Have you ever wondered how to talk to kids about sex? Sex is one of the uncomfortable conversations we aren’t always are comfortable having, and it’s even harder when educating your own kids. But it shouldn’t be. With Valentines Day coming up, it’s the perfect teaching opportunity to talk to kids about sex. But where do you even start? How do you even bring it up?
Kathleen Hema is a sexual health educator and has recently brought her career onto youtube. She has lectured at universities, presented at conferences, and facilitated workshops and seminars for the past 13 years but taking her career to Youtube was her scariest moment in sexual health education and public speaking thus far.
She started her Youtube channel, ‘It's Time for the Sex Talk for Parents’, knowing that the internet can be an unforgiving place but also a brilliant way to reach a large audience. Kathleen believes that parents want to talk to their kids about sex but:
they feel afraid of saying the wrong thing,
they don't know how to get the 'sex talk' started,
they think that their child is too young for 'the talk', and/or they think that their child doesn't want to talk to them about sex.
Making Youtube videos is like having a full-time job but she doesn’t make an income from her videos as she does it in her spare time and in between her other commitments.
She could've gone back to work and continued to be a sex educator in the traditional sense, but she was curious to see if she could fill in some of the gaps that she had seen around sex education in the home.
She stated, “As a parent, I found lots of parenting resources to help me raise resilient and confident children, but nothing specifically focused on how parents can be their child's primary sexual health educator.
I wondered if I could address some of these social inequalities and reach other parents like myself via Youtube so they can have medically-accurate, age-appropriate, and honest conversations about sex, sexual health, and sexuality with their child. No parent or caregiver has to pay for childcare in order to watch one of my videos or take time off work in order to attend a workshop on how to have the sex talk in the home. My videos are available for free, on Youtube, and can be watched multiple times at the parent's convenience.
I took a leap and started a #Youtube channel; still waiting to see how I will land!”
Check out Kathleen Hema’s YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/KathleenHema