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Nadine Thornhill is someone I admire greatly. Not only was she part of the Explore More Summit, but her approach to parenting and talking to kids about sex is revolutionary. And this week, we’re going deep into consent, kids, teens, being a parent, talking about porn, and much more.
I truly believe that future generations will be so much more consent informed and emotionally intelligent because of work like Nadine’s. If all of us are better able to express ourselves and receive rejection gracefully, we’d have drastically healthier relationships and sex for it.
So, let’s dig in and have fun.
“Unlike something like The Transformers movie, where we see regular cars all the time that do not turn into robots, youth especially don’t really have anything else against which to gauge the sex they’re seeing in porn because we don’t talk to them about sex. If [porn] is all they see [of sex], that by default becomes incredibly influential in a way that other types of entertainment may not.” Nadine Thornhill
In this episode, Nadine and I:
- Field a question from a parent who caught his teen son watching rough, violent porn. How can he talk to him about it?
- Dig into how porn is impossible to block from kids these days. Even if your child isn’t watching, they probably have a friend who is and talks about it. Nadine offers amazing ways to talk about porn with young folks.
- Discuss simple ways to share your sexual values and feelings with kids and teens, plus how asking questions is a powerful way to learn about their experience rather than our assumptions.
- Answer a question from a mom who is wondering how to support her son who seems to be trans or gay.
- Roll around in all sorts of yummy resources about gender and sexual diversity aimed at kids and why it’s important to share in these discussions from an early age.
- Consider what it means to be an askable adult and a safe resource for talking about sex.
- Talk about how part of being a teenager is figuring things out and navigating situations for the first time. You can tell someone all the things, but there’s a huge difference between being told and actually living the experience.
About Nadine Thornhill
Nadine has been helping families and educators talk to kids about sex for over a decade. She has a Doctor of Education in Child and Adolescent Sexuality and is a member of The Sexuality and Information Council of Canada. When she’s not working, Nadine enjoys adventures in the city with her husband and son, off-key crooning at karaoke, eating great food and watching reality television.
You can find Nadine at NadineThornhill.com. She’s also on Twitter @NadineThornhill and YouTube with awesome videos. You can also buy my chat with Nadine from the Explore More Summit, along with 29 other experts here.
Resources discussed in this episode
Cindy Gallop’s Make Love Not Porn website and Ted Talk
“Red: A Crayon Story” – a children’s book on being different (Nadine referenced it as “Blue” but it’s actually “Red”
Cory Silverberg’s books “What Makes a Baby” and “Sex is a Funny Word”
S Bear Bergman’s Flamingo Rampant for inclusive kids books
Kind, formerly Pink Triangle Services, in Ottawa
Heather Corinna’s book “S.E.X.”
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore, sex, bodies, and relationships from a place of curiosity and inclusion, tying the personal to the cultural, where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics, and liberation.
This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.
Dawn Serra: P.S. If you’re hearing this, then you went way back in the archives. Boy, has this show changed over the years. It started with two of us laughing our way through our own stories, but then all of you came into the picture, Dylan left, but we still have mad love for each other, more experts lend their voices, and now the show is about exploring what is and what could be. So enjoy these older episodes and delight in how much we’ve been growing together.
Hey, sexy listeners. Dawn Serra here. Before we get to this incredible episode that is all about parenting and emotional intelligence, I just want to remind you that it’s still Masturbation May and if you haven’t been one of those super lucky listeners to treat yourself to one of the five incredible toys that we have available through our podcast exclusive sale for Masturbation May, then pop over to sexgetsreal.com/May. Because who doesn’t want an Njoy or a Magic Wand? And if you treat yourself, I’m throwing in a bottle of free lube that I personally love. Plus, the potential for some other naughty little goodies. Get your hands on yourself. Treat yourself to a toy. And here comes the rest of the episode.
Dawn Serra: Hey everybody, it’s Dawn Serra with this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real and joining me this week is somebody that I’m super excited to introduce you to. It’s Nadine Thornhill. Hi, Nadine.
Nadine Thornhill: Hi.
Dawn Serra: Yay. Thank you so much for being here this week.
Nadine Thornhill: Oh, thank you for having me. I’m so excited.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. For those of you that participated in the Explore More Summit, Nadine Thornhill was one of the experts that I interviewed. Nadine is a sexuality educator and a parenting expert. There’s so much that you do, Nadine, that I adore. I love your approach to talking with kids. I love your approach to talking about sex in general like conversations about consent and bodies and the stuff that you’re doing in the world is amazing.
Nadine Thornhill: Oh, wow. I’m so flattered. It’s fun, and I love doing it and I love talking about it. So let’s talk away.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Okay. So I’m really excited that you’re actually on this episode, because I’ve had a couple of questions come in over the past couple of months that I just kind of been sitting on until a parenting and/or an expert that knows how to talk to kids came on, because I can run my mouth all I want, but I’m not a parent. So yeah, I think these will be really perfect for you actually.
One of them is from early February. So this poor person’s been waiting quite a while for an answer. If you’re ready, we’ll just jump right into the first one.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah, let’s do it.
Dawn Serra: Okay, so I got an email from Chris that says: “Porn Help.” The email says:
“Dawn and Dylan, you two are rock stars. Your show is awesome and I thought this might be a good question for you.” So this was back when Dylan was still on the show, that’s how old this email is. And it says, “I caught my teenage son watching porn and it was some pretty rough, violent stuff. I’ve never really talked to him about porn, but it seems like I should now. I don’t want to shame him, but I’m a little concerned about the stuff he was looking at. Any thoughts, tips or resources for me? Keep up the great work. The world needs you. Chris.” Oof.
