There are certain conversations dealing with challenging, confusing, traumatizing, or even sensitive topics that some of us would rather avoid talking about with our kids for a variety of reasons. But the reality is we can’t always shelter our kids from the difficulties of our world today. So the ability to talk about tough stuff is a skill that we as parents absolutely need to have. How can we find the courage to have those difficult conversations with our kids?
Today, we’re going to approach this with three main points in mind. Number one, we’re going to talk about the myths we believe about these hard topics. Two, we’re going to talk about establishing a safe and supportive environment. And third, we’re going to talk about conversations with younger kids versus older kids.
So I can say one of the hardest things for me to talk to my kids about was suicide. Mental illness and then suicide, both in their family and then also in friend groups and friends, families. And it’s unfortunately been a big issue and it doesn’t have an easy answer.
Suicide would be one for me as well. It hasn’t happened. It has happened with friends, their friends, my daughter’s friends. I’d also say as a guy raising three girls, talking about sex was incredibly difficult in knowing how to guide them. I mean, it felt almost impossible. It was really difficult.
We’ve kind of tiptoed into some difficult conversations with sex and puberty and all the things that come along with that. But porn is the conversation that I’m not looking forward to having because I’m raising a boy and it’s so accessible and you can’t protect them from it.
What are some of those myths we believe about these hard topics?
I know my kid isn’t doing the thing. He’s not having sex yet. For instance, he doesn’t really know about porn yet, that sort of thing. I don’t want to believe that he actually needs to know this information yet. And so I’m just going to keep kicking that can down the road. And I know another one for me is like, Well, if I don’t talk about it, then he won’t know about it and then he won’t think about it. So I’ll be dodging it or dodging this discussion. Total myth. Because he’s learning about it from somewhere. So I have tried, especially as it relates to his changing body, to get ahead of it as much as I can and talk about some of those more difficult things so that he’s hearing it from me. [I’d rather do that than] him coming to me, something comes out, and then I’m reacting because I’m not ready for it, and I shame him or scare him inadvertently.
A big fear for me is that I’ll give my child permission because I don’t want to be like, “Okay, and if you ever do this, then I’m never going to talk to you again.” That’s not real. And quite frankly, back to your point I don’t think my child is doing X, I have 16 and 18-year-old kids and they do not tell me everything. There have been things where I did not think my kids were doing, but they were. And so I have to have that conversation. Drunk driving is one I’ve had with my kids since before they started driving on their own. It was, “I do not want you drinking. However, if you find yourself where you have had a drink, I would rather you call me than drive drunk.” And I have told them, “You’ll get in such big trouble if you drive drunk. If you call me, it will be less of an issue for you. It is not that I will be accepting of it, but I am much more afraid of you driving drunk than I am of you having a drink.” But there’s that fear that if I tell them to call me if they have a drink, they’re just going to say, “Whatever, mom doesn’t care if I have a drink.”
I dealt with that so much. First of all, teenage parties, they’re crazy. There’s these parties I’ve heard about where you pour pills in a bottle and you just take them out like candy. You don’t know what you’re taking. It’s crazy. But anyway, this guy was saying to tell your kids, “If you were at a party and there’s drinking involved, whether you’ve had anything or not, I want you to call me. I don’t want you to drive. And if you start saying to me, “Mom/Dad, I don’t want to come home, that’s so unfair” and I haven’t said anything to you about coming home, that is a signal that you want me to come pick you up. And it saves face for [the child]. So you are “arguing” with me about why you don’t want to come home, and I’ve never told you to come home. If that happens, then I get the signal I need to come and get you, and I will be right there.
If they’re drinking or if they’re at a party where they feel ashamed, they don’t want to call you. But the truth is that we need to make it as easy for them as possible to come to us with that. Hunter came to me recently. His brother was out with friends, and Hunter said, “I want to go to this party, but there could be drinking.” I was like, “Okay, so here’s the ground rules of what happens. You’re not supposed to drink and all of the other stuff.” But I did not say no. It turned out there wasn’t drinking, so it was an easier thing, but my gut reaction was not “Absolutely not.” It was, “Let’s have a conversation about this and walk out why it would matter to me if there was drinking and why it should matter to you.” People do stupid things when they’re drinking and it turns it into a conversation rather than, “Well, I’m just not going to ask my mom. I’ll just do it anyway.” Being able to have some of that open dialogue and having them realize that “Sometimes mom is trying to protect me, not trying to squelch all the fun” can be helpful.
