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Teaching kids consent is a vital and ongoing conversation from toddlers to teens.  By starting these types of conversations early, it won’t be awkward to continue to have these conversations as your kids enter the middle school years and beyond.

Consent, Consent, Consent – Does Your Toddler to Teen Understand What This Means?

First of all, I’ll start with the middle school years which are a time of experimentation and a time when things can go very wrong because it is such new territory.

How does your child handle a first kiss that moves into hands sliding up or down the other person’s body?

How does your child handle their first date at the movies when they suddenly find themselves in the back row of the movie theatre and discover it’s a two hour make-out date and their date is not actually there to watch a movie?

How does your child handle being called  “Hey Bitch” by others  in a “fun” way ?

How does your child handle it when another kid slaps their butt as a “joke”?

What about a dare?  (There’s so many situations where kids are dared to do inappropriate things.)

How does your child handle receiving inappropriate texts or sexual memes (supposedly hilarious visual images)?

What about being part of a group chat that involves inappropriate talk such as threats or inappropriate sexual comments?

The list goes on because the risks are rampant, especially in this age of technology.

Have You Taught Your Child About Consent?  (This begins as a toddler and continues into the teen years as outlined below)

Teaching Kids Consent –>Your Young Child:

• Use the real names for body parts
• Help children to wash their own body parts and teach them that this is their body
• Explain that strangers, family friends, same-age friends, family relatives etc. are not allowed to touch their bodies and they must never feel pressured to touch anyone else’s body parts either
• Teach them to ask their friends for hugs before giving a hug
• Talk about the importance of the words “no” and “stop” and to honour these words
• Emotion coach your child – talk about feelings a lot.  (See this previous post on talking about negative feelings underneath their behaviour and how how to handle them well)
• Don’t force your child to hug or kiss anyone, even if it’s a family friend or a relative (you can explain your reasons to Auntie later) – they need to learn to trust what feels okay inside of them.  They can always wave “good-bye” or “hello” or give a high-five or fist punch.
• Talk about “gut instincts” and that “weird” feeling that we sometimes get inside
• When playing tickling games, pillow fighting or play wrestling – always model consent and ask your child if they want you to continue to wrestle or tickle.  When you’re pillow fighting, if it gets too much,  call a time-out or say “stop” and explain calmly that “stop” means “stop” (See this previous post on the importance of rough-housing)
• Teach your child that if they’re ever put in an uncomfortable position and they don’t feel comfortable saying “no”, they can exit and say they need to go to the bathroom
• Teach them how babies are made
• Teach them to read non-verbal signs – use pets as an example.  Talk about signs that show a friend needs help.  Ask who they can go to if they need help.
• Talk about how pets listen to their instincts – dogs will bark at someone they don’t trust or won’t go near someone they don’t trust – we need to listen to our instincts too
• Show the younger children this “Consent for Kids” video

Teaching Kids Consent –> Older Children, Middle Schoolers, and Teens

There is a well-known teaching kids consent video that compares offering a person a cup of tea to asking for sexual activity consent.

You can watch it here (for tweens and teens):

Sometimes this video gets criticized for making light of consent, but on the other hand, I think it’s an excellent entry point for having a conversation about consent.  It’s light-hearted, which means kids will actually watch it with you, and then you can have further discussion.

Ask about their “inner voice” – have they ever had a situation where they felt uncomfortable being too close to someone, being touched by someone, being kissed by someone?

Do they realize the importance of checking-in with their partner that they’re comfortable and before each stage of sexual activity?

Do you and your child have a code word, that can be used, by text, in person or phone call to signal “get me out of here”?

Has your child thought about saying they need to go to the bathroom, if they need to get themselves out of an uncomfortable situation?

Do you and your tween/teen have regular 1:1 time where these kinds of conversations can happen? Read why this is so important and how much our kids want to feel heard, understood and supported –>Lessons from Teens for Parents

You can click here for the pdf sheet of questions that I use to discuss the tea consent video with older children and teens.