Nadine Thornhill: Okay.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah. This is a really common concern for a lot of people who have adolescence and even some people who have tween-age children. So, in the light 9 to 12 corridor, just because porn is ubiquitous at this point, and it’s virtually impossible to block access to pornography because it’s on the internet. It doesn’t even have to be if your child physically has a smartphone, or a tablet, or a device like that. It can just be if their peers have it, they can see it. Youth are looking at porn. So a couple of things around this:
The first one is to know that it’s not unusual behavior and that the type of – if you catch your child looking at pornography, the type of porn that they’re watching may not be an indication of what their sexual desires are or it may not be what you would think it was based on the content. So when you talk to people about what kind of porn they watch, people have a range of case and subject matters they’d like to look at. But it’s often what’s in the underlying subtext that turns them on, or there’s just one small aspect of the storyline or the genre that really kind of triggers their sexual arousal, but it’s not necessarily like, “Oh, they’re watching violent porn, they’re turned on by violence.” It could be something like they’re watching violent porn, and they’re turned on by the power dynamics, but they aren’t actually interested in hurting anyone per se, in real life.
Nadine Thornhill: Porn can often represent our fantasies, and our fantasies are not necessarily what we want to do in our reality. So that’s the first thing to understand. For the most part, and there were there’s research around pornography, that it’s somewhat inconclusive, but the research that’s emerged so far with youth and pornography seems to indicate that for youth who already have violent or misogynistic ideas, the porn will reinforce that. But that’s not where their thinking is anyway. Seeing violent porn doesn’t seem to put that idea in their head, they do have some ability to filter and say, “This part of it turns me on, but this part of it would never be acceptable to me.” So that’s one thing that’s important to know.
In terms of having the conversation, I think a great way to talk about it is to sit down and be honest. I don’t know if his kid is aware that his parents saw him or his family members saw him, but if he is, you can sit down and say, “Okay, yeah. This is what happened, we both know what happened.” If he doesn’t know, then you can sit down and say, “Listen, I happened to walk by while you were watching this thing.” I think the first thing to start off with is, “You know what, that’s really normal. It’s normal to be curious about sex, it’s normal to be curious about how people have sex. A lot of kids your age will go online, they will Google sex or Google a sexual position or a sexual term, and come across pornography. And it’s normal to be curious about what that is and to want to look at it.” So I would start there just reassuring them it’s normal.
Nadine Thornhill: The next thing, I think, is to start asking questions, “What did you think about what you saw? How did it make you feel?” Things like that. Depending on their relationship and depending on the kid, they may or may not open up. Then you can get into a little bit of your values. Everyone has different values around pornography. For example, if you’re someone who you’re like, “I’m not really comfortable with you looking at this.” You can say that, like, “I’m not comfortable with you looking at this. This is why these are my values around pornography, these are my values around sex.” You may be someone who wants to talk about, “What are my values around violence? What are my values around power imbalances? What are my values around misogyny?” You can just get into that a little bit. “I’m not comfortable or I really feel that it’s wrong to treat your romantic or sexual partner in this way. This is why I feel it’s wrong. This is why it makes me uncomfortable. What do you think about this? What would you think about treating someone like this in real life as opposed to pornography?”
There’s a whole host of questions that you can get into. Again, you don’t have to do it all at once. It doesn’t have to be like, “We’re going to sit in your room, we’re going to have a conversation and we’re going to break it all down, and then it’s going to be resolved.” No. You can even just say, for the first conversation, just be like, “Look, I know this is happening. It’s totally normal. I’m not mad at you. I would like to have a conversation about this. We don’t have to do it now. Just a heads up.” Then you can go away, and then come back in a couple of days or a week or whatever, and come back to it and be like, “I just want to talk a little bit about what you were watching and maybe what you found appealing about it, and why it may or may not be problematic in real life, real life sex versus porn,” and all of that. So break it down. What else did they say? What else was in their question? I want to make sure I answer everything.
Dawn Serra: Let me pull it out. What’s striking to me as you’re talking to is so much of the advice. Usually when I hear really good sex or relationship advice, that advice holds true for non-sexual or non-relationship situations too. And I think I love so much what you’re saying about if you want to have this conversation, and it might be potentially kind of awkward, it’s okay to say, “I’d like to have this conversation and let’s come back to this,” and then you revisit it in a couple of days or a week. I think that could be true for two adults trying to navigate something really awkward too. Instead of like, “We have to talk about this right now!” And just giving that space.
Okay. He says, “I caught my teenage son watching porn, it was some pretty rough stuff. I’ve never really talked to him about porn, but it seems like I should now.” So I think… The other thing is, I hope all parents realize at this point that all kids look at porn at some point.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah. And even if they’re not doing it actively, they are very likely around someone else who is. The odds of your child or your teen seeing pornography at some point is really, really high. Just understand that doesn’t mean that they’re bad kids, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with them. It doesn’t mean that they’re really any different from the way we were when we were teenagers, it’s just that they have more access to content.
The last thing I wanted to mention about having that conversation is that, apart from talking about your values and owning your values, you can also own your feelings. Sometimes that can make it easier to ease into the conversation. If you say – just say what you’re worried about. So if your kid is looking at something that’s the content is violent or the content seems to run contrary to the values that you’re trying to share with them to say, “Yeah, I saw you were looking at this, and I was just a little bit worried that maybe you think this is how you should behave in relationships or maybe you think that this is the way that you’re supposed to have sex, and I just really want you to know that there are other options. Or this could have XYZ consequences, or this could make your partner potentially feel this way. So I’m worried and I don’t want you to look at this as the model of how to have sex in your real everyday life.”
