Stop Wasting Your Time Teaching Teens about Consent

Educators and parents are becoming increasingly aware of the prevalence of sexual violence in our relationships.

Whenever we gain understanding of significant problems, it seems that our favourite and most effective strategy is to teach kids to do better. Since we all seem to agree that old dogs can’t learn new tricks. 

Advocates of social change often refer to the power of teaching children about the changes we’d like to see in our society. Because children will listen and learn in a way that adults seem to resist.

Look at our environmental challenges. Young people have grown up being taught that we need to protect our environment. They are environmental advocates and they do not question whether recycling has value. 

Meanwhile, ‘boomers’ are still out there insisting that our environmental impact is minimal, and our efforts won’t make a significant difference.

Boomers were raised in a time when almost no one talked about the environmental impact of our existence. Younger generations have spent their whole lives being taught that we, as a people, are destroying our planet. 

I personally think that we are unfair to our youth when we download our social problems on to them, and task them with fixing the problems themselves.

I have heard people speak about environmental anxiety that children today feel. I have seen it in my own children. They are frustrated and feel a sense of hopelessness. Because they have been taught to recognize a problem, but they are living in a world run by adults who do not recognize the problem in the same way. These frustrated children are anxious about how the adults who govern and educate them promote and defend an economy that destroys the planet. 

But the environment is not the subject of this post. 

I am talking about how we are wasting our time teaching teens about consent.

We have a sexual violence problem in the world. The experts who have observed the problem, dissected the details, and disseminated the data know an awful lot about how humans can mistreat one another. But that knowledge does not necessarily point to an obvious solution.

As I mentioned, we are accustomed to the strategy of ‘teach children to do better’.

And from this strategy there have been incredible and valuable resources created. Here in Nova Scotia we have the Healthy Relationships for Youth Program. This program was created by the Antigonish Women’s Centre & Sexual Assault Services organization.

And I love this program. It’s smart. It’s engaging. And kids learn a lot from it. 

But

Consent isn’t a math concept that can be taught in a few classes and then assessed for comprehension. 

Consent is a language. A way of perceiving the world, expressing yourself, and interacting with others.

Imagine if we wanted to teach children to speak a new language and taught them this language for one class, once a week for 12 weeks when they are in high school.

And then never exposed the children to that language again.

Anyone who has mastered a second language would probably agree that you can’t really expect a person to gain proficiency with a language this way. 

What we need is immersion.

When I meet people who grew up in a house where multiple languages were spoken, I feel a little envious. Imagine not really having to ‘learn’ the language, but to grow up ‘knowing’ another language. What a huge gift and benefit!

I have always wished that I was fluent in French. But even French classes from grade 4 through to university did not provide me with enough skill to comfortably navigate interactions en français. At my best, I could read elementary French pretty well, and I could make my basic needs understood. But I was no where near mastery.

I have tried lot’s of tactics, but since French is not part of my life, it has always taken tremendous effort to learn and retain the language. 

I have resolved that at some point, when my kids are a bit older, I will head to Université Sainte-Anne and spend weeks in their immersion program. 

I know people who have taken this immersion program and while they say it definitely works, they also caution that it can be lost. If you don’t use the language, you lose the language.

And this is a challenge with teaching consent to teens.

The intervention-style lessons that we offer are short-lived. And it does nothing to change the fact that their teachers aren’t fluent in consent. Their parents aren’t fluent. And their future workplaces aren’t fluent.

How will they master and maintain the language of consent?

We can stop wasting our time teaching teens about consent by teaching adults how to immerse children in the language. 

So that they grow up never having to ‘learn’ consent, but always living with it.

Intervention programs like the HRY program should be funded and continued. It should be in every school in Nova Scotia.

But if we do that alone, and never teach adults to immerse children in consent, then we are wasting our time. 

When adults can speak the language of consent, and immerse children in it from their first moments of life, then these intervention programs will become obsolete.

 And that should be our goal. 

When children are respected, when children’s boundaries are honoured, when children are protected from sexualized violence, then we won’t need to teach them consent. 

They will be living and breathing it like a second language.

And that is not what is happening right now. Right now 34% of children are experiencing sexual abuse. In any friend group, classroom, sports team, or family… sexual violence is occurring against children. 10 hours of consent lessons won’t undo the life lessons that these kids are experiencing.

Right now, we are immersed in sexualized violence. We need more than a course in consent to turn the tide.

We need adults to understand consent and defend children’s boundaries so that they grow up ‘knowing’ what consent is.

That is what we do at Priority Kids. We teach adults how to protect children from sexual violence, and consent is a huge part of prevention.

Instead of downloading this problem onto teens, we adults must believe in ourselves and our ability to protect children. It isn’t fair to children to task them with transforming our relationship habits.

We must learn how to prevent sexual violence against children so that they are living and breathing healthy relationships. 

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