Masturbation doesn’t have to be a difficult topic to talk about with your kids. Small children, especially, may not even understand what masturbation means. They just know that touching themselves feels good. This is often the easiest time to broach the subject if you ask me. The video above provides scripting for this talk with your child. It is just one except from our Talking THE Talk Together e-course designed to guide parents and their 9-12 year old kid through the sex talk together. 

With younger children, parents can acknowledge that the touching is happening by saying something like, “I totally understand your body feels good.”  Then parents can suggest that kind of touching be done in private and, if kids want to do it, they should go to their rooms to be alone.

For a child under age 8, the talk might revolve around self-touching. This is vastly different than masturbating for sexual pleasure (which involves hormones, fantasy, and...

Before we dive in and get into the 10 toughest questions, I want to go over some quick guidelines no matter what your child's question is, because let's face it, there's more than 10.  So, in general, some things to keep in mind always when your child is asking a question that is a sex related question, or even just a question that really surprises you is you want to do your best to have a poker face. Meaning, try not to show your emotion if it's one that's shocked, embarrassed, or maybe concerned. You don't want to show that expression on your face right away. What that will do is shut the door to them talking to you. That's definitely what you don't want to have happen.

The other thing you want to be really careful about is your tone. Your tone says so much. Next to your body language, it's the second most powerful communication tool that we have. So, if you say, "Where did you hear that?" Or, "Where did you hear that?" Is different than, "Huh, where did you hear that?" The...