Scarleteen

A friend of mine on Facebook posted a link to Scarleteen.  It's a website specifically for teens and young adults which is full of really good information about bodies and sex.  She talks about any topic you can imagine from sex to masturbation to the size of different body parts.  It's wonderfully educational and informative without the least bit of judgment associated with it as far as I can tell.  I really wish I'd had this when I was growing up.

I was fortunate to have Everything you wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask.  I was embarrassed almost to the point of mortification, but I went into a book store (not in my small home town) and bought it.  I was at the point where I definitely needed information - I was going out with a guy who was putting a lot of pressure on me to do things I was not comfortable with and I didn't have a clue how to say no, much less what he was talking about!  I brought the book home and read it voraciously.  When I wasn't reading it, I put it under my mattress so no one would discover it.  One day I came home and was wanting to read it and discovered that it was no longer there - and my sheets were clean.  Apparently Mom had changed my sheets and had found the book.  OMG, I thought I would die.  I didn't ask her about it because that would be admitting that I owned the book.  She didn't say anything about it.  It wasn't until 3-4 years later, when I was in college, that I saw the book on HER bookshelf in her bedroom.  I told her it was my book and asked how she had gotten it.  She didn't remember, apparently, and said it was hers!  I never did finish reading it.

It was so hard to learn about sex but so incredibly important to have information.  I don't think that's changed at all.  I think kids are probably even more pressured now than they used to be to be sexually active.  Thank goodness for Scarleteen which gives kids good, unbiased information, especially since the schools don't/can't/won't.