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3 Things You Don’t Know About Your Children and Sex

This summer, by a long stretch, was the “worst” in terms of what secrets I learned students carried. After my last night speaking at my last camp, I retreated to my room and collapsed on the bed face-first. Tim simply laid his hand on my back to comfort me.

I could not logically reconcile in my mind all the confessions I heard over the summer with the children who shared them.

While every story was unique in the details, in most situations, there were three common themes that kept surfacing.

1. Google Is the New Sex-Ed.

Remember the first time you, as a parent, saw pornography? Likely it was a friend’s parent who had a dirty magazine, or maybe you saw something somebody brought to school.

Now, when a student hears a word or phrase they don’t understand, they don’t ask you what it means (because they fear getting in trouble). They don’t ask their friends (because they fear being ashamed for not knowing).

They ask Google.

Google won’t judge them for not knowing.

Because of our short attention spans and desire for instant gratification, they don’t click the first link that shows up—they go straight to Google Images. In almost all of the stories I heard, this is how someone was first exposed to pornography—Google Image searching.

The average age of first exposure in my experience was nine years old.

2. If Your Child Was Ever Molested, You Likely Don’t Know.

Another extremely common theme was children being inappropriately touched, often by close family members or friends.

When I was molested at 16, I didn’t tell a soul until I was in my 20s. I didn’t tell my own mother until I was 28.

The stigma and shame of being a victim, coupled with the trauma that happens with this experience, is confusing to a child of any age: Our systems weren’t made to process that event.

Many things keep children from confessing abuse: being told they’ve made it up or are exaggerating, being a disappointment, and in most cases, getting the other person in trouble.

While a child can look at pornography without being abused, children who have been molested, by and large, look at pornography and act out sexually.