The Push to Restrict Rights for Young Transgender People Parents can also use the conversation, if appropriate, to talk about the importance of contraception and protection from sexually transmitted diseases. Aguirre said parents can ask if they want to act on the crush and let them know sleepovers aren’t the place to do that. If a teenager has a crush on a friend, Dr. That’s a sort of sexualizing of L.G.B.T.Q. “There shouldn’t be an assumption that your son is attracted to all of his male friends. It’s critical for parents who want to keep their children safe at sleepovers to start building open, trusting, shame-free relationships with their young children so that kids can freely ask questions about sexuality as they grow. kids are more likely to be bullied and harassed,” he said. kids, he said, often “the fear is: Is my child going to be outed? Is my child going to be bullied? Is my child going to be harassed? Is my child going to be attacked? Because we know L.G.B.T.Q. Aguirre suggested that parents who are concerned about possible sexual exploration to ask themselves: “What’s the fear?” For parents of L.G.B.T.Q.
Or if the child is uncomfortable changing clothes in front of friends, parents can make a house rule that everyone changes in the bathroom.ĭr. For example, children should decide if they want to share their sexual orientation or gender identity with their hosts.
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sleepovers, but parents concerned about making sure their kids feel safe and free of shame can try to plan ahead.
There is no one way to structure L.G.B.T.Q. kids risk sending the message that they disapprove of this part of their human experience and that they don’t trust them to “develop the tools to experience this in a positive way,” Dr. If they don’t take this route, she said, parents of L.G.B.T.Q. Schalet warned when it comes to sleepovers, sometimes “prohibition takes the place of conversation.” Parents can help children learn sexual agency and develop healthy sexual lives by talking to them about consent and whether experiences made them feel good or not. Unlike Americans, who feel that teen sex shouldn’t happen at the parents’ homes, Dutch parents think teens can self-regulate their urges and often allow older teens in committed relationships to have sleepovers.ĭr.
Her book “ Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex,” compared the way Dutch and American teens negotiate sex and love. For some, the intimacy of having their teens spend long stretches of unsupervised time in pajamas in a bedroom with someone they may find sexually attractive can be unsettling.Īmy Schalet, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who studies adolescent sexuality, said that American parents tend to believe that by preventing coed sleepovers, they are protecting teens who may not be emotionally ready for sexual intimacy. While teens may see sleepovers as just a chance to spend a lot of time with their friends, parents may worry about their children exploring their sexuality before they are ready and about their safety if they do. “It’s a trusting and bonding experience.” Blaise Aguirre, an adolescent psychiatrist at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “It’s a nice break from a digital way of connecting,” said Dr. He knows that limiting sleepovers was his father’s way of protecting him, but at the time, he recalled, “I felt like it was a planned attack against me.” Instead of sleepovers, he drives home after hanging out with friends. Now at 16, with his family in the audience, Trey performs in drag at a local club. “If they knew for sure my son was gay, I doubt they were going to let them come over,” he explained. He thought about bullying, and about how other boys’ parents might react. So when he told his family he was gay, his father, Jeff Freund, a principal at an arts magnet middle school, asked himself, “Would I let his sister at that age have a sleepover with a boy?” When Trey Freund of Wichita, Kan., was 13, sleepovers and closed-door hangouts were part of his social life.