Raising Wildlings
Raising Wildlings
Navigating Sex Education As Parents with Cath Hakanson
It's time to gain the confidence to flex your 'uncomfortable muscles' and become an agent of positive change in your family's life – because when it comes to sex education, silence is not an option.
This week we're chatting with Cath Hakanson, mother, sex educator, and founder of Sex Ed Rescue. Cath is all about helping kids and parents have better relationships through empowering conversations. With the right tools, self-confidence, and strategies, sex education can be less threatening, more natural, and much easier.
Cath is a firm believer that if kids can talk to their parents about sex, they can talk to their parents about anything!
In this episode Cath shares:
0:00 Empowering Parent-Child Conversations on Sex
11:38 Talking About Families, Relationships, and Pleasure
19:34 Open Conversations About Sex Education
30:36 Resourceful Parenting and Sex Education
41:34 Importance of Open Communication About Sex
From conversation starters to tackling sensitive subjects like pornography and consent, Cath's knowledge will help you feel supported and ready to make these crucial conversations a natural and normal part of your child's upbringing.
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This week we're chatting with Kath Hakanson, mother, sex educator and founder of Sex Ed Rescue. Her life's work is all about helping kids and parents have better relationships through empowering conversations. She provides parents with the tools, self-confidence and strategies to make sex education less threatening, more natural and much easier, and believes that if kids can talk to their parents about sex, they can talk to their parents about anything. Let's chat to Kath. We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we record today the Kabi, kabi and Gabi Gabi people. We recognise their continued connection to the land and waters of this beautiful place. We recognise Aboriginal people as the original custodians of this land and acknowledge that they have never ceded sovereignty. We respect all Gabi Gabi elders, ancestors and emerging elders and all First Nations people listening today.
Vicci Oliver:Welcome to Raising Wildlings, a podcast about parenting, alternative education and stepping into the wilderness, however that looks with your family.
Nicki Farrell:Each week, we'll be interviewing experts that truly inspire us to answer your parenting and education questions. We'll also be sharing stories from some incredible families that took the leap and are taking the road less travelled.
Vicci Oliver:We're your hosts, vicky and Nikki from Wildlings Forest School Popping your headphones, settle in and join us on this next adventure.
Nicki Farrell:Welcome to the show, kath. Thank you so much for joining us and for those that are, you know, listening along, I do like to make this a bit personal. Kath has been so flexible this morning because we had a last-minute neighbourhood not going to say emergency, because that's very dramatic, but I always find that people we attract to our podcast and into our world so compassionate. So thank you for your compassion and understanding today. How are you today?
Cath Hakanson:Hi, nikki, and thanks for inviting me along. Oh look, I sat here this morning, got the kids off to school, sat at my desk and started typing into Facebook, talking to people all over the world, and in the background I've got this gang of juvenile cookaburras. I live in the inner city and we don't get cookaburras, and it's like this gang move in for a couple of days then then they disappear. So I'm sitting here typing with all these beautiful cookaburra stuff in the background, living in the inner city, and it's just such a great start to the day. So I'm really glad to be here talking about my favourite topic sex.
Nicki Farrell:Me too, because, as I was saying before, I'm an HPE teacher. So and this is one of the reasons I went into high school and PE was for actually the health component and the relationships component. So this is something I'm super excited and passionate about. But as a business owner too, I'm really curious to find out how you ended up here with Sex Ed Rescue. Can you talk to us about that?
Cath Hakanson:Oh, it's ironic. I often joke to my peers. If I wanted to make money out of sex, I'd be either on the corner pimping, because I'd probably make more money, or teaching people sex techniques, or running a porn site. My whole life has been sexual health. I've. You know how sometimes you find a passion in life, or human sexuality has been a topic that totally intrigues me and I geek out on it. So my career has always been something in regards to sexuality. So I'll work, for you know, three or four years in STIs, and then I get interested in women's health, and then I get interested in sexual dysfunction, and then clinical drug trials for sex and then research.