Because then you’re making it about you, you’re not making it about – “You’re doing something wrong.” “You don’t understand this.” “You’re not capable of discerning the difference between fantasy and reality.” You don’t really know where they’re at, and that kind of gives them more of a chance to be like, “Okay, I’ll talk to you because I’m assuaging your concerns as opposed to proving to you that I’m not some crazy, deviating teenager.”
Nadine Thornhill: As for resources, one of my favorite videos – it’s really short. It’s YouTube – on YouTube – is Cindy Gallop’s Make Love Not Porn. I love that because she’s not anti-porn. She’s not saying porn is terrible and you’re a terrible person if you look at it. She’s really just pointing out some of the differences between what we see in pornography, which is often a contrived fantasy version of sex versus the reality of sex and what sex means and what bodies are like, and all of that for the average person in their normal everyday life.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I can’t remember who said it. But I remember somebody said, “Kids don’t go into the Transformers movie and then leave expecting that to be a real life situation.”
Nadine Thornhill: Exactly.
Dawn Serra: But kids do often watch porn and think that’s how sex should be. In fact, adults do that too. Lots of adults watch porn and think “Well, then why aren’t you orgasm in this way?” or “Why doesn’t my body look this way?” Instead of realizing it’s a form of entertainment. I think that that’s a really powerful way to have a conversation with young folks about porn, values aside, just making sure they understand that porn is edited and unrealistic in most cases if it’s mainstream, and just a form of entertainment that happens to involve this very specific activity.
Because I think that that’s where we get into so much pain and so many problems ourselves is feeling like what we’re seeing in mainstream porn, specifically, is an accurate representation of sex.
Nadine Thornhill: Absolutely. I think one of the big reasons that that happens is because unlike something like the Transformers movies where we see regular cars all the time that do not turn into robots, youth especially don’t really have anything else against which to gauge the sex they’re seeing porn, because we don’t talk to them about sex. They obviously don’t see other people having sex. We’re not a culture where a lot of people are naked and show their bodies a lot. So if that’s all they see, then that by default, becomes incredibly influential in the way that other types of entertainment may not because they’re like, “But this is all I know, this is the only information I have,” in a lot of cases.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think that’s a really, really good point of none of us, really, until we actually start having sex. And often, it takes many times for us to start to realize how different sex can be with different people. But we don’t have anything to gauge sex against. We don’t watch our parents have sex for the most part. We may catch them having sex, but in our culture, that’s not really a part of the way that we’re raised. We don’t have materials that depict at different types of sexual encounters with real bodies and real situations. So I think that’s such a powerful point that I’ve never thought about. One of the reasons we know Transformers is fiction, is because we see regular cars and regular streets and regular people all of the time. So when something comes up that isn’t similar to those, we know that it’s made up. But we don’t have anything that shows us that what we’re seeing in porn may not be very representative of real life, because we don’t have real life images. That’s fantastic. Oh, my gosh, you’re so smart. Oh. I love that so much and I’m going to think about that for a week.
Yeah. But hopefully, Chris, that gave you a nice jumping off point. To all of the parents listening out there, I think it’s okay for the conversation to be awkward. But I think it’s more important to have those awkward conversations and to actually make sure a conversation around porn is happening with all children – all children everywhere. Rather than just waiting for it to be something that you discover or turning a blind eye because it’s happening.
Nadine Thornhill: Exactly.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, it’s absolutely happening. Do you want to go to someone asking about a college-aged kid or someone asking about a five or six year old next?
Nadine Thornhill: Oh, let’s go to five or six year old.
Dawn Serra: Okay, here we go. Conflicted Mom writes:
“Hello, Dawn. I feel embarrassed to ask this, but I don’t know where else to turn. I think my son who is five or six may be different, as in gay or trans or something. He’s a sweet boy. But as he gets older, I find a lot of his behavior different from that of his older brothers. I want to support him, but I worry about him too. Do you have any suggestions for how to talk to him about gender or how I can be a better parent to a kid that may be really different from his peers, especially as he gets older? Feeling scared and alone. Conflicted Mom.”
Nadine Thornhill: Awww!
Dawn Serra: I know.
Nadine Thornhill: Okay. First of all, I absolutely do not want to invalidate her feelings. But this is a completely – this is a great question. I want to say don’t feel embarrassed, but I also don’t like to tell people what kind of feelings they can have. S I’ll just say I’m really glad that she reached out to you and asked the question. So what can she do to support her son who, I guess, she’s just observed that he’s different. For children who are different, it can be a range of things. Generally speaking, when a child is transgender or is non-binary, you’ll see there are some behaviors that are more common to see. I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression that like, “Okay, if your child is trans, they will absolutely behave in this way. And if they’re not behaving this way, they’re not.” It’s just things to maybe look out for.
Definitely, the three, I guess, the three guidelines that I will often hear/read about are trans and non-binary children are insistent, persistent, and consistent. So if your child is saying to you, “I’m not the gender I was assigned, I’m a different gender or I’m not a gender.” If they’re saying that to you over and over and over again, if they’re constantly insisting on dressing in ways that are not conventional for the gender that they were assigned at birth, if they seem to very consciously try to identify with people that are of a different gender than they were assigned at birth, things like that. And if that’s just happening very consistently and they’re very adamant about it, and they won’t let it go, those can be pretty good signs that their gender is just different from the one they were assigned at birth.