Jax is 11, and I don’t know how much his eyes have been opened to the messiness of the world yet. I know some, but even the other day, he was like, “Mom, what is this and this and this?” And I was actually really surprised that he still had his innocence in that way and that he didn’t know the answer. I would’ve assumed that at 11 years old, he would’ve known that or heard it somewhere or come face to face with it in some way. And I just remember thinking, “Oh, huh, okay.” So I think where I’m kind of teetering is how much do I share? When do I share it? What can he handle? What’s he not supposed to handle yet? I just don’t know the timing of things. And I don’t want him to lose his innocence sooner than he needs to. And with certain things, especially as it relates to suicide and some of those harder conversations, we’ve had some talks about alcohol because of his dad, but even the drug conversation, all these things they need to be aware of. I still want to shield him from the pain and messiness of the world and not throw it in his face too soon.
I don’t want to have to scare my kids. Even to this day, I’ll read a news article and be like, “Hey, these kids were in a fight at school and one of the kids didn’t make it.” I’ll tell my kids that. “Don’t get into fights at school. You could kill somebody.” And I’ll have times when my kids are like, “You’re scaring me, mom.” And I’m like, “I’m not trying to, I was just reading the news because life is scary.” But I can tell you there’s also stories—not ones I’ve read to my kids—of 10 year olds who have committed suicide. I had to talk to my kids when they were eight and 10 about suicide, and it was far too young. How do you even start that conversation when you haven’t been having it? But if 10 year olds are doing that, then when is too young? And it’s such a hard balance because I do not know what my children are going to face tomorrow.
It’s important to develop a curiosity about what’s going on in our kids’ lives. I think one of the myths that we can get stuck on is If I lecture them, they’re going to listen to me at a certain point. Sorry, they’re not listening to you that much. So we have to be curious about what’s going on in their lives more than just having all the right answers. And that means getting on their level and trying to understand what’s going on, not interrogating them, but being really curious. We need to be seen as their safe person. Just [asking questions] and being curious saying, “What do you think about that? How do you feel when you come face to face with that?”
Another myth that I’m dealing with is It’s too late to have that conversation. Because the cat is out of the bag. Maybe you find out that your child has tried alcohol. Is it too late to have the conversation? No, it’s not too late. The bottom line is that if we are not the people talking to them about this, they are getting the message somewhere else. If we’re not controlling the narrative or being involved in the narrative, this world has tons of messages that they’re receiving every single day.
I think another myth is They’ll come to me if they need help. How many movies have we seen where the kids get into more trouble because they don’t talk to the parents? They might not even know they have a problem that needs to be talked about. And their peers may be telling them, “Hey, this thing porn online is really, really cool. And I can show you where to get into the dark web and I can do all this stuff.” And it’s a cool factor. “I’m not going to go tell my mom. I don’t want her to talk me out of it. I want to be cool.”
How do you establish a safe and supportive environment?
One of the best ways is to start small in conversations. Back to Elizabeth’s comment about “I don’t want to scare my kids, and how do I talk about this?” You don’t have to come at it with a whole 30-minute monologue of why drugs are bad.You can drop hints over time if they are younger, and as you’re talking about things, be sure you are watching their face, their body, how they’re handling this. Are they saying, “Okay, I need to go run off and play right now”? They may just be really in a hurry to get to their friends, or they may be saying, “This is too much for me to deal with right now.” So you can size up their reactions.
I’ll just mention stuff to try to have a conversation like, “Just because you get a text doesn’t mean it’s a friend.” They’re kind of used to it, which means then I can to get into things that may hit a little bit closer to home, like teaching my kids gun safety because it may not be in my house that they’re exposed to a gun, but I do want them to be aware of how to handle yourself around a gun. And if you think that kids are not playing with guns, we had a tragedy with my son’s graduating class and it was a complete accident. But talking to them about those things that you think, That’s not my world. I don’t have a gun at my house, can also be really, really important.