Cath Hakanson:But I became a parent and even though I had worked as a sex educator in schools, teaching kids, I was sitting there as a parent and it was like I didn't know what to do with my own kids. I'd have a kid masturbating on the lounge and I just didn't know what to do because I could talk to people at work, but talking to my own kid about sex was really really hard. So I then did a bit of a deeper dive into it and realised that I wasn't alone. Other parents were struggling and I was frustrated because you'd go to a website and there'd be an article and it would say teach them what sex is, but they wouldn't tell you how to do it. Or teaching the names of their private parts, but they didn't tell you what you shouldn't do. And I got frustrated because I thought, no wonder no one can do it, because this is just not enough information. So I created Sex Ed Rescue just as a resource to help parents to start having these conversations.
Nicki Farrell:That's, I think, the hardest part, isn't it? I was saying we have you know. So I'm in the homeschooling community and we have. It's a spectrum, like all the things. It's a spectrum of diverse, beautiful flavours and races and cultures and genders, and all the fluidities are making words up now. But one thing I've noticed is there tends to be a lean towards the conservative, which comes out of love and I'll say that straight up, it always comes out of love the thought of protecting children through, you know, saving, protecting their childhood and keeping them children longer. But part of that is avoiding having sex ed conversations. As a high school teacher, I've seen the later result of that. You know whether that's STIs or unwanted pregnancies, sexual assaults, rapes, girls not knowing how to say no all of the things these really, really big conversations. So I'd love for that to be one of our first questions of you is how early is too early? When can we start? And the what? What should we start with, kath?
Cath Hakanson:Yeah, and look, you're right there. As parents, we want to do a good job, we want to protect our kids and we want to keep them safe and we don't want to harm them. And I think that's why so many of us struggle with sex education, because it's like we know we need to have the talk, because you hear about it or it might have happened to you, but you just and you know it needs to happen, but you're just not sure because you're sitting there thinking okay, if I talk to them about sex, does that mean that they're going to go to school and tell everyone? You know they're going to start doing blowjobs in the toilets at lunchtime and start practicing. And we just have all these fears and all these doubts. And so, as parents, we want to protect our kids.
Cath Hakanson:But, ironically, when I first started diving into sex education, I had all those fears and doubts myself and it was like, well, why do we need to have these conversations and why are they important?
Cath Hakanson:So I started going out there and being curious and watching people how, talking to my friends, watching how they parented, and digging a little bit deeper to see you know, what's the benefit of these conversations or why should we be having them, and it took me a little while to sort of make sense of it, but I the one thing I realized is that sex education actually protects our kids and it actually empowers them Absolutely, because a lot of us, if we look at our own sexual pasts and think about yourself going through puberty and some of your first early sexual experiences, if you had had parents that had talked to you, had allowed you to come to you with their questions and their concerns or provided you with other ways to get that information, I reckon most of us would have made totally different sex decisions and I used to work as a sex therapist and the one thing I noticed was that you'd get two types of clients the ones that had had good sex education and they were as rare as Hens teeth.
Cath Hakanson:And they were resilient, bums would come along in their sex lives. They'd resolve with it and deal with it and go back on to having fantastic, healthy, happy sexual relationships. But then you'd get the ones that had negative messaging, shameful messaging, no messaging, and it was a lot. The resilience sexually was a lot lower. It took a lot more work to get them comfortable and back into healthy, happy relationships. So I was seeing the long term damage of no conversations or bad conversations and the thing I've realized about sex education, and this is why we need to start talking sooner than later, because if we're not talking, kids are going to hear about it anyway.
Cath Hakanson:I live in the inner city. I have buses go past with Victoria's Secret Models on it. I go into a shopping centre and there's an adult sex toy shop there. Kids are accessing porn. You know I hear from parents that are sitting there at the swim class watching little Johnny swimming up and down the pool, but Mary, who's two years old, is sitting next to them on mum's phone watching porn while mum thinks she's playing a game at swimming classes.
Cath Hakanson:It's just beginning to hear about sex regardless, because we live in a sexualized world where marketing use sex to make money and to sell more products. So we need to be getting in early. So everyone is different. Some parents will start talking about sex at a much younger age. But most of us either talk about it at the age where they're curious about where babies come from and how they're made, or they wait until puberty, because puberty is that time where bodies are becoming sexual. They might get pregnant. So let's talk about sex and how to prevent pregnancy. So that sort of becomes the age where people naturally think of doing it. But I think it needs to start pretty much from around that age of five or six as an information about sex.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah, it's so important. I think again. I've got the same stories as you. You know hand jobs in classrooms and pregnancies where children didn't even know that they could get pregnant, and girls that got their period, and then the mum just feeling so bad and so guilty because I got my period at 14, but she got it at 10. I thought I had years ahead. So we need you know.