Nadine Thornhill: In terms of sexual orientation, they may or may not have a word for it, because children, generally speaking, don’t have the same kind of sexual romantic attraction that older kids do or adults do. But again, you may just notice that they are – they may or may not be different in the way that they express themselves, and they move around. It could also just be that that’s your child’s personality, and it’s just manifesting differently. But parents usually have a pretty strong instinct abou their children and what it means. It doesn’t mean you have to sit down with your kid and be like, “Alright, we’re going to have an in-depth conversation about your gender identity and your sexual orientation.”
There are things you can do, even at this age, just to support them and to let them know that they can be themselves around you, and that you’re a safe space. Then in time, when they’re ready, if they feel safe and secure, then they’re going to be able to talk to you and reveal themselves as it feels right for them. One thing, and I actually recommend this for all parents, regardless of what you believe your child’s sexual or gender identity is, is to read books and to look for television programs and media that really reflect gender and sexual diversity in a positive way. So even things like if you watch sitcoms with your five year old, family sitcoms – there are family sitcoms that feature gay people or two moms or two dads or trans people. It’s okay to watch that with them.
Nadine Thornhill: I’ve watched with my own child, not now, but even when he was younger, we’d watched a few documentaries. We watched this one documentary that was about – it was about drag queens and they were going through this pageant circuit. It was fun and beautiful in the costumes. And I decided to watch it with him, because I just wanted to normalize for him the idea that there are all kinds of ways to express yourself, even at like— These are all men, but even as a man, you can express yourself in a highly feminine way, and it’s completely legitimate. And there are people in the world who do this. Books is a great way because, and especially books aimed at kids, because it not only gives them a vocabulary to start to talk about maybe some of these feelings they’re having. It also gives you as the parent or the grown up in the family a vocabulary to talk to them. Because a lot of times we think of it in a very adult context and you’re like, “I don’t know how to break it down on a five year old level.”
One book that I absolutely love, it’s called Blue: A Crayon Story. It’s very simply told, and it’s the story of this crayon that is… The crayon itself is blue, but the wrapper is a red wrapper. So it’s this anthropomorphized crayon and it’s going through its life and it’s day to day. It has it’s crayon parents, jerseys and crown friends. And all the crayons keep trying to get it to act like a red crayon and draw things that are red strawberries and fire trucks, and tries and tries and tries and it can’t do it. Then I don’t remember how it comes to pass but someone, I think his crayon teacher, says, “Draw the sky.” He’s like, “I can’t do that. I’m red.” His teacher says, “Just try it.” And he draws the sky and it’s perfect. He’s like, “Oh, I’m blue! I’m blue!” Then he blossoms and draws all these blue things. He’s like, “Oh, okay. I know who I am now.” And I love that so much. It’s just a great way of breaking down for kids in a very safe, accessible way that sometimes everyone thinks that you’re one thing because of your label, but you’re just something else. Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Nadine Thornhill: I would discover that someone else is. It’s great. Of course everyone accepts the crayon and he’s happy for the gray on. So even just reading books like that and just starting there. Communicate to your child that, “This is one of my values. In our family, we accept people for who they are. That’s a great positive thing. It’s okay to be different. It’s okay if you’re not who people think you are.” And just to make it safe for your child. Give them some time and if they feel safe and secure over time, they’ll be able to reveal more of themselves as they grow and develop. But I think the most important thing is to make them know that it’s okay. It’s okay. When you’re ready, if this is what’s going on, you can talk to me about it.
Dawn Serra: I think that’s such a wonderful advice. I love using books as a way to establish words that you can both share and understand. I love everything by Cory Silverberg. S. Bear Bergman now has a publishing company with kids books.
Nadine Thornhill: Yes.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. It’s like Flamingo Press or something.
Nadine Thornhill: I think it’s Flamingo Press.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’ll put a link up on Sex Gets Real, so everybody can find it. But a couple of friends of mine just had a baby. So for their baby shower, I bought them eight books. They’re a lesbian couple, and I bought them eight kids books that were all from S. Bear Bergman’s publishing company, and Cory Silverberg, and the And Tango Makes Three book, just so they’d have this full library of books about all different types of people and all different types of bodies, and just start that conversation pretty much from day one. I think that’s so powerful.
I also like how you’re saying, by creating a space that’s safe for the kid to realize that, “No matter who I am, it’s going to be okay because my parents’ values – they value people who are different.” Because you never know how your child’s going to grow up. I just saw some people in a group that I’m in on Facebook recently talking about parenting, and a mom was saying, “My boy, my little boy likes everything pink.” And all of these other parents were like, “Oh, yeah, when my little boy was younger, he wanted Barbies and dolls, and he wanted to wear head to toe pink. He wanted to wear princess dresses all the time, all of his favorite movies were princess movies. And now he’s an adolescent and he’s totally not interested in those things at all, and he’s into monster trucks.” Just allowing for their kids to try lots of different things on. I think that’s beautiful.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah. That’s really common for little kids. Part of the reason that kids of all genders, a lot of them when they’re little, gravitate towards pink and princess and all that is because that’s… It’s fantasy. It’s more fantasy than some of the things that tend to be targeted towards boys. Boy dress-up costumes are still some variation of pants and a shirt whereas the “girl stuff” or the stuff that’s targeted towards girls is floofy and it’s all of these vivid colors, it’s sparkles and big skirts and crazy hats. It just appeals to a child’s natural sense of exuberance, and fantasy. At this age, sometimes you don’t know. Maybe you have one child who may be a little bit more staid in their aesthetics, and there’s another child who’s like, “Everything pretty!” Whatever that turns out to be, if you’re willing to accept it, your kid is going to be okay.
