By: Jason Jowers
On August 5th, 2021, OneOp hosted our latest webinar in the Sexual Behavior in Children and Youth Series (SBCY) entitled “Talking with Youth about Sex, Sexuality, and Media.” This webinar was another great installment in our SBCY Series, which has been ongoing since May 2019!
The goals of this webinar focused on discussing strategies for speaking to children about sex, sexuality, pornography, and interaction with their peers. This event emphasized ways for parents to recognize how to have sensitive but needed conversations with children on these important topics. We discussed the importance and difference between parents-caregivers and other caring adults and the impact of different roles adults play in a young person’s life and how each role can have a positive impact on the development of young people in regard to their development and identity. We also reviewed the impact of social media and its relationship with pornography and social media’s role in modern youth life.
We were joined in this webinar by Clifford Sipes, a facilitator of youth voices at the National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth (NCSBY). He specializes in the creation of youth advisories and getting youth and young adults involved in the training of professionals that serve them.
Webinar Highlights
We wanted to share some of the highlights from this webinar session that are beneficial for service providers and continue to provide strategies and resources when working specifically with military children and families.
- We began this webinar by going over the importance of language and how to honor the child, person, and family with the type of language we use when discussing issues of problematic sexual behavior (PSB) and kids.
- Clifford shares ways of being when working with children and families in a therapeutic setting when addressing PSB. This included ways to eliminate tension, facilitate youth engagement in the process, and the roles of their parents or other adults in their lives.
- Clifford next began to speak on the intersection of social media and pornography and how it has become a normalized process for these two to coexist. Also, he expressed how children are growing up with social media and how it is a big part of our culture. He also expressed the issues of cyberbullying that a lot of kids face these days.
- We then went over education and prevention of PSB-related behaviors by highlighting issues to look out for and to be knowledgeable about like teen dating violence, manipulative and stalking behaviors, the phenomenon of sexting and sending nudes, and commercial sexual exploitation of children and sex trafficking.
- Clifford finished up by expressing the importance of ongoing education and prevention practices of understanding sexual health and sexual assault issues for children and teens.
Archived Viewing and CE Credit Info
If you missed the live event, you can watch the archived recording on our YouTube channel on the event page, “Talking with Youth about Sex, Sexuality, and Media.” Free Continuing Education Credits for this event are still available for licensed social workers, professional counselors, case managers, certified family life educators, and family therapists. The Case Management CE credits are available through August 2022 and the UT Social Work CE credits through August 2023.
And be sure and join us for our next SBCY Series webinar coming up on September 16th, 2021, entitled “Understanding Children’s Sexual Knowledge and Behavior from a Developmental Perspective.” Be sure and RSVP for the live event and thank you for your continued support in this fantastic ongoing webinar series.