Nicki Farrell:And then that poor child being so scared because she didn't know what was going on and don't think we I know that as parents, we don't want to harm them from not giving them the knowledge. And they are getting it. They're on red tube, they're on all the websites and also they can hack them at school just to heads up. They can and they are hacking them at school. So school's not even a safe place. Not a safe place. They are still getting the information at school. So how do we go about starting those conversations and why is it so? Well, we've already covered why it's so important. What are the kind of topics we can start with then at five and six?
Cath Hakanson:Oh, there are so many topics to talk about and we all have different passions. So at that age of about five or six, they definitely need to know the anatomic or correct names for their body parts. So we should be talking about penises and volvers, or vaginas. We need to be talking to them about body safety. So we, because we're now starting to see a lot of inappropriate sexual touch between children and it's all rather stems. It's yeah, it's innocent, but it can be problematic. So we need to be talking to them about the other boss of their own body, talking about consent, what to do, that they need to ask their friend before they hug or kiss them or touch them and vice versa. So we need to have those body safety consent conversations. We need to talk about internet safety. We need to talk about the fact that every family should have rules about going online and what these rules are. We need to be talking about families and relationships, because kids go to school and they might have two mums at home and they go to school and at school pick up they might or at the school you know when they do that thing, where they stand in front of the school and they do like a song and something assembly or something and they notice that all their friends parents are there, but most of their friends have got a mum and a dad or just a
Cath Hakanson:mum, but they've got two mums. So we talk about families, about everyone has different families, or families are wonderful, regardless of how they've made up. And then we also talk about diversity as well, in regards to everyone's different, and that's okay. So it's okay if I've got two mums, because you've got a mum and a dad and over there's just got one mum and they're living in foster care. So talking about that diversity, because I think parents who want to have these conversations want their kids to grow up to be nice people who will make the world a better place, but we also don't want our kids to be doormats as well.
Cath Hakanson:We want them to stand up for ourselves. So talking about diversity and inclusion and talking about different relationships as well is helps with laying foundations for conversations that you're going to have later on. And then we should be talking about how babies are made and where they come from, mainly because it explains that answers the mystery of life. That's basically the only reason why we talk about it. When kids are younger, they're so curious and they're trying to work out how they came to exist. And if we can respond to their curiosity, we're giving them information that's age appropriate and we're opening the door to let them know that it's okay to come to us about questions and things that they've heard at school, about other things that they don't understand.
Nicki Farrell:That's so interesting. You ringed that up. The conversation I had when I think it was my elders it may have been my youngest brought it up first. Actually, we obviously animal lovers here, we're in the wild a lot and so it was like well, dogs make babies this way, chickens lay eggs. It was just a very curious. These animals do it this way. We're an animal, so how does it happen with us? And there was definitely that little bit of a giggle when they realised that mum and dad have sex and that that's where they came from. But it was not an uncomfortable conversation at all. It was just answering that curious drive of where do I come?
Cath Hakanson:from. There's a vintage sex education book and it starts off with chickens and dogs and it's got like the penis going into the chalk or the dog. But then you get to the parent, the human page, and all you see are the parents under a blanket and it's like there's no penetration. It's so funny isn't it?
Nicki Farrell:We had to do a deep dive into chickens because, you know, in our house there were some thoughts that roosters did have penises and there's not. So we've done a lot of biology research.
Cath Hakanson:And you can talk about sexual assault and rape with chooks as well. Yes, because there's no consent with the rooster jumping on the spot no consent.
Nicki Farrell:We've had lots of chats like that. So she doesn't look very happy, does she? I think part of that is when she's in her cage, but when she free ranges she can run. But there's some really, really in-depth conversations.
Cath Hakanson:This is one of the strategies for sex education. You see an opportunity and you grab it. So the chicken and the rooster it's like you could talk about sexual assault. You could talk about it, because there's no consent. You could talk about how babies are made. You could talk about body language. Look at her body language. What do you think she's trying to tell the rooster? So there's just so many things that you can talk about from one situation.