I guess the last thing I want to say is, you’re absolutely not alone in this. It can feel like it sometimes. But there are lots and lots and lots of little kids who, yeah, it does turn out that they’re gay or they’re trans or they’re non-binary. And that’s not unusual. But I can understand how it can feel very isolating at times. But I think just by virtue of the fact that she’s asking the question and reaching out, and makes me feel fairly confident that she’s someone who wants to embrace her child, loves her kids, is parenting from a place of caring and wanting to do what’s best for her kids. If that’s where you’re starting, you’re golden. You’re golden.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think, yeah, I totally agree. The fact that she’s asking this question means she’s thinking about it, instead of trying to pretend like it’s not there or changing the kid. I think that act of denial is something that can translate very easily to a child realizing, “There’s something about me that Mom doesn’t accept or doesn’t want to talk about.”
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah. She’s coming at it from a place of, “How can I support and make things good for my child?”
Dawn Serra: Yay. Well, I’m so glad you wrote in Conflicted Mom. Hopefully, that was helpful. I’m going to put links up on Sex Gets Real for this episode that will have links to the Blue book that you mentioned, Nadine, and then also to Cory Silverberg and to S. Bear’s publishing company, so that anybody that’s looking for books that are beautifully inclusive and have very simple language, it’ll be nice and easy for you to find. Do you know if there’s any support groups online or parenting resources for gender non-conforming kids or trans kids?
Nadine Thornhill: So there’s a website called, and they’re also an organization, called Gender Spectrum. They’re amazing. They’re based in the U.S. I think they might be out of California, but I’m not 100% sure. They have a ton of resources, articles, community resources, books for families who have trans or non-conforming kids. There’s PFLY, which is Parents For Lesbian— What is it?
Dawn Serra: I think it was…
Nadine Thornhill: I can’t remember.
Dawn Serra: I can’t remember either.
Nadine Thornhill: Oh my god!
Dawn Serra: That’s so sad.
Nadine Thornhill: Okay, but PFLY is a resource for parents of gay, lesbian, and bisexual children. There’s an organization here in Canada, based in Ottawa, and they are… Oh, they just changed their name! So I have to remember the name. They used to be called Pink Triangle Services, and they just changed their name. And I can’t remember what their new name is now, which is terrible. But they have a lot of great resources online. They also have a support group, but it runs in Ottawa. So unless the reader’s – the person is in Ottawa, you can’t go there. But you can still read and connect with people online also. They’re great, too.
Dawn Serra: Sweet.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: All right. Hopefully, that gives Conflicted Mama a jumping off point, and definitely write back in if you have any further questions or anything like that. I’m happy to provide resources. Okay, so we got a question from Auntie Awkward. It says:
“I’m so glad I found you on Spotify, and I need your help. I am very close with my two nieces and I want to help one of them when it comes to sex. Here’s why: One of my nieces is very adventurous, rebellious, and sexual. She’s had a number of boyfriends and we’ve talked about sex a few times. I know she has a very clear idea of who she is and how to advocate for herself. Her sister, though, is the exact opposite. She’s very introverted. The few times I’ve tried to ask her about sex, she’s basically said she doesn’t want to talk to me. I’m a college professor and I see young people at college all the time who are totally unprepared for the drinking and the sex and the hookup culture. I’m just not sure how to talk to her about it or if there are resources I can give her that she can look at on our own time, so that I don’t have to have that awkward, “I’m your aunt and let’s talk about sex,” thing. Thoughts? Suggestions? I want to help her be prepared, and I feel like she’s woefully unaware of what the realities of college life will be like. Thanks. Auntie Awkward.”
Nadine Thornhill: Okay, I love this question.
Dawn Serra: I know, me too!
Nadine Thornhill: I’m aunt to four amazing girls. One of them is a teenager, one of them is tween, and then two of them are little. So I can relate to this. Being the aunt who always wants to give sex advice, although my nieces never want to hear it. I will live vicariously through this question. So I’m assuming that her nieces are teenagers, although she didn’t say specifically, but I guess it sounds like they’re moving up and going to college. So trying to make a teenager talk to you about anything when they don’t want to is a Herculean task and doubly so when it’s about sex. Especially when they reach this age, I’m like, really, most of what you can do is make yourself an askable family member, but you can’t make them say anything to you if they don’t want to.
So I’m going to start with a resource. There’s a couple of resources. There’s Heather Corinna’s book called S.E.X. It’s amazing, it covers so much. It’s a really comprehensive resource. She’s very relatable, totally non-judgmental. It covers dating, STIs, drinking, and hookup culture, and everything you could want. Sometimes with youth who are more introverted, something like a book is going to be more up their alley. They may not want to sit down and have a real conversation with you, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not interested in the information. It doesn’t mean that they’re not curious. And even if they’re not right now, sometimes it’s nice when they have one nice comprehensive resource that they can go to when these issues do start to come up for them, and they can sort of consult that. You can give her that book. I love that book. It’s amazing.
