Sexy, Too Soon?
Sexy, Too Soon. Parent Map, a company that helps parents navigate parenthood, and offers many different resources, is sponsoring a panel discussion this Wednesday night at the Seattle Children’s Theatre from 7-9 pm. The topic is “Sexy, Too Soon” and takes on the issue of body image, media and self-esteem. We’ll be looking at various ways parents can help their children handle all this in age-appropriate ways.
10 year olds in a limo. One of the examples we’ll be talking about (yours truly will be moderating), is a recent party for a birthday girl and her friends, who were taken in a limo to cruise around Alki, given fake bling, drinks out of a champagne classes, and had manicures — all this, at age 10!
It’s on TV, in music, everywhere. ‘Sex sells,’ as the saying goes, and kids these days are exposed to an amazing amount of innuendo, references to sex, sexy clothes, and language in the media. It’s tough to escape, but does offer some ‘teachable moments’ for parents to talk about these things with their children about what’s appropriate, what isn’t, and what the parents’ values are.
On the Panel. Parent Map has put together a very impressive panel of experts for this discussion. They include:
Amy Lang — the Mom’s Choice Award-winning author of Birds and Bees and Your Kids and The Ask Anything Journal. She is also the author of the forthcoming book Is this love? A teenagers’ guide to dating and romance.
Dr. Diana Wiley — has almost 30 years experience as a Board-certified sex, marriage and family therapist. She is now part of the Seattle Institute for Sex, Therapy, Education and Research.
Julie Metzger — is a nurse, who along with her colleague Dr. Rob Lehman, founded the popular program at Seattle Children’s Hospital called “For Girls Only” and “For Boys Only,” which teaches kids what to expect through adolescence.
Emily Cherkin — teaches 7th grade English at Seattle Academy. She runs a workshop for girls based on author Rosalind Wiseman’s work. Wiseman wrote the book Queen Bees & Wannabes which later became the movie “Mean Girls.”
We also have two 8th grade girls from the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, but because of their ages, I’m not identifying them by name on this blog.
Please join us and bring your questions! We’d love to see parents there on this Wednesday night at Seattle’s Children’s Theatre, with a reception starting at 6pm, and our panel discussion from 7-9pm. For more information, check out: http://www.parentmap.com/content/category/24/162/444/#panel.