Nicki Farrell:Oh, I love that Pleasure. One of my passions as a sex ed teacher was to try not to just scare the bloody bejesus out of all of our teenagers and remind them that sexual intimacy is also meant to be pleasurable. This seems to be the thing that scares some parents the most, because if teenagers find out it's pleasurable which they find out through culture anyway maybe they're going to do it and they're going to do it earlier. How do we bring up pleasure in a way that keeps our children safe but also makes it not a scary task, not something they'll consent to without pleasure and knowing that they deserve for these experiences to be pleasurable?
Cath Hakanson:It's ironic that pleasure is like the new sex ed, whereas there's some nice vintage stuff that was happening in the 70s and the 80s.
Cath Hakanson:That was all pleasure based, and then we went into this very factual prevention thing Very factual, so pleasure is really, really important, and I think a lot of parents struggle with it because sexual feelings are very personal and it pushes lots of buttons. But I am starting to see a lot more books coming out talking more about pleasure and I think a nice, simple way to talk about it is you might start talking about sex so your kids know that that's how babies are made and then one day they like well, hang on. There's three in our family, so does that mean mum and dad have had sex three times? So they might ask that. And then you start talking about the fact that adults have sex for lots of different reasons. We have it for fun, we do it to make a baby, we do it to show our love, some people do it for a job, some people force people to have sex and that's against the law and they go. They should go to jail for that because that's wrong. So we can talk about all the different things.
Cath Hakanson:But as kids get closer to puberty, that's when they start to think of sex a little bit differently, because they know that their body's changing, they're seeing their friends change and that's when sexual feelings first start rising up and we kids start thinking about sex as being something that they know they might one day want to do. But they start noticing that they get different feelings around friends and start having crushes. Masturbation might start happening again for the first time. So this can be a great opportunity for us to be talking about puberty, about physical changes that happen. But there's a lot of really good books now that are coming out that are also talking about the sexual changes as well, about how the fact that our brain changes and we start having these sexual feelings and they happen to everyone and then we can start also talking about how exploring your own body and working out what works for you is a good way to go, because how can you tell a partner what you like if you don't know what you like?
Cath Hakanson:This stuff can feel scary, but if we can just start talking about stuff, it keeps the door open and conversations will just naturally evolve. But the pleasure is important because I think we've had the focus in the past on sex just being about preventing STIs, preventing pregnancy, and consents now come in because of all the sexual assault and all the stuff in America with their high profile university college cases, so we now talk more about consent. But yeah, we're now starting to part of the consent of pleasure is also about empowering our youth as well, because sex, you know, good sex is great. Yeah.
Cath Hakanson:Sex is. It's an important part of a relationship and it's important part of who we all are as well.
Nicki Farrell:Oh, I love that and I think it's. I love the touching on excuse the pun the masturbation part as well. I think that's such a good lead up into well, if you know what feels good for your body, that's what it feels good for mom and dad as well. But you know, you can mutually pleasure as well, and I think that's the conversation. I think actually in my household that we've missed at the moment is they know about self-pleasure and they know about sex for pleasure. But I don't think I've pieced together those, the two. The two are, you know, one and the same. It's all about making sure it's a pleasurable experience for everyone.
Cath Hakanson:Yeah, because sex is such a weird thing because when you think about it you have you have your tongue in someone else's mouth, you might put your mouth on their penis, vagina or bottom. You know, poo and wee comes out of there and it gets smelly and we touch their bodies. And so kids, it's like this really weird thing that we do and it sounds gross when you sort of step back and look at it. But they forget that we get all these sexual feelings, that sort of get rid of the grossness and make it desirable, and that can be really tricky because they're looking at it very mechanically. They don't get the feelings, they don't understand that good sex isn't about having a tight vagina or a big cock or knowing how to suck a penis. So they don't realize that sex is more than technique, it's more than the mechanics, it's the communication and the connection and, yeah, what happens between two people. So, yeah, it takes them a little while to get that.
Nicki Farrell:That's the conversations that missing. How do we bring that up? Connection and communication, because you've nailed it, that's it.