Nadine Thornhill: Another resource, which is online is the series of videos called the Midwest Teen Sex Show. They’re not producing actively right now, it’s something that they were – it’s this troupe of improv actors who live somewhere in the Midwestern United States. And they realized that there wasn’t really any good sex education happening for teens in schools. So they decided to produce this series of videos. They’re very good in the sense that they’re very much rooted in fact, they’re very sex positive. But they’re also unflinching and hilarious and reverent. Every once in a while, I’ll be like, “I’m going to watch the Midwest Teen Sex Show again,” because they make me laugh so much.
Dawn Serra: That’s awesome.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah, it’s fantastic. Even though they’re a few years old, I think they’re five or six years old now, most of them are still entirely relevant today. So I still use that as a resource and show them to people. It’s just a different approach from grown ups trying to relate to the youth of today, which is how I feel sometimes when I talk to teens, “Hello, I’m a 40 year old woman. I’m going to pretend that I’m down with the youth.”
Dawn Serra: Yep.
Nadine Thornhill: No. Then I use my 40 year old lady slang and colloquialisms, and they’re like, “Stop. Just because you’re on Instagram, do not think that you understand anything about what we’re going through.” And then they’re like, “Who’s on Instagram anymore anyway?”
Dawn Serra: Right. We’re all on Snapchat now.
Nadine Thornhill: Exactly. It’s that sort of situation. Sometimes using resources like videos and stuff are great. Laci Green on YouTube is another amazing educator. She’s relatively young, her videos are very quick, easily digestible, super sex positive, packed with information. Again, that’s something that… You don’t have to watch them all at once. You can just be like, “Hey, check out this channel.” And she can watch videos on her own time, and there’s a ton of them. Lindsey Doe is another youtuber who’s amazing. Again, really quick, packs and lots of information, but does it in a really accessible way. So those are all resources that I like to recommend for people talking to teens.
The other thing that I will tell adults sometimes, it can be hard to swallow sometimes, I’m like, “Don’t underestimate a teenager’s awareness of what’s going on and don’t underestimate their resilience, and their ability to navigate new situations, especially sexually.” Teenagers are— Just because they’re teenagers and they’re developing to adults. Part of that development is that you’re going to go out into the world, and you’re going to have new situations, and you’re going to have to sort them out, and figure out what’s going on, and figure out how you feel about them. So part of becoming a new adult is going to be going into situations you’re like, “Whoa. Okay,.”
Dawn Serra: “I have no idea what to do.”
Nadine Thornhill: “I didn’t know what to do.” So I think one of the best things you can do is going back to being an askable, approachable adult, so that if they come up against a situation where they’re like, “Whoa, I kind of feel like I’m in over my head with this. I don’t know what to do.” You can still be there as the person that they can go to to be like, “I’m in over my head, I’m in over my head! What do I do?” But encountering that in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. It’s not the worst thing in the world if a teen gets to college and is like, “I wasn’t entirely prepared for this and I don’t understand it.” There are a ton of situations that we can’t really understand them, until we’re in them.” You have to have the experience to learn from it.
I know with sex that can be really scary to people because there can be pretty serious consequences in certain situations when sexual things don’t go as planned and particularly with drinking and drugs. I know there’s often a concern, especially with women of sexual assault and sexual harm and that is an entirely real concern. There’s this fear of being brokenhearted or being in a situation where you do something you regret and there can be a lot of heavy emotional fallout from that. So I completely understand as a parent, why it’s scary to say, “Okay, I can’t prepare them for everything. I don’t think that they’re prepared for this.” So I’m not going to say, “Don’t be afraid,” or “Don’t be worried,” or “Don’t do what you can to help them be prepared.” But also prepare yourself. There is going to be something and they’re not going to be prepared. So just be there as the supportive person for them to either come back and be like, “This really went wrong and I need someone right now, because I’m hurting and I need a safe place to heal, and to process this.” Or in a better case scenario, it’s like, “Oh, I came against the situation I didn’t know how to handle. I pulled myself out, but now I need to talk to you about this and figure out what this is, and how to deal with it the next time I go in.”
Nadine Thornhill: I think one of the best things you can do is just be supportive, supportive, supportive, supportive, “That no matter what happens, no matter what you come up against, I am going to be here for you. I love you and we will figure it out.” Yes, “As you go through your college or not college,” depending on what their future plans are, “As you’re growing up, as you’re going through life, as long as I’m alive, I’m here for you and we will figure this stuff out.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I love that. I think you’re so right. You can’t force teenagers to engage in conversation, if they really don’t want to, for the most part. I mean, to a certain degree, you can force a teenager to sit down. But instead, framing it as, “Here are some resources and I’m here if you want to talk. I’m here if you have questions.” And just making yourself available. I love that advice because I think that also allows them to have a little bit of autonomy and choice about, “When am I ready? What types of questions do I have?” Instead of us as adults, I think, we have this habit of assuming that we know better than them. And often, I think that they actually may have different needs than we think that they do, and insecurities and places where we may not have guessed.
Nadine Thornhill: Absolutely. I mean, this is this is something that I keep having to relearn with my own child, who’s only nine, but very strong willed and has his own ideas about things is that I will come in and be like, “I’m going to sit down and I’m just going to blast information at you, and I’ll think that you’re just going to listen to me, while I’m talking,” which never works. But also that, I can’t just throw information at him, and then think, “Oh, he’ll be prepared now, because I told him that this stuff is going to happen.” It’s not the same as it actually happening and actually being in the moment. You can tell a teenager all you want to – there’s going to be parties, and there’s going to be drinking, and you’re going to come across this kind of pressure and this kind of pressure. You’re going to meet someone and you’re going to want to have sex, you’re going to feel like this, you’re going to feel like this. It’s not the same as when it actually is happening to you. And all of those feelings and hormones and reactions are happening in your body, and you’re alone with the person. There’s wine and there’s this and that – it’s not the same.