In the middle school years, this is just the beginning of experimentation, competition and posturing, as touching each other is all so new.  We need to continue this conversation all through the teen years and share stories such as Brock Turner’s so they know it’s real.

There’s also a lot of confusion.  Does your child know all the laws around sex?  We can’t assume they do.  “We don’t know what we don’t know”.  Ask them what they actually know.

Do they realize that the rules for consent apply whether it’s friend to friend, same sex or opposite sex, romantic partner to romantic partner, someone you know or someone you don’t know etc.?

Does Your Child Know the Laws Regarding Sex?

What is the definition of Sexual Assault?

According to the BC Criminal Justice website, sexual assault is defined as:

• Your words or actions indicated that you did not want to have or continue sexual contact, but the sexual contact continued
• You submitted to sexual contact because someone threatened or used force on you
• You were not able to give consent to sexual contact (for example, you were drugged, impaired or have a disability)
• Someone persuaded you to have sexual contact by using their position of authority or power over you

Teens need to know that this applies to them.

This applies to them when they are dating someone too.

This applies to them even if they turn around after and say they were “joking” and didn’t really mean to be threatening or blackmailing to the other person – it’s too late to go back.

Sexual assault is a crime and the police will and need to be involved.

According to the Canadian Justice Government website:

All sexual activity without consent is a criminal offence, regardless of age.

This website also outlines the ages that different individuals can have sex with each other:

This is a summary (but I encourage you to read the website with your middle schooler/teen/young adult):

In Canada, the age of consent to sexual activity is 16 years.

There are Close-in-Age exceptions…

A 14 or 15 year old can consent to sexual activity as long as the partner is less than five years older and there is no relationship of trust, authority or dependency or any other exploitation of the young person. This means that if the partner is 5 years or older than the 14 or 15 year old, any sexual activity is a criminal offence.

There is also a “close in age” exception for 12 and 13 year olds. A 12 or 13 year old can consent to sexual activity with a partner as long as the partner is less than two years older and there is no relationship of trust, authority or dependency or any other exploitation of the young person. This means that if the partner is 2 years or older than the 12 or 13 year old, any sexual activity is a criminal offence.

Do you remember the Brock Turner Rape Crime?  I wrote an article titled 7 Virtues We Can Teach Our Children in Connection to the Brock Turner Rape Crime . You can read it here.

Sexting and the Law

Sexting – the sending of pictures of naked body parts is also illegal.

It is illegal to produce, possess or distribute naked or sexually explicit pictures and/or videos of young people under 18 years of age.   

Click here to read more about Sexting on the RCMP website.

Ask your kids what they know about consent and sexting.  How do they define sexting? Ask them what they think constitutes a criminal offence.  We can’t assume that this is common sense – it needs to be explicitly taught!

Sextortion – It’s illegal for anyone to threaten you into sending naked pictures or performing sexual acts on video. Read about the Amanda Todd tragedy here – she was stalked, tormented and blackmailed from age 12-15 years by a predator from the Netherlands, while she was living in Coquitlam, British Columbia.  Ten years after her suicide, Aydin Coban, her predator, has finally been convicted and sentenced to 13 years in jail in the Netherlands.

There are too many true stories from young kids to tweens to teens to adults about boundaries being crossed.  Let’s work together to ensure our kids are crystal clear about boundaries and consent.  Please help spread the word about this very important topic by forwarding this article to your friends and family.

For further reading, my very good friend, author, journalist, mother of two daughters, and sexual assault survivor, Sally Clark, has written a book titled “The Way of the Warrior Mama – The Guide to Raising and Protecting Strong Daughters”.  It’s available  here.

Warmly,

PS. Registration is now open for my next round of “Self-Empowerment” groups to teach children ages 7-9yrs. and 10-12 yrs. about boundaries, social dynamics/pressures, mindset, self-regulation, and valuing oneself through self-worth.  Click here for more information and to register. 

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