I needed to listen more. As parents, we want to jump in and be the expert on things. Developing a sense of curiosity about what’s going on in their lives establishes a safe and secure environment that’s not judgmental. It doesn’t mean you’re asking, “Where are you going to be? What are you going to be doing? Who’s going to be in there?” Those are appropriate questions at times. But my youngest daughter, Zara, struggles with anxiety. And one of the things that triggers her anxiety is the world stage. Like what’s happening in the World War in Israel, Russia, Ukraine, etc. And so she says, “Dad, is the world going to end? Is it?” And so for me leaning into that, if I know that’s something that is on her radar, I know that anytime something comes across an Instagram feed or a TikTok feed that has to do with it, she’s taking that in and pursuing that thread. And the algorithms are now targeting her with all the messages about Ukraine. And so my point is to make sure that if there is something on their radar they’re thinking about and are scared of, just ask them about it. And this sounds counterintuitive to me to say, “So did you hear about what’s going on in Ukraine?” Make sure the playing field is wide open and that you’re curious to know what their perceptions are because they may not just come to you with those things, but they’re dealing with them. So we have to create an environment where we’re not going to judge or lecture, but we’re there to listen.
One thing that keeps from establishing a safe and supportive environment is triggering topics; things that are very anxiety-ridden, especially if you don’t know how you want to respond or what to do. I can tend to bring my own trauma into things and make assumptions about how my son thinks based on my own trauma or experience with whatever topic it is. The whole sex talk is a very difficult topic for me. I was introduced to sex at a very young age because of my sexual abuse past and because of the things I was introduced to through no fault of my own. And that informs. And then not to mention the whole religious aspect and how it was shoved down my throat: No sex before marriage. And then the shame that came along with it. I never had a sex talk with my parents. So it’s not like I have some roadmap here. The only sex talk that was happening, for instance, was my Sunday school teacher saying, “Don’t do it, or you’re going to hell.” And then cap on top of that, I was sexually abused as a child. And so that very much informs how I’m going to talk to Jax about it. If I’m not careful and don’t remove all of my past trauma, it can create this environment where I’m making a lot of assumptions about the way he may view things—because at this point, he’s a clean slate for the most part. He hasn’t had the experiences I’ve had. And so I actually have the opportunity to take what has been a very difficult thing for me and talk about it in a healthy way that’s going to help him thrive in life versus suffer. But I have to do it the right way and I have to create that safe, supportive environment.
Your reaction when things that you’re not expecting happen can really feed into whether or not they’ll continue coming back to you. So I think some of the words that we use and how we lead into these conversations can really matter. When we’re trying to figure out what our child does know, we can say, “What do you know about that?” So in your example about the sex talk, “What do you know about it? What are you curious about?” There are some things you can feel them out on. Other times, they might come to you and ask you a question that you’re like, “Oh, how deep do I go into this?” You can say, “Well, good question. Why do you ask?” Or “I want to do a good job answering but let me think about that for a minute.” Just because your child is asking you in this moment doesn’t mean you have to answer it in that moment.
I think that’s a really good point to establish: If [my kid] comes to me with a question and I don’t know how to answer, it’s okay to honor the question and say, “That’s a great question. I want to give you a right answer. Let me think about that a little bit more and I’ll get back to you.” And then by all means, please get back to them. Don’t just leave it there.
Marissa, in the past with your boys, if you say, “Hey, let me get back to you,” then you actually go do some research. In this case, there was one regarding porn. There was a study of butterflies, and they made cardboard cutouts of butterflies that were more beautiful. Before long, the males only tried to mate with the cardboard because they didn’t care about the other ones. So it’s kind of a visual stimulation. And I have talked to urologists, and it can cause a lot of issues. So I will just tell my children the research that’s out there. It is not a conversation about what you are doing, but it is a conversation about this behavior. And it makes them more informed. It takes away the ammo that your child might have to not believe you because you’re their mom, right? “That’s just my mom, once again telling me something to be scared about and has no backing for it.” And I actually have a lot of fear of just being like, “Don’t do this. You could die,” and say that too much. It’s the boy who cried wolf, and then he’s not going to believe anything I say.
So let’s talk about what the conversation looks like with a younger kid versus an older kid.
I know with Jax, he is just straight up. Younger kids have no filter just asking the questions and wanting to know and the curiosity.
And for those of us that didn’t set a good foundation to talk about everything, it gets harder because the older they get, the less they come and ask the questions. And so if you can start establishing that you’re a safe place to ask anything at an early age, it will more likely translate when they become older. But the older they get and the more they start creating these circles of influence beyond the house, (not that it doesn’t happen in younger kids), the more they listen to their friends, the more they listen to media, the more they listen to all these things, they start slowing down when they come to you with things.
