How to Support Healthy Sexuality in Children

By Samuel Malkemus & Marina Romero

We are often asked by parents how they can foster a holistic and healthy sexuality in their children. Parents are naturally concerned about their children inheriting some of the cultural repression and conflicts that they themselves lived through. There should be no controversy in stating that growing healthy children, with a healthy sense of sexual identity, is fundamental for a healthy society.

Yet the topic of childhood sexuality, where, commonly, children are denied a sexual life altogether, is fraught with misunderstandings, fears, and inherited cultural shame. Reverend Shaw, played by John Lithgow in Footloose (1984), bemoaning the “spiritual corruption” of “rock-n-roll music with its easy sexuality and relaxed morality” comes to mind as an amusing reflection of the fact that: to really foster healthy sexual identity in children, adults must face their own shame and discomfort around the topic.

Understanding Sexuality

But first, what is sexuality? If we understand it in its narrow cultural definition as pertaining to genital desire and pleasure then we are left with a conundrum. Do we want to bring awareness to genital pleasure in children? Especially if they are pre-pubescent? If ignorance is bliss then perhaps best to stay silent, rather than initiate a curiosity around genital pleasure that would otherwise not be there. Yet this is a limited picture and a limited understanding of our sexual natures.

Sexuality certainly does include genital pleasure, and it would be senseless to say that it does not, but it is also so much more, and this fact is poorly understood and rarely considered by many today. Sexuality includes sensuality—the pleasurable experience of the various senses (i.e., the very nature of pleasure itself)—as well as vitality—the energy of aliveness and the passionate, physicality of bodily expression. This gives us much more to work with in understanding our sexual natures! If we open to this expanded understanding of sexuality many more pathways are opened to approach childhood sexuality.

Sexuality in Younger Children – Setting the Foundation.

In many ways, children can only get so far as their parents, and so the work begins with them, and this presentation of a healthy childhood sexual foundation applies equally to adults who are moving to heal and understand their sexual selves. Bringing adult awareness back to childhood sexual experience is a powerful pathway to healing.

So, because sexuality is founded in sensuality, vitality, bodily experience, and connection, these four elements create a simple framework to better foster and understand our sexual nature.

1)    Exploring the Senses – creating daily spaces where the sensuality of the living world is brought into awareness. Food, music, touch, movement, appreciation of beauty, are all avenues that create a sensual ground and a healthy relationship to pleasure. This will instill a sensual compass that will direct our children for the rest of their lives, being naturally drawn to that which is coherent with their unique sensual intelligence and able to set clear boundaries to that which is unappealing to their

senses.

2)    Inviting Wildness – making space for expansive vital expression will help to cultivate a connection to their primal animal natures and foster experiential referents for those activities and situations that make them feel most passionately alive, whether swimming in a river, dancing freely, playing with exuberance, or laughing with friends. This welcoming of an undomesticated vital freedom sets the stage for shame-free access to their most primal and vital natures.

3)    Accepting the Body – life grows through a welcoming acceptance without condition, and making spaces to fully welcome the body, without excluding any parts of it is foundational to a healthy sexuality. For some this may look like having safe spaces in the home where nudity is welcome for all family members. For others it may involve not using shaming words around the body, while approaching bodily curiosity with kindness and appreciation. In any case, it is important to bring attention and care to this topic as we live in a country, in the US at least, where nudity is criminalized and certain parts of the body are kept hidden under strict cultural taboos. An accepting environment at home can go a long way to confront the shame and confusion that pervades the world at large.

4)    Connection – self-presence is the ground of intimacy for genuine intimacy only happens from present awareness, which then allows for a perception of the vital energetic flow that is always taking place between ourselves and the world. Connection with oneself, with another, and with life’s mystery allows for the full expression of both our animal body’s innate need and our spiritual flourishing on earth. Fostering awareness around connection in our children, allows them to be supported in developing emotional intelligence and to be discerning about relationships that involve degrees of disconnection, and thus potential harm.

These four topics underscore how cultivating the foundation of sexual life will provide a solid ground for a holistic sexual identity. To this we could add a few crucial points:

·      Make space for questions around sexuality that will naturally emerge for a child as they develop. Asking about genital function (what is my vagina or penis for?), relationship possibilities (can a man marry a man?), and reproduction (how are babies made?) are but a few opportunities to provide knowledge to your children about their sexual natures. We advise to provide that knowledge in a simple and understandable form. There is a natural impulse to protect our children from sexual information, yet it is important to not shy away from these questions. A balance must be made between openness to their developmental curiosities and a trust that they will learn what is needed as time unfolds. All beings grow according to their nature, and we can let the organic unfolding of a child’s innate curiosities, as well as socially provoked questions, guide the conversation.

·      Is the agency of the child empowered and supported? In other words, is the child treated like an infantilized object or is the child seen and respected as they are? If a child grows in a family system where their worth is only valued if they conform to the wishes of their caregivers, their basic sense of self-worth and power will be greatly diminished. This sets the stage for nonconsensual sexual relationships. To consent, one needs to be anchored in who they are, which stems from being welcomed and treated as a being in themselves. Respecting the inherent wisdom and uniqueness of our children instills a healthy morality and capacity to honor the truth of others. If we do not respect the agency of our children, how will they respect the agency of others or their own?

Sexuality in Adolescence and Beyond

With adolescence we move into a stage of vital initiation, that includes more active genital sexual expression. Masturbation, sexual intimacy with others, and pornography may become central topics, and increased curiosity about them is healthy and natural. Like we mentioned earlier, here it is crucial to understand genital sexuality and desire as but a part of a broader sexual context, which includes sensuality, vitality, embodiment, and connection. With this framework we have powerful tools at our disposal to support our children move through this fiery threshold.

If you have read this far, take some time to reflect on your own sexual nature and what this essay has awakened within you. With care, awareness, and compassion we can move towards making the world a healthier place for sexual flourishing, both in ourselves and in our children. Depending on our biography, it can be a quite challenging process. But remember that, guided by love, even Reverend Shaw is able to support his daughter in the end.

October 6th 2025

**** All images from Adobe Stock Images