Introductory workshop for parents: When, why and how of sexuality education?

From the very beginning of our work at Sahas, we have always been asked whether we could also do workshops with parents on sexuality education, what about those children who are of age below 10 years and so on! We too felt a need to create gender sensitive and inclusive environment for the adolescents who engage in our gender, sexuality and reproductive health program. The students/participants spend most of their time in either home or school; both of the contexts influences their learning, growth and development.

Initially, with a belief that a person with a specific identity can engage or build conversations effectively on the issues related to their identity, we invited parents to support us in creating a curriculum that could provide necessary tools and language to make conversations on sexuality education with their children easy and without awkwardness. However, while we were sharing experiences of having such conversations with one of our acquaintances – they said, “How I wish you could speak to my parents too! You people make these conversations seem so easy, uncomplicated and fun filled”.

There were lot of factors which came into play including COVID-19 crisis that inspired us to ideate and design our very first online workshop with the parents on sexuality education. The sole objective of this workshop was to bring out fears, anxiety and what is holding them back to have conversations and answering questions to their children. We used our personal experience based on our interaction with parents, our peers, working with adolescents and teachers to develop this interactive session.  

It was heartwarming to see parents joining the workshop from Maharashtra, Delhi and Noida with an intention to engage with their children but they struggle with how to start the conversations without being invasive, or are they oversharing the information or what to share at what age and many a times they feel that information provided by them is not satisfactory.

The introductory workshop began with us sharing our intention and objective behind creating this session, followed by inviting the participants to introduce themselves. We did a quick expectation mapping from the parents to understand why they felt the need to join this session. This included – finding the confidence to initiate conversations with their son as the parent felt unprepared, some suggestions to interact with the adolescent daughter who seems aware of the issues and how to deal with questions at a younger age of 4-5 years.

The session had both father and mothers so it seems indispensable to bring out ‘influence of gender in parenting’ – the first response was as long as the child feels safe and open to ask question, it doesn’t matter who they ask question!

“I feel both the parents should be able to engage on the issues because if they don’t then certain awkwardness and taboos linger”

Another mother brought out a very interesting dynamic to the conversation when she said that it’s her husband who knows all about what is going on with daughter, he gets pad for both of them and also keep a tab on menstrual cycle. Her daughter and son both feels very comfortable about it.

In the next part, as we invited participants to share on what they wish to learn from sexuality education, lot of interesting connotations came up.  Like when a child doesn’t really ask questions but state things they have watched on television or around them – husband and wife kiss on lips, Boys stand and pee; why girls can’t do that! Also there was question around curiosity – like one of the parents pointed out that their child is very curious, so she asks questions and when they answer, she asks again and this chain follows, there is no end to it and many a times she seems unsatisfied with the answer.

One of the things that came up was slangs and abuses – f*** or b**** which are derogatory as shared by parents but the children find them cool and interesting! There is too much distress to make the child understand that these are not right words or we shouldn’t be using them.

It was very heartening to see parents getting comfortable and were open to share things made discussions engaging. The session processed from ‘what does oversharing means to parents’ to ‘dos and probable don’ts’ while communicating with the child/adolescent/teenager’.

I was amazed by one of the incidence shared during the session where the parent answered the question in detail to the child; now the child is very curious and interactive so they went and shared with their friends while some adults were sitting including their grandmother. The parent didn’t mind giving the answer but was wary of the reactions received by their child from the people around. The concern about what her child would feel weighed above anything and I must say this parent is absolutely on the right track of parenting! Hats off.

In the next part while sharing about tools to engage on various topics, one of the parents mentioned how she has talked about taboos around periods and have asked her daughter not to follow all this false beliefs but her grandmother says the opposite. At the same time, she herself can’t stop following the beliefs because of the ingrained mindsets and what her own mother taught her. This is one of the best examples which initiated a much needed conversation on how different things said by adults can be confusing to the child and how we can negotiate and still support them in taking the best decisions while engaging on sexuality education.

As the session followed, lot of other fears and questions came up; one being that ‘I totally trust my daughter not to see bad stuff on internet and TV. However I am very curious to know what she does on internet as she spends lot of time there. I don’t want to invade her privacy but wish she could just tell me. I have asked her but she said it’s nothing bad’

This is where we brought out the children’s perspective – there are two things; one she may be watching things that seems inappropriate to the parents but as long as she feels safe to watch it- it’s okay; also the child might think that parents would be judging them for what they do on internet courtesy our upbringing and messages we receive from our society. Another thing is with open conversations, normalizing the so called tabooed topics, she would take some time to be okay with sharing things and even then it is okay for child to keep few things to themselves there is nothing wrong in that.

‘We were watching an English movies and there was kissing scene. My husband is not very comfortable so he asked my son to close eyes!’ Interesting but can we ensure that he does that every time such scenes come up? Also it’s not necessary to jump right on ‘sex’ part of sexuality education – we can start taking small steps, make these conversations more often normalizing them and at the same time work on our own ideas, mindset and beliefs that stop us from communicating with our child making the conversations unnecessarily awkward!

It’s rightly and truly said that gender is an indispensable part of sexuality education- the question was raised that when the parent talks to boys about sex – they are all excited, jumping and full of questions while girls are silent, listen carefully. From our experience of working with all girls and all boys group , we could explain this and also emphasis that being eager is not bad but can we make these conversations comfortable so that girls are more participative and are not conscious of what would people think about them!

I am so grateful for all the parents who participated, brought out so many questions, curiosities, vulnerability and a desire to have open communication with their child so that they are more equipped with sexuality education. One of the amazing things about this session was that despite our call was disconnected thrice due to less time for meeting, the parents keep joining back on Sunday evening. I couldn’t be more happy and thankful that our workshop culminated on such a bright note!    

Dan Oswald has rightly said, “Communication must be HOT- That’s honest, Open and Two-way”