I think that is what it means!
3. The Friendship Conversation
“What’s the hardest part about friendships right now?”
Parents often jump straight to romance and sexuality. But most relationship skills are learned through friendships first:
communication
boundaries
conflict
trust
rejection
If your teen can talk to you about friendships, they’re more likely to talk to you about romantic relationships later.
4. The Self-Disclosure Conversation
“Can I tell you an embarrassing about when I was your age?”
Then share a brief, age-appropriate story:
a crush
a breakup
an awkward dating experience
Not because your teen desperately wants to hear your life story. But because vulnerability tends to invite vulnerability.
Keep it short. Resist turning it into a life lesson. Don’t overshare!
5. The Low-Pressure Future Conversation
“If [insert friend] had a relationship problem, who would they talk to?”
This is one of my favorite indirect questions. Instead of discussing themselves, teens often feel safer discussing:
“a friend”
people at school
hypothetical situations
You’ll often learn more about how your teen thinks about relationships, sex, trust, consent, and communication than if you had asked about them personally. Plus, this is a tricky way to get at the Theory of Planned Behavior. The more hypothetical situations you discuss, the more seeds that are planted to get them to think about what they’d do, even if you didn’t ask directly.
It is so much more about building the relationship with our teens than the content we share!