As the gen­er­a­tions go on, teenagers are be­com­ing more aware of their sex­u­al­i­ty at younger ages. To help pro­tect them from the risk of get­ting sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases, it is im­por­tant to ed­u­cate and make them aware of the ways in which they can pro­tect them­selves.

Schools in T&T do not of­fer sex ed­u­ca­tion class­es, which means it’s up to the par­ents and guardians to en­sure that chil­dren are prop­er­ly ed­u­cat­ed.

Teens are at a stage in life where they some­times do not lis­ten to what their par­ents have to say. You sit them down and get the usu­al, “I know, Mom” or “Okay Dad, I heard you.” Well, this is where par­ents need to start get­ting cre­ative with their meth­ods of hav­ing ‘the talk’.

The usu­al method is to scare them with the re­al­i­ty of sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases (STDs), but this usu­al­ly doesn’t stop them. In­stead of try­ing to scare your teens, in­form them of the dif­fer­ent types of STDs and dif­fer­ent meth­ods that can be used to pre­vent them, the most com­mon be­ing con­tra­cep­tion.

Fo­cus on chang­ing the be­hav­iour rather than us­ing a scare tac­tic. Let them know that us­ing a con­dom is a great way to pre­vent con­tract­ing STDs and make the dis­cus­sion around con­dom use seem very nor­mal dur­ing sex­u­al ac­tiv­i­ty. The hope is that this be­comes some­thing they al­ways re­mem­ber.

Whether sex­u­al­ly ac­tive or not, it is im­por­tant for your teens to know about STD test­ing and where the ser­vice can be avail­able to them. While pre­ven­tion is bet­ter than cure, some­times this doesn’t al­ways go as planned. It is im­por­tant to em­pha­sise that STD test­ing is a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that comes with the choice of be­ing sex­u­al­ly ac­tive and it can pro­tect them and their part­ner/s. Make them aware of the fact that many STDs do not show clear symp­toms or signs, and the on­ly way to clear­ly di­ag­nose them is by get­ting test­ed.

The rea­son for ed­u­cat­ing your teens about be­ing sex­u­al­ly ac­tive and ways to pro­tect them­selves, is to hope that they ac­tu­al­ly do. Scare tac­tics, graph­ic im­ages and po­ten­tial med­ical con­di­tions as a means of ed­u­ca­tion, on­ly have a tem­po­rary ef­fect and will not en­cour­age them to be safe.

Mak­ing the con­ver­sa­tion more about pre­ven­tion and less about ab­sti­nence gives them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to make the choice on their own. If they do choose to be sex­u­al­ly ac­tive, par­ents can seek com­fort in the fact that they’ve ed­u­cat­ed their teens on the ways to pre­vent both STDs and po­ten­tial preg­nan­cies.