Cath Hakanson:And this is the thing. When I first started doing sex ed rescue and thinking about sex ed, I thought, oh yeah, it's all these conversations got to have and you got to have this convo and talk about that. And then, as I was because I was a parent myself and I was living this I was realizing that there's actually an easy way to do sex ed. I often jokingly call it the lazy way, but it's the way that fits in with busy parenting, where we're all busy. We've all got a guilt list of things that we feel we should be doing, but we don't have time.
Cath Hakanson:But sex ed can be really really easy to talk about love, sex and relationships. But it also makes your relationship with your child much stronger and more connected and it saves your time because you're talking about what's relevant. So you ask questions of your kids, you answer their questions, you read books. I used to do the thing where my kid would pick a book. I would pick a book. So every night I'd get a different book in about a topic that I thought was important. So, because I was reading this stuff as well, we would talk while we were reading, which meant we're getting stuff you know combos ticked off the list.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah nice, keep the doors open.
Cath Hakanson:But what I noticed is the more we talked, kids are smart. They go to school. They realize that these topics are taboo because they're other friends don't talk, but so they know they can come home and go. Hey mom, what's a 69er?
Cath Hakanson:And you'll answer them in an age appropriate way. So they keep coming back to you with stuff and then, because you're talking and you're getting closer, they're sharing stuff that's happening at school. So as your kids then go through teens which everyone says are the years of bad relationships, lots of tension they don't have to be like that, because you've got a strong foundation of a good relationship with, conversations are going on. So as they become teens, conversations get a bit trickier because now they're more about relationships and stories and connections and they're not really wanting the facts from you as they go through puberty. So then you've got to think well, I try to throw them a book.
Cath Hakanson:They won't read it because they just won't. It doesn't even matter if it's comic book, it's because you've suggested it. I try to start a conversation and they're not interested. So you've got to keep talking because you go well, you know I heard this great story about porn the other day and I go. So what, mom and walk off, that was wasted and it wasn't because you've just let them know that you're happy to talk about that stuff.
Nicki Farrell:So true.
Cath Hakanson:So as they get older, another easy way to keep the conversations going is to build into your weekly routine with either all the kids or individually, depending on their age differences and how much time you've got, but is to build into a ritual of always watching a program with them.
Cath Hakanson:So, my son loves Mr Beast on YouTube. He's a number one YouTuber and he's actuallya really interesting guy. One of the regulars in it is now a trans woman. So I have opportunities. I go so what's Chris's new name again? And we'll talk about that, and we talk about gender diversity. So we watch that on a Sunday morning. I stagger up and he goes hey mom, the new video is out and we watch it and we talk about stuff. So with my daughter, we'll watch, read the same books, or we'll watch the same shows like Gilmore Girls, anything from the 80s or 90s. You sit there and watch it.
Nicki Farrell:So much problematic stuff from them, isn't?
Cath Hakanson:it Like those vampire ones with the vampire and the wearable. And then she has the baby. That has a really weird name, but you watch these shows Edward and Bella, or is?
Nicki Farrell:it. Oh, talking about problematic controlling coercive relationships. So unhealthy, but you know what?
Cath Hakanson:So unhealthy. As parents, we've got to be watching those trashy programs that make us cringe, because there is so much fodder for us to talk about love, sex and relationships.
Nicki Farrell:Red flag, red flag, this is the thing.
Cath Hakanson:The trashier it is, the more problematic it is, the better it is to watch because you talk about the stuff.
Nicki Farrell:But like heartbreak, heartstopper, Heartstopper yes, heartbreaker is a heartstopper, heartstopper, yes.
Cath Hakanson:Yes, mmm, netflix is picking up all this diverse stuff. They did. They turned another book about two men falling in love red, blue and white or something. Oh, I haven't read that one. The book was brilliant, but oh, it's about two guys falling in love. It was so corny and so stereotypical, it was actually offensive. I watched it with my daughter and we talked about how harmful stereotypes are. So types can be about gay people so beautiful.
Nicki Farrell:So, yeah, I bought the book series with my son and we're going to read it together and then we'll watch the series together too, because I just think how wonderful. Like you said, it might not, it might be too good. It sounds like this is so. It's so beautiful. It's like I need to introduce more of that old trash.
