Let's Talk Month and Parent-Child Retreats

Let’s Talk Month is a community campaign to encourage parents and families to talk together about sexuality and their family's values, and to support them in building and maintaining healthy family connections.

One program that Planned Parenthood MN, ND, SD offers to support positive parent-child communication about puberty and sexuality, while building family connection through learning and play, are Parent-Child Retreats.

At a Planned Parenthood Parent-Child Retreat last winter, nine mothers and their pre-teen sons introduced themselves and got ready for a day of discovery about puberty, family, relationships and gender dynamics.

First on the agenda was an exercise to highlight the amazing complexities of the human reproductive system. With a cheat sheet to guide them, each mother-son pair got to work building a replica of male or female anatomy from a grab bag of materials: light bulbs, balloons, plastic cups, pipe cleaners, and what have you.

One boy wanted to sit this one out. “That’s OK,” facilitator Robbie Weisel told him. “You don’t have to do anything here that makes you feel uncomfortable.” Later, he was discretely asked, “What troubles you about this?” He shuddered and said, “Just the idea that the human body is made up of red, pulsing things.”

Soon, however, curiosity overcame squeamishness, and he eagerly joined the day’s activities, all designed to open channels of communication, build trust and deepen the parent-child bond.

The mother-son, father-son and mother-daughter daylong retreats, funded entirely by donors like you, have been serving families in the region for 17 years.
To expand the program’s outreach, Planned Parenthