Talking About Sex and Sexuality to Your Adolescent

Talk to your adolescent about unhealthy relationships, and have the courage to speak honestly if you see one developing:

• Relationships that ride a roller coaster of emotions — being madly in love one day, fighting like cats and dogs the next, crying and making up over and over — distract and drain a couple's time and energy and wear out everyone else for miles around. They also turn into difficult marriages.
• Relationships in which one person is intensely needy for the other, and thus clingy and smother-ing, are parasitic and draining.
• Relationships that have ongoing verbal disrespect in one or both directions are doomed.
• Relationships in which physical abuse occurs must be terminated immediately.

Last updated: May 2005

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On This Topic

• Introduction • Preparing for Puberty • Continuing the Discussion • It's Hard to Resist • Reasons to Resist • What Leads to Sex • Preventing Sex • The Role of Identity • Unhealthy Relationships • Pointers for Parents