Talking To Your Teen About Consent

Are you worried about talking to your teen about consent? Perhaps you’re concerned you’ll ruin your child’s innocence or frighten them, or do you feel embarrassed to talk about sex with them?

In fact, consent isn’t just about sexual activity. It’s a part of creating trusting and positive relationships with everyone, including friends and family.

We’ll look at:

• • What we mean by consent

• • Teaching your child to respect choices

• • Sex and consent

• • How to have these hard conversations with your child

• • Where to get further help

At the end, you’ll find nine ideas to help you have these conversations with your child. But let’s start by finding out more about what consent actually means.

What does consent mean?

In a legal sense, the word “consent” is used to describe giving permission for sexual activity. Also, someone needs to consent to get married. But, we can think of it in a much wider way.

Think of consent as giving permission for someone to do something. You can teach your child the idea of seeking permission in all their relationships, with friends, family, and other adults.

Seeking permission includes:

• • Asking before hugging and kissing a friend or family member

• • Respecting someone’s choice if they say no or change their mind

• • Showing your young person they have ownership over their own body

Consent isn’t just about saying “no” when you don’t like something, or assuming someone is happy unless they say otherwise. It’s important to get permission first and respect the choices people make.