How To Talk To Your Kid About Sex (with Dr Tina Schermer Sellers)

Raising kids is hard in a bunch of different ways, but one of the main things parents dread is having the inevitable “talk” with their children. How do you have the talk, when should you have it, what is appropriate to say: these are all questions that nobody really gives parents the answers to. But what if that one, all-important moment never needed to happen, because kids got the information they needed as they needed it growing up?

Author of the incredible resource Shameless Parenting: Everything You Need to Raise Shame-free, Confident Kids and Heal, Dr Tina Schermer Sellers, joins us this week to discuss how to raise kids in a shame-free way, including “drip-feeding” them snippets of information about sex and their bodies throughout life, starting from toddler-age. 

We start the episode hearing about Tina’s own upbringing, which was exactly the kind of parenting she has found is beneficial to kids in her research. Tina explains what sex-positive and shame-free parenting means and what parents need to do to make sure they’re not passing on their own shame to their kids.

Dr Tina gets into the different developmental stages kids go through with understanding sex, and what is age appropriate to teach them at each stage, including what to do if your kid is touching themselves or trying to experiment with other children. You might experience conflict in your own relationships, so she also goes into what is appropriate to share with your kids and what to do if they ask you questions. 

We then get into how to talk about bodies in positive ways; Dr Tina explains that not having these crucial conversations with your children can set them up for loneliness and feeling as though they are unequipped for the world later on in life, which can in turn make them look to harmful examples in the world around them. 

Thank you so much to Dr Tina for joining us, we learnt so much about how to raise sex-positive children and we hope you did too. You can find more from her on her website and find her Instagram @drtinashameless, or on Twitter @tinassellers. You can also find the Northwest Institute on Intimacy on Instagram and buy her books on Amazon.

As always, you can find more of us on Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Facebook @sextraspodcast, our website or email us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com. We’ll be back next week with the last episode of our Family, Parenting & Sex miniseries, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it! 

Produced by Mable Productions

Original music by Sacha Puttnam 

Family, Parenting & Sex Miniseries

Episode 1 How Sex Changes With Age (with Beducated co-founder Mariah Freya)

Episode 2 Deciding to Have Kids & Outgrowing Relationships (with Jessica Hendry Nelson)

Episode 3 Having Sex After Birth (with Smile Makers Collection)

Episode 4 How To Talk To Your Kid About Sex (with Dr Tina Schermer Sellers)

Episode 5 Do Gen Z Want To Be Parents?

We might choose to ignore the fact that family has anything to do with how we behave around, or think about, sex and relationships. But what we’re told, or not, by our parents, siblings and even grandparents lays the groundwork for how we choose a partner, sexual or otherwise. Becoming a parent ourselves can turn that all on its head, changing the time we have available for our pleasure and informing how we raise our children.

So we’re here to talk about it. Across five episodes we explore the links between family/ parenting and sex/ relationships. Join Mariah Freya (founder of pleasure-based sex education site Beducated) in the first episode, to discuss how sex changes throughout life. Author Jessica Hendry Nelson joins us in our second episode to tell us how she dealt with grief as a new mother and in our third episode Cecile Gasnault (brand director of sex toy company Smile Makers Collection) unpacks the difficulties of having sex after giving birth. In episode four we’re joined by Dr Tina Schermer Sellers to discuss how to raise kids in a shame-free and sex-positive way before we unpack how Gen Z want to raise children in the final episode.

We can’t wait to get into it and hope you learn as much from our amazing guests as we did. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you can follow along!