it isn't weird unless you make it weird

our inability to acknowledge our children's sexuality is a litmus test for the lack of comfort we feel in our own.

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Regardless of whether or not you want to acknowledge it, your teenagers are probably horny. And today we’re going to talk about how not to be weird about it.

Yes that’s right, you’re probably weird about it and I say that with love because how could you not be. It is a strange thing for our tiny babies to suddenly look like… not babies anymore. No one talks about the effects that puberty has on parents because as uncomfortable as most people are with their own sexuality they are even MORE uncomfortable with their children’s.

Many women who struggle with their sexual security grew up in homes where sex — specifically female pleasure — was stigmatized, yet our silence and refusal to acknowledge our children’s sexuality, while not as harmful as shaming, can also be detrimental.

Denial, after all, is just shame positioned differently. Which is why I think it’s necessary and urgent to acknowledge the role parents have in raising the next generation of sexually satisfied, female-pleasure-prioritizing, self-advocating adults.

But we cannot do that unless we are willing to remember what it felt like to be a teenager in a teenaged body. (This was advice my teenage daughter recently gave on my podcast and she’s right.) And recognize the importance of validating our children’s desire without scaring them, shaming them or silencing them.