Cath Hakanson:Yeah, because at the end of the day they get to that age where you've you can no longer shape them. They're working out who they are in life. So you've got to. You know it's like fight the battles that you can win or pick your battles. So, yeah, going with what their interests are and showing you've got an interest and keeping the doors open for talking.
Nicki Farrell:It's a really good reminder, though, that that's why we need to start early, because if you're waiting at 13 and 14, they're not interested to be hearing it from you anymore and you need to have that base laid and covered and that relationship of trust built already, that you're a person of knowledge to go to and a safe space. It's a lot harder.
Cath Hakanson:You've got to apologise. Apologise for not realising. And then it's a lot harder because they're more resistant because of the stage that they're at developmentally. Because, yeah, they've got to go through their healthy development and we've got to work with where they're at in their development and leaving it until the teens is impossible. But I got an email once from a mother. Her kids were in their early 20s and I don't even know how she found me, but she found me and she started reading my emails and after six months she messaged me and said Kath, I'm a great. Oh no, she was a grandmother. I'm a grandmother. My youngest youngest are in their 20s, but I've started talking to them about sex. Oh, thanks to you.
Cath Hakanson:And she said it's incredible. She said, even though we never talked, I apologise. I explained that I realised I should have been doing this and she said we're having the most amazing conversations. And she said I'm so glad that I know it made me feel like crying. Oh, terry, I'm so glad. Yeah, she's now there for her kids as young adults navigating relationships themselves. So it is never too late to start talking.
Nicki Farrell:And that's the extra degree of separation from a parent. You know that our teenagers and young adults need safe people around them that aren't their parents as well. They need you to be safe, but they also need those additional people. How do you go about earmarking those people and giving those people a bit of a heads up that you know I'd love for you to be my teens village, my safe person.
Cath Hakanson:Oh, it's tricky because, like I love Maggie Dent as parenting guru, I just think she's wonderful and she talks about how we're no longer parenting in a village. And this is the thing. When I was a kid growing up, I knew all my neighbours. My kids don't really know our neighbours because we live in the inner city. Most of their friends don't live in the same suburb. So it's I live on one side of Australia, my family are on the other side, so my kids don't have aunts and uncles, they don't have cousins or family over here and we've got different family friends. But because the lives get busy, a lot of communicating now is just done with me and my friends. The kids aren't involved.
Cath Hakanson:So it is a lot harder for kids to find that community. So that's why it's, you know, when we talk about having a village for our children, it's about making sure that they're trying to get them involved in sports, if you still can, or giving them other things to do so that they can have other trusted adults to talk to. But it is really tricky Because we're now parenting in a generation where we know about sexual abuse.
Nicki Farrell:Yeah.
Cath Hakanson:And we're a lot more private as families as well, and we're a lot more protective. So it is a lot harder for kids to have other adults to turn to, but the internet is a great place for kids to find that connection and the communication as well. We just have to be careful, though, to make sure that it's healthy communication, because we just don't want our kids to get trolled or catfished.
Nicki Farrell:And tricky adults.
Cath Hakanson:It is a lot harder to get kids those extra people for them to turn to and extra support people as they get older.
Nicki Farrell:So, speaking of that you kind of touched on, my next question was resources. I'm going to get you to tell me all about yours in a minute. Is there anywhere else you would direct children and children, teenagers, adults, parents for resources on sex ed, relationships, all of those? I don't even want to call them uncomfortable conversation conversations. We need to have to be the safe spaces for our children.
Cath Hakanson:The kids helpline. Have you been to their?
Nicki Farrell:website recently. I haven't been in a couple of years, actually not since I was teaching.
Cath Hakanson:I don't know. They must have received some funding. They have got the most amazing educational information for kids. It's like it's a resource of everything from friendship issues to sexting. It's got so kids helpline is an incredible resource the website itself and the services that they offer if kids need to ring. So there's not a lot of stuff out there actually for children or twins, lots of stuff for teens when they get over 14. But because that's funding related to preventing pregnancy and public health service.
Cath Hakanson:So there's government funding for that, but in the early years there's not much at all, which is why we need to oh, america has, it is American, so it does come from an abstinence based.