So even if you tell them everything, that can only prepare them so much of the reality of what it’s like. And yes, I constantly find myself saying to my nine year old, not that he’s going to parties or anything, but just with nine year old stuff, and like, “But I told you this was going to happen!”
Dawn Serra: “It’s not the same, Mom!”
Nadine Thornhill: I can’t just preemptively live your life by talking to be up. I get it, but I’m just trying to protect you and give you the heads up.
Dawn Serra: Because you love him.
Nadine Thornhill: Because I love him.
Dawn Serra: Right.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah. Maybe you can avoid some of the pitfalls that I fell into, but like, “Okay, I’ll just let you do this on your own, and then if something goes wrong, I’ll be here and I’ll comfort you, and have pain in my heart because you’re my child and it hurts if you’re hurt.”
Dawn Serra: Yeah. So just out of curiosity, for folks who have kids in their lives, what do you think is one of the best ways to make it really clear to young people that you are a safe space for them to come to, that you’re accepting of them. Basically, how can you be a sex positive role model for young people in your life so that they know they can come to you? What do you think is one of the most important things for that?
Nadine Thornhill: Okay One of the most important things. One of the things that does work for me, and I think this is one of those important things, is asking questions about sex, and asking them open-ended questions so that they can give you information. Because A.) that shows that, yeah, we can totally talk about this. B.) It shows them that it’s okay for them to have knowledge, curiosity, observations around sex, that it’s not this like totally taboo subject. And C.) It makes them talk more. Again, there’s something I constantly have to remind myself, because I love to chatter away, but the conversations I have with my son are so much richer, and so much more productive if I start off asking him a question, as opposed to lecturing.
It’s interesting because we were talking about porn earlier, and that subject came up with him just last week for the first time, because someone in his class brought it up. He asked me, “What is porn?” So the first thing I said, before diving in my instinct was like, “Okay…”
Dawn Serra: “I won’t tell you all the things!”
Nadine Thornhill: I can’t tell you everything. So I was like, “Oh, okay. Well, have you heard that word before?” He’s like, “Yeah, I think so.” I was like, “Do you have any ideas about what it was?” And then he told me, and he was a little bit on track, but not quite. So then I gave him a really simple definition of what it was. He was like, “Oh…” I said, “Why do you think people might watch that?” And he told me what he thought. I said, “What do you think about someone, your age looking at it or seeing it?” And he told me what he thought. Then I kind of dived into some of my own values, “It really is something that’s made for adults, and it’s not for children. I think that that’s really something that I think is better to watch when you’re older or a little bit. What do you think about that?” So we just had this whole conversation, it was only 10 minutes or something. But I was like, “Okay, good. Okay, porn is on the table now.”
It was really good timing, because I had just been thinking a couple weeks beforehand, I’m like, “Oh, he’s nine. He’s starting to hang out with friends a little bit independently. I know some of them have smartphones, I got to figure out how to bring this up somehow because it’s going to become relevant soon. Then that window opens again.” So I think just ask them questions. Let them tell you what they think, what they know, and then you can dive in and just be like, “Oh, this thing that you think is maybe not accurate. Let me give you some accurate information. This is what you think about this aspect of sexuality, this is what I think, these are my values, or this is what I hope that you will do or take into consideration,” and then it could be like a back and forth. So yeah, that would be my answer.
Dawn Serra: The thing I love about that is that’s the best advice for any relationship that you have, really. I mean, instead of assuming that you know what your partner thinks about something, ask what they think about something or instead of assuming that what your friend meant by a comment asking what they meant or thought about a comment. I mean, I think that’s such powerful advice, instead of telling ourselves stories about somebody else’s experience, inviting somebody else’s experience, and then being able to actually have a nice dialogue about that. That’s powerful.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting because I learned and developed this strategy for families talking to their kids about sex and now it sort of spilled over into other relationships in my life, and other adult relationships. Exactly what you said, I’m like, “Oh, this works good all the time.”
Dawn Serra: “I’ve stumbled on a universal truth!”
Nadine Thornhill: Isn’t the universal truth is listen to other people?” Right? Finally, at 40 years old, I’m having relationships.
Dawn Serra: “I’m figuring this thing out that’s called conversation.” And the same way, especially when it comes to sex. I like to share all my thoughts, because I have so many and I get so excited. And sometimes I forget the other person probably does, too.
Nadine Thornhill: Yeah, me too.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I love that. So, I know you said you weren’t quite ready to talk about this so I can clip this out if you want to. But I know you mentioned that you’ve written a book, and it doesn’t have a publisher yet, but I’d love to know what is the book about?
Nadine Thornhill: Okay, yeah. I will definitely tell you what the book is about. The title is Positive Guide to Family Sex Ed. In my job, I read a lot of books that are about parenting and, specifically parenting in dealing with kids and talking about sex. And I found that there were a couple of things that were missing in general. So there were a lot of really great books about how to have the conversation about sex, like general techniques that you can use and they’re really effective. There are a couple of books about childhood sexual development, but I find a lot of them are very formal and academic, and maybe not super accessible.
