My son is nine years old: I expected to have an uncomfortable conversation this holiday season, but I thought it was going to be one about a guy in a red suit. I misjudged which uncomfortable conversation was coming.
It all began when the song ?Baby, It?s Cold Outside? came on the radio and my thirteen-year-old immediately said, ?Isn?t this the date rape song"? Then the third-grader chimed in: ?What?s date rape"?
I felt a lot like Atticus in To Kill a Mockingbird, trying to explain the context of his case to Scout, only without the gift of rhetoric or a legal background.
But I did my best.
?Well, date rape is when someone is in a social situation, like a date, and is pressured to have sex when they don?t want to.?
Since the concept of sex is still a hazy one at best for my youngest, that didn?t quite cut it. ?Why would someone pressure someone else to have sex"? he asked.
By this point, I was really wishing that anything else, even ?Santa Baby,? had played on the radio instead.
?Sometimes one person is more interested than the other person, and the person who is interested feels like it?s OK to try to talk the person into doing something they don?t really want,? I said. 
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How to talk to your kids about sex: An age-by-age guide

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