And so often it’s more important to be proactive with them. And that does not mean, for me at least, to just go and ask them a bunch of questions. It’s choosing to spend time with them and be in their environment and foster the sense of being in it together. And I’m not saying to just stare them down while they’re eating or something, but if they’re playing a video game, just be curious and go sit there with them or whatever that looks like. The most important thing with older kids is giving them your full attention. If they ever gift and honor you with an opportunity and they ask you a question, put everything down, put your phone down, close your laptop, turn off the tv, whatever it is, and give them your full attention, letting them know that it’s a valuable time. And you have to be very conscious of making sure that they understand that what they wonder about and what they think about is important to you.
Because [older kids] have so much access to the world, there are conversations that you’re going to need to drive yourself. They’re not going to come to you and ask or bring it up, but if you don’t want them to learn it by experience, you might want to say something and [establish] that safety net of “There is no problem that will make me not love you.”
I know people who have lost their 19-year-old children because their children were defrauded and made to think that they did something they did not do. And rather than speak up, they took their own life. The stakes are so high. If we do not create that environment of “I am a safe place and there is nothing you can tell me that will shock me out of loving you” then they’re going to go somewhere else, whether it’s solving their own problem or going to a very unwise friend.
I’ve let my daughters know that what I dealt with as a teenager is so much smaller than what they’re dealing with as a teenager, and honoring the fact that they’ve got so many voices coming at them. They can never wear out the welcome of coming to me with problems because I have so much respect and so much admiration for the things that our kids are carrying right now. They are carrying so many messages all the time.
Takeaways
- We need to be aware of the myths we believe in regards to talking to our kids about hard topics.
- Above all, it’s important to establish a safe and supportive environment for your kids to trust you and openly express their questions and feelings.
- We need to realize the conversations with your kids will look different based on their age and what they come to you. Now, what your kid comes to you with right now is going to evolve. It’s going to change. One size does not fit all. We have to change with them.
Listener Question
When you started dating again as a single parent, did you share that with your kids? And when Some of my kids have encouraged me to date, but I know it will be so complicated with my ex, I would rather date quietly and only let them know if I meet someone I would want them to meet.
When I started dating and wanted to introduce Jax to someone, I actually had to be pretty intentional because my ex at the time was still pretty volatile with our relationship, and I didn’t think it would go over very well. My son was seven or eight, and he didn’t really understand the whole dating thing. So it was more of the conversation with my ex that I had to worry about. And I actually told him about a month before I was going to be introducing Jax to the person I was dating. And I did it on a day that Jax wasn’t there, so that Jax didn’t get blowback if [my ex] was having a hard time with it. I wasn’t sure how he would react. I wanted to give him enough space to deal with it on his own, but also protect Jax, and give enough time before it happened so that I was respectful of him. I didn’t want him to find out from Jax. I didn’t want it to be this sudden thing that was happening. I wanted it to be well-thought-out because on the flip side of that, I was completely bombarded and it didn’t feel good. So even with all the things that me and my ex go through, I don’t want other people to experience things the way I do. So that’s what I did.
I let my kids know that I was going on dates because they’d know and ask, “Where are you going?” And I think they never met them, but it was helpful for my kids. Hunter tried to set me up the month after his dad passed away. He just wanted a dad and it took Colton several years before he was ready. And we actually had some fun with it. There would be dates I would go on and I’d be like, “Okay guys, I don’t want to see this guy again. How can I break up with him over text? How can I tell him I’m not interested?” We’d have some pretty funny conversations about it.
I did tell them about Matt, who I’m now married to. There was a time when I was like, “Okay, Matt’s coming over to fix the dishwasher.” The dishwasher was broken and I couldn’t take it out and they were supposed to go to a friend’s house. And I was like, “Well, if you don’t go to the neighbor’s house soon enough, you will end up meeting him.” Then all of a sudden the neighbor delayed this meeting and my kids had a lot of curiosity around it. They love Matt. So everything worked out well. But that was not the way I wanted it. That was more of “It was covid. I needed a dishwasher. And getting a repair person wasn’t easy.” But I didn’t have to worry about my ex. I did have to worry about Bill’s parents, and I can tell you that was incredibly awkward.
I’m encouraged by whoever sent this question in because that tells me that you’re actually paying attention to and being cautious about “How do I go about this?” When I started dating, I told the girls I was going on dates. I also told them that, at the right time, if I felt like there was any chance of this being something that they’ll meet. It’s tricky because on one hand you don’t want to introduce them too early to someone that may not work out … but I would say err on the side of going slower.
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