I still remember what my mother said to me when I got a girlfriend. “Use a condom.” That was it. No pretending it wasn’t going to happen.
As for drugs, my family never liked them. They never told us kids, but my father had an issue with opiates that’s cost him his job and medical license. My older brother also had an issue with opiates.
I used to do a lot of research on erowid on drugs. Between my brother and I it was a lot of don’t be stupid, do your research on what’s safe and what interacts with each other, and stay away from opiates.
For the most part, it wasn’t talked about much in my family, other than my older brother my younger brother and I didn’t gravitate to them too much or hang with people who did. I ended up getting really into weed for a short time, because that’s where my ADHD hyper focus hobby was for a few months. Then I realized I didn’t like not being sober that much.
Man, my parents were cool as shit about this. And I think it had really good consequences for me later on, like in college.
Sex was positively viewed, but strict about protection (rightly so), and drugs were described as a spectrum with weed being very low, and the scary drugs (heroine) being very scary. They were honest about wanting me to wait for drugs and booze till I was more adult, but let me have a few parties with friends where everyone crashed at their house. It was super fun, and very badass feeling. I got to college and was like … Meh? On partying.
Definitely not the only way to go about it, but the honesty helped me weigh consequences of it all a bit better, I think.
What you just described is the absolute dream I have for all adolescents everywhere.
Society (from my perspective) doesn’t seem to realize that people grow way more by experience than they ever will by age.
You got your partying out of the way as an adolescent and we’re way less inclined towards it during college which it’s easy to argue was a way more important phase of your life.
I have the same experience as the first few commenters. These things were never talked about in my home.
How can we as a society justify refusing to educate the youth about these things and leaving them to haphazardly stumble through the same mistakes that we all made?
My mum at least asked ‘do you learn about this stuff in school?’, to which i awkwardly said yeah. We did get some pretty good classes on bodies, the biology of reproduction, and contraception. I even remember having a test on contraceptives in biology class.
Unfortunately, it was very cis-het only. I had to figure out by myself that I should be using protection during sex even if both participants had a vulva.
As for drugs, it never occurred to my mum that anything other than alcohol and nicotine could be relevant to us. She did well on keeping me from smoking just by telling me about her experience as a smoker and how hard it was to quit. I kept my drinking and weed smoking from her pretty well because even a mention would make her angry. To be fair, as an adult I understand she had some trauma from her mum being an alcoholic.
Drugs: Never mentioned. There were anti-drug ads on TV 24/7.
Sex: Never mentioned. Well, by the time they got around to having “the talk” we asked them if they needed to know anything. Mom laughed, dad looked embarrassed, and that was that.
My folks were hippies. Did the woodstock thing and all. I grew up around them smoking pot at parties and stuff. When Nancy Reagan told us all it was bad my parents told me she was full of shit, that smoking dope sometimes was as ok as drinking a few beers and that when I moved out of the house I was free to do what I wanted.
As for swx, pretty much the same thing. Wrap your willie, wait till you’re abdcadult, and don’t do it here.
I’m as honest with my kids about drugs now.
don’t do it here.
You mean they told you you could fuck but just not in the home? How on earth is that productive?
Sure, go fuck in your car and risk catching shit from the cops or go get blown behind the library at school and risk getting expelled (real story that actually happened to a friend of an old gf).
I agree. We let the kids have privacy in the house, there is nothing wrong with having a sexual relationship with your boyfriend/girlfriend, you don’t need to be embarrassed by that, it just needs to be private. They also know to KNOCK if our door is closed.
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Not discussed, they assumed I knew, they were correct.
My parents both openly smoked weed in front of my from a young age. I was told that as long as I was home by curfew and didn’t come home in a cop car they were fine with me doing basically whatever cuz they knew I wasn’t a complete moron (my dad worked in the school system and knew all the ACTUAL problem children really well, they hated me because of that so I never got to be a hoodlum lol), though my nugs WERE taken from me at 15 because “you were dumb enough to let us catch you with it” which is fair but I say they were out and bumming off of me without saying so lol
As for sex I got a quick talk about using a condom after my dad caught my GF and I doing it, but otherwise it was left mostly unsaid cuz my sex Ed wasnt trash
Catholic, so not much.
My mom did pick me up some condoms when she knew I was banging though. Not much talk except be safe.
Don’t do drugs, don’t do sex, only bad people going to hell do that. Even the part about us being their biological children was framed as “can you believe what we had to go through?”, because evangelical Christianity is a hell of a drug itself.
Presumably, the teenage talks would have been different, if they hadn’t totally checked out of parenting at that point.
You will burn in hell for eternity and always as demons bite and eat your flesh from your body.
My mom found out I had mushrooms and asked if I was gonna do heroin
Nonexistent, except for a comment from my mom once that she didn’t understand why drugs were illegal, didn’t care what people did in their own homes.
With my kids just an open door communication style, they ask I answer - so like when one got a boyfriend and both were first timers, she asked about STI, was it safe if she had birth control, and we talked about the HPV, HIV, Hepatitis, things you could possibly get from being born or nonsexual contact, but also about relative risk, and how there is always going to be some, but that shouldn’t stop you from living, being open and talking with your sex partners. And talked about enthusiasm rather than consent, that you should not push anyone for consent, wait until both of you feel enthusiastic about sex to do it.
Oh and drugs they don’t seem interested in, alcohol I let them try rarely off and on when teenagers and all have turned out to be responsible with it, some drink occasionally, or weekly, some none, but none abuse it - their bio dad was alcoholic/drug abuser as was his dad and brother so they are kinda hyper aware already that they could have a risk, and have them as bad examples. They don’t want a dependency, so all tread lightly. None seem to have inherited the alcoholic/addictive trait though.
If you do this, invisible sky god will make your life terrible and you will rot in imaginary pain forever more after you die.
Me: so… Just like now?
This was exactly my experience. Extreme repression of my sexuality via religion.
Shamed for every impulse. Shamed for masturbation (Not by them of course, they had someone from the church do it. I guess the idea of doing it themselves was just too fucking awkward for them). Shamed for porn (Back when porn was waiting 20 min for an image of tits to load).
It is an overall tenet of my advocacy that this cannot possibly be right. We all hit puberty, all we want to do is fuck as we are driven towards it directly by nature.
Maybe there is a societal need to curate that impulse, I can accept that. But not like this. Not through guilt, shame, and fear.
Neither sex nor drugs were ever discussed…at least not by my parents.
Same here
