Aaaah, aching so much for you right now. I had therapy on and off for 35 years. Seems like it's an ongoing healing for me.

I am sorry for your horrible experience. I found Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear and Protecting the Gift very helpful as far as discerning who might be trouble.

What’s wrong with just telling him what you wrote here? You should tell him that alcohol lowers inhibitions, that he may not be able to tell how drunk his partner actually is, and that he should always err on the side of caution (it sounds like, from the story he told you about his encounter as an exchange student,…

Thank you, that is reassuring to hear re reinforcing bodily autonomy, etc. I will be sure to be careful about messaging. Luckily, my husband is awesome and really great with children and I hope that they will have a really good male figure in their life that they can trust.

I think it’s really good that you are aware of it and thinking about how not to send the wrong message. My mom was abused as a child too. She definitely taught us that our bodies were ours and to speak up if anything made us uncomfortable which was good. But she also taught us that men could not be trusted and I think…

Yup. I fear being like Candychelle’s mom when I have kids. I can’t trust ANYONE, I have irrational fears about my father and boyfriend (the men that I trust the most)... in my early teens I read that children who were molested molest when they grow up so sometimes I’m even scared of myself.

Hmm. That’s a tough one! I might say something like, “Kid, at school, people are going to drink. A lot. And the lie of alcohol is that it makes you think that you are funnier/sexier/a better dancer/more up for anything than you actually are. That applies to alcohol and sex, too. If you have had more than 2 drinks, or…

As the mother of a son, I have a serious question that’s been on my mind for a while, but first, some background. I grew up in a family that didn’t shy away from discussing sex, so it seemed like I just always knew what it was, and my parents acknowledged my budding and very clear sexuality by the time I was 11. I now…

Ahh, this is my fear for me!! I was sexually abused as a little kid and it has definitely fucked me up wrt sex and a lot of other things. I have been in therapy for years now, but I catch myself planning on being way more protective than is probably necessary, or maybe even healthy. I don’t want to give my children…

Arrrrgh! The AOL chatrooms! a/s/l? The screen would always freeze up when some dude was being super inappropriate (the computer had no parental controls but it was in my parents’ bedroom so privacy was not guaranteed). It was the worst.

I thought that too. Poor kid was probably mortified. What a shit message to have sent him when he was just being nice to a young cousin.

The only sex talk I got from my mom before she found out I was having sex was this ...

Yep, that’s the only workable approach IMO. We decided very early on that prohibition/forcing abstinence not only wouldn’t work but would send a message about sex that we did not agree with.

“Well, I think you should wait until marriage because (Jesus reasons). But if you decide not to, here’s what you need to know.”

UGH WHY CANT ALL RELIGIOUS FOLK TEACH KIDS LIKE THIS

My mom was (is) a nurse, and was always very matter-of-fact about sex and bodily functions. I never felt embarrassed to ask her anything, she was very frank, despite being a conservative Christian in the Bible Belt. Our discussions about sex (at least in my high school years) were more like “Well, I think you should…

I’m curious if you ever followed up with the teenager whose lap your daughter was seated on. He may have felt shamed for something completely innocent, and he was still a kid too. Do we think of shaming as something we only do to girls?

This post just reminds me of the 7 or 8 year old kid I used to babysit who would dry hump everything in sight. I was 14 and so grossed out/weirded out by him that I forced myself to try and bring it up to his mom, who acted like I was crazy and said “he likes to play wrestle with pillows and stuffed animals”. Ummmm if…

My parents were super protective and my mom was molested by an uncle as a kid, so my sisters and I got some horrendous messaging. Every boy/man, even family members, were molesters waiting for the right opportunity. We couldn’t even play hide and seek with our male cousins because of what might happen. Even though I…

See, growing up in the ‘80s/early ‘90s, we had videos on MTV to explain all of this to us. It was a simpler time!

I think that this might be the most important reason to make sure that your kid has some good friends. I know that I could have talked to my mum but the reality is that all of my (accurate, sex-positive, safe) conversations happened with my same-age friends. I know how lucky I was to have that and I’d really do…