Inside: Find out how to turn your kids invading your bedroom (or personal space), into a teachable moment about love, sex and relationships.
So how do you turn ‘kids invading your bedroom’ into an opportunity to teach your child something important.
Teachable moments should be your Number 1 strategy for sex education!
Learn more about what a teachable moment is. You can read this article to learn more about what to do when your kids walk in on you having sex.
Read the transcription
[00:00:00] How do you turn kids invading your bedroom into a teachable moment? Let’s find out.
[Music]
[00:00:15] Hi, I’m Cath Hakanson from Sex Ed Rescue and this channel is all about helping parents get more comfortable with sex education. These teachable moment videos are about how we can turn everyday situations around us into an opportunity to talk about sex with our kids.
There’s a link to a blog post underneath about how to talk to your kids if they walk in and find you having sex, because that does happen. Google the topic and you’ll be amazed at how many articles have been written about what to do if your kids walk in. There are even some funny threads, where groups of people chat about this sort of stuff online.
Some of those people share funny stories and my YouTube video on “What to do when your kids walk in,” somehow got listed as a recommended video and it’s gone crazy. It’s funny to read comments that say, ‘Yeah, that happened to me,’ or ‘I walked in and I saw my parents doing this,’ or ‘I was a parent and it was just so funny.’ It’s another YouTube video on my channel that’s worth having a look at.
[00:01:37] But anyway there’s a couple of different things I need to talk about. What if they walk in and you’re actually having sex? Luckily for most parents, once you have children in your life, daytime sex rarely happens. I don’t know about you, but I cannot remember the last time my partner and I had daytime sex. Now, sex usually happens at night time when the kids are away in bed, and if they’re away it doesn’t matter when or where you do it! LOL
They’re not going to catch you and if they do, they might not see too much. I’ve already talked about that on my blog and as you know, I’m all about being very open and honest with children so that they can trust us to give them the right information. Because if they find something that concerns them or someone shows them porn they can think, ‘I can ask mum what this is, because I can ask her, and she’ll tell me the truth. She always answers my questions.’ Or if you don’t, they could think, ‘Well mum still tells me that Santa Claus is real therefore, I can’t ask her because she won’t tell me the truth.’
[00:02:41] You want your kids to know that you’re reliable. So, if they walk in on you and they discover you’re having sex, the next day when you’ve both recovered is a great opportunity to talk to them. First, you can remind them that you might have been making a baby, but you might not have been as well. It’s a good reminder to kids that we have sex for other reasons.
I still remember when my daughter was sitting at the table eating dinner with my husband and I and she turned around to me and said, “So you and dad have had sex more than twice,” because I’ve only got two kids. I looked at my partner and blushed; I get uncomfortable with personal questions from my kids, but my husband said, “Yep, we’ve had sex more than twice,” and looked at me. Yeah, you know what it’s like when you’re in a long-term relationship and you’re up all night. Sex doesn’t happen as often, so I knew what he was thinking in the background. LOL
[00:03:42] But yes, it’s an opportunity to talk to kids about the fact that grownups have sex because it’s fun. We all have sex for lots of different reasons and that parents not only do it to make babies, but they also do it because it’s a way to connect, it’s a way of loving, and it’s a way of communicating. We do it because it feels nice or we’re stressed. We might do it because we’re females and we get horny when we’re ovulating. There are lots of different reasons as to why we have sex.
[00:04:15] Now, another thing that you could talk to your kids about is the fact that it’s your personal space and if the door is closed, it’s closed for a reason. So, they need to learn to knock. If you respect their privacy, they need to respect yours. In our household for example, if my kids are in the bathroom or their bedroom, I will knock before I go in because I expect them to knock before they barge in on me.
Now half the time, they don’t because it can take them forever to learn, but it’s good to have that constant reminder. This is something they need to understand when they go out into the big, wide world. If they do invade your bedroom, talking about that social etiquette and privacy is a great opportunity. That and about boundaries, about space that they’re allowed into, and about space they’re not allowed into.
[00:05:14] That’s all I can think of now– and these are just the things that I’ve thought of now. You might think of something that’s completely different.
If you can think of anything to add to talk to your child about, please do throw it in because there are so many possible conversations of any situation.
Okay, I hope that helps!