Cath Hakanson:American views on sexuality is a little different to us because they come from purity, whereas we don't. They have some. They have a maze sex ed videos. So these are videos that they make to teach kids about lots of different topics because there's like zero sex education in their schools. So they are good resources as well for parents to turn to if they want resources to watch with their kids. But books are basically your best resource.
Nicki Farrell:And, I would add, for tricky, tricky adults. The Daniel Morgan Foundation's got some fantastic conversation starters there for parents and educators as well. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we start to wrap up? Anything you'd like me?
Cath Hakanson:to know other than you don't have to do this alone. You're not on your own with sex ed and I. My whole thing is about making it easy for parents and don't feel like you're alone. So just realize that there are resources, there are tools out there that you can use to make sex ed easier, and it doesn't need to be another job on your list of things to talk about with your kids that you can actually build it into your everyday relationship. But you just end up with that stronger, more connected and healthier relationship with your kids and it just makes parenting and empowering our kids so much easier.
Nicki Farrell:So true, you know we might not live in the village scenario anymore, but that doesn't mean that the village isn't accessible, whether that's online, phones, resources like yourself, it is. It's in the information era, right? It's all there. We just need to set aside those times to have those conversations, and I love the idea that TV and books, all that kind of literature, can be the prompts for those conversations too. All right, are you ready for some rapid fire questions, kath Yep? All right, what's your favorite book of all time and why? Or, if that's too hard, what are you currently reading or listening to?
Cath Hakanson:I am reading lots of trashy teen romance.
Nicki Farrell:Amazing. Do you have a favourite?
Cath Hakanson:author at the moment. I found, oh, I'm reading Jennifer Armentraup and Jennifer J Armentraup. Her stuff is brilliant in regards to consent and stuff. But Allie Hazelwood is another youth young adult romance writer and she writes from an autistic perspective, so she talks about stuff that other romance books don't talk about. So that's what I'm into at the moment, other than problematic masturbation, is my favourite thing I'm reading at the moment.
Nicki Farrell:We won't go to the diversity we have available at our fingertips now is like nothing I knew about when I was growing up. It was very, you know, it was very like very straight, very white. There was no intersectionality and it was all very biology based. It was very functional. So the stuff we have access to now like we really don't have any excuses, do we? It's great, all right, where do you go or what do you do to reset after a rough day?
Cath Hakanson:Oh, this is so hard as parents. I don't turn to alcohol, I usually, for me, it's about just sitting there and grounding myself and telling myself that shit happens, some days I don't do as good a job, or some days are just tougher, but I'm human and tomorrow is a fresh day and what matters is that I care and I'm trying to be a better parent, and that's what matters. So that's how I handle it.
Nicki Farrell:Everything's better after a good night's sleep.
Cath Hakanson:Yeah, and also kids learn when we screw up or have bad parenting moments.
Nicki Farrell:So yeah, absolutely.
Cath Hakanson:Yeah, how we respond allows them to realise they don't have to be perfect.
Nicki Farrell:Oh, I love that. If you had to choose just one thing to change about the education system, what would it be? It?
Cath Hakanson:should start later.
Cath Hakanson:I think we start kids way too early. I know why we start them early, but I really do think that I started off my children at alternative schooling because I hated the education system with the fact that I felt it was throwing kids into a system and breaking their spirit, training them to respond and behave, and then shoving all this information into them and there was not enough about emotional intelligence, resilience, being a good person. So, yeah, that's the one thing I would like to see change that I don't think we need to have them starting at the age of four. Why not do what they do in Europe which works?
Nicki Farrell:really well, really well. And again, I'm with you. I know it's for certain demographics, it's the safety thing, right, but we're still doing them a disservice with what we're teaching and the testing and whatnot. And we can still have a school where children are safe but where we can just play and where we can reach those emotional intelligence goals which should. I mean, you can't teach a child maths if they. What's the point of teaching the maths if they can't even have a healthy relationship outside of school? So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nicki Farrell:And finally, where can we find out more about your work and what can parents gather from your services?
Cath Hakanson:Okay, so my online home is Sexo to Rescue, so I have it all set up how I would like it if I was a parent struggling with all these conversations. So I have lots of blog posts and I'm going to add a new thing. Recently I have a I run a Facebook group called that Parent Group and we get questions all the time about the same stuff. So we've got this huge list of about 40 topics that I've written information about how to handle, and I've realized that it's not on the website and all these other parents are in the same situation. So I have all these resources that are there to help make your job as a parent easier. So I have a lot of free stuff, but I also have a lot of resources that I create to sell, because I have to make money to be able to help people, so I sell stuff as well.
