How to Talk with Kids About Consent

The news this week has once again underscored the need to teach children at an early age about consent. Here are a few resources to help parents and teachers address the topic in age-appropriate ways.

Elizabeth Kleinrock, a third-grade teacher in California and a recipient of the 2018 Teaching Tolerance Award for Excellence in Teaching, explains “How My Third-Graders and I Address Consent.” Many of her ideas could be used by parents as well as teachers.
The Child Mind Institute’s “How to Talk to Kids About Sex and Consent” has ideas and advice from two clinical psychologists.
Bonnie Rough, author of Beyond Birds and Bees: Bringing Home a New Message to Our Kids About Sex, Love, and Equality, which includes a chapter on consent, writes in the New York Times today on “The New Birds and Bees: Teaching Kids About Boundaries and Consent.”
The Good Men Project’s 2013 piece on “The Healthy Sex Talk: Teaching Kids Consent, Ages 1-21,” remains a useful overview for addressing the issue at different ages.
Romper’s “5 Children’s Books That Teach The Importance Of Consent” happily includes the all-gender-inclusive Sex Is a Funny Word, by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth, which I have long loved for many reasons.
Teach Consent, a project of the Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance, offers a one-minute video for youth 11 to 16 showing examples of how to ask for consent. They also provide two discussion guides, one for parents and one for group facilitators, “to spark conversations with teens about respectful relationships, the importance of consent, and how teens can ask for and give consent in their friendships and dating relationships.”
AMAZE, the queer-inclusive site with sex-ed videos for 10- to 14-year olds, offers a playlist of videos on personal safety and consent, which I’ve embedded below.

Teach your kids—no matter their gender—about consent and what it means for them and those around them. It’s not a complete solution to the horrific stories of abuse and assault that plague our world, but it’s a step towards positive change.