Where I really found there was a lack was there are not a lot of books that are aimed at adults that talks specifically about the information that kids need. There are books that are aimed at kids and teenagers that talk about puberty and contraception and safer sex and things like that. But the parents don’t have the information. And in my work, a lot of times, once we get past the “Okay, this is how I bring it up.” The next part is, “But I don’t know anything about that. I want to talk to my kids about safer sex. How do I do that?” I’ll say, “Okay, you really need to go beyond just the, ‘Use a condom,” line or ‘Protect yourself,” line and get really specific. Then I find people are like, “Okay, but what? What else is there? What are the sexually transmitted infections? I have no idea.”
Nadine Thornhill: The only reason that I knew is because this is my job and I’ve worked with organizations where it was my job to know every single sexually transmitted infection and the symptoms and the treatments, what all the safer sex practices were, and things like that. So the book is basically divided into three sections. The first part of the book is basically how to have the conversation – techniques you can use, how to share your values, how to share facts, how to avoid miss – lots of questions that you can ask your kids to get into these conversations, what to do when you’re feeling awkward, or scared or whatnot.
The second part of the book is child and adolescent sexual development, and it’s sort of chunked down into the stages – infancy and toddlerhood and childhood and tween and older teen and younger teen. And it talks fairly broadly about what they may be going through developmentally, and also where they’re at in their ability to comprehend certain topics, just so parents can maybe have some idea of like, “Okay, this is probably where my kid is now in terms of their sexual feelings or not sexual feelings in their body and whatnot, this is what’s going to be coming up,” things like that. So they can have a guideline of what they might want to start talking about.
Nadine Thornhill: Then the third part is, I think it’s 10 or 12 chapters, and I just go through a bunch of different topics. So there’s abstinence, there’s anatomy, there’s puberty, there’s gender, there’s sexual orientation, there’s just sex, because I find that missing all the time. We want to talk to our kids about actual sex and how to feel good and enjoy it. There’s contraception, there’s conception, there’s pregnancy options, there’s all of that. So that if you’re like, “Okay, I want to talk to my child,” for example about abstinence. I don’t really know what the facts around absence are, then you can go to the book and be like, “I’m going to go to the abstinence chapter, and I’m going to read it.” And it’s like, “Okay, now I kind of have the basics. I can start the conversation.” “My child just came to me and said, ‘I’m worried I have chlamydia.’ Well, I don’t know what that means.” So you can go to the sexually transmitted infections section and actually be like, “Okay, chlamydia, this is what it is, this is how it’s treated. These are the symptoms, here’s how you get tested.” Just stuff like that. I really wanted to be a comprehensive guide that anybody can have at their fingertips if they have a child in their life. You just need information.
The other thing is, I wanted to try and make it as inclusive as I could about children of different genders, also children of different sexes, including intersex, because that was another thing that I noticed that seems missing from a lot of the current literature that there was very much an assumption that your child is either a boy or girl, your child has the gender they were assigned at birth, your child is straight, which a lot of people’s kids are. But there are also a lot of people whose kids aren’t, and I find that they have to go to a whole separate set of resources, which is fine. I think he will do that anyway. But what happens for a lot of parents I talk to is that if their child comes out as queer or their different gender or their a different sexual orientation, it comes as a complete shock because any of the information they’ve been reading has all been predicated on, “Your child is straight and cisgender.” They’re like, “What?!”
Dawn Serra: “No, what?”
Nadine Thornhill: “What?” So I was like, I would love to see, for lack of a better word, mainstream inclusive resources just assumes off the bat that there’s a wide range of children, and that they across the gender spectrum and across the spectrum of sexual and romantic orientation, and that all of that is under the umbrella of just a normal kid, because it is.
Dawn Serra: That sounds amazing. I think the world needs that book.
Nadine Thornhill: So if anyone out there is listening and wants to publish my book…
Dawn Serra: That’s right. If we have any people in the publishing industry listening, we have a book for you. I would love for you to tell everybody how they can find you and stay in touch because you’re doing such awesome work. I know for people who have kids in their lives, either getting some resources or finding out when your book is going to come out, you find a publisher, so how can people find you and stay in touch?
Nadine Thornhill: So you can find me on my website, which is nadinethornhill.com. I’m also on Facebook facebook.com/nadine.thornhill and I’m on Twitter @NadineThornhill. Those are all great ways to get in touch with me. I mentioned, I am on Instagram but that’s really just if you want to see pictures of my cat.
Dawn Serra: Which is an amazing reason to follow you on Instagram.
Nadine Thornhill: My cat is adorable and he’s super huge, and just love. So yeah, if you want to see pictures of my cat. Occasionally, I do that cheesy picture of him on a beach like my legs and my feet and like water. So if you want to see the most basic Instagram, follow me on Instagram.
Dawn Serra: I love it. I will have links to Nadine’s website, to her social media, and to all of the resources that we talked about on sexgetsreal.com for this episode so that you can check out the books and the websites and also stay in touch with the team. I just want to say thank you so much, Nadine, for joining us and fielding these questions because you handled them 1000 times better than I would have.
Nadine Thornhill: Thank you so much and thank you for having me on and letting me answer questions. And thank you to your listeners for sending in those questions. They’re amazing questions.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, yes. The Sex Gets Real listeners are awesome. Thank you to everybody who wrote in. Of course, you can go to sexgetsreal.com to send in any questions or stories that you have. If you’re struggling with anything in your own sex life or relationships, you can go to dawnserra.com, I’m accepting new clients. I just want to thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you next week. This is Dawn Serra with Sex Gets Real. Bye.
Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to the Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/SGR to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses.
As you look towards the next week, I wonder, what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship, or helps you to connect more deeply with your pressure.