Nicki Farrell:Exactly.
Cath Hakanson:And knowledge is valuable, and this is the thing you know. There's two ways to do it. You can do all the research and find all the information yourself, or you can grab a resource, and I keep my stuff priced very low and very affordable because I come from the public health system myself and I believe that information should be accessible. And then I also run a free Facebook group which is sitting in about 180,000 parents, and it is a place. It is a place where you go. My five year old came home from school and told me that this happened what the hell do I do? And parents will jump in and go why don't you try this or do that? Or oh you poor thing? So I've created this online space so that parents don't feel alone with sex education and where they can help each other as well.
Nicki Farrell:Oh, that's incredible. It's that safe place that's validating your experience and breaking. Shattering that Facebook group would be shattering taboos and enabling parents to have those conversations with their children. Oh, that's so important. That makes me so happy. It's the missing link. It's the missing link between books, my child. How the hell do I answer this question about the kid I just caught masturbating under the table as a teacher?
Cath Hakanson:Yeah, and we're alone. Sex education you do in isolation because you don't sit at the park talking about little Johnny masturbating under the table or something. So where else can you turn? You ask it in other parenting groups and they think you're a weirdo or you get responses that don't fit with your values. My group you'll get like between 20 to 300 comments and you are guaranteed to find something that'll work.
Vicci Oliver:You'll find a lot of stuff that won't work and you'll go.
Cath Hakanson:I would never do that, but this is the thing it's about seeing what other parents do, and you can't get that information.
Nicki Farrell:No, that's right. There's resources, and then there's the real life practice and modern culture around it too, I think, which is just amazing. People slander technology and there's definitely some bad sides to it, but gosh, the conversations that have happened, particularly for minorities and particularly around taboos. It is life changing and it is creating such a safer space for our children, which is ultimately what we all want. So thank you for providing such a space for parents, because that means, I mean, you're a children's advocate by doing that. It's just what we're all here for, isn't it?
Cath Hakanson:Yeah, it's interesting when I get the hate mail. I get the regular hate mail accusing me of being a pedophile because I'm teaching children to have sex, and it's like, no, I'm not. If I am, my insurer would not insure me. I've had the police knocking on my door and this is the thing, isn't?
Nicki Farrell:it the old. Yeah, I won't go down that rabbit hole, but it is. There's the whole. You need to protect children by empowering them and giving them the knowledge, because if you don't, the Andrew Tates of the world will, and that is terrifying. So please arm yourself with all the knowledge and please pass it on to your children. Thank you so, so, so, very much for joining us. We will link all of Kath's resources to her website and her socials in the show notes. So if you missed that over the podcast, don't worry, it's in the show notes. Please follow her. Please join her Facebook group.
Nicki Farrell:The more we all talk about this, the better and safer all of our children will be. Thank you so much for joining us today, kath. Thanks, nikki. That conversation was so affirming and a reminder about how important these conversations are for our children. The more often we talk about sex, ed, masturbation periods, pornography, wet dreams, consent, stds you know all the things the less they become taboo and the safer our children will be.
Nicki Farrell:We always have that saying.
Nicki Farrell:You know, we say it all the time knowledge is power, but our children need to have the correct knowledge, not something they've learned off a friend in fifth grade who heard it from their older brother who idolizes Andrew Tate.
Nicki Farrell:If we don't give our children this information A they will find it somewhere anyway and it could be correct at best or dangerous at worst. And you won't have built a relationship of trust with your tanger to come to you about these topics so that even when they find themselves in a dangerous or scary situation, they may not feel safe coming to you, which could possibly put them in an even more dangerous situation. So we need to practice using our uncomfortable muscles until they become comfortable. You know, the more we use these muscles, the easier these conversations will become. Starting early with developmentally appropriate talks paves the way for these bigger, harder conversations, but at least your child will know that you're a safe place to go. So thank you, as always, for joining us for these tough and uncomfortable and super important conversations and for being part of the change that you want to see in the world. Until next week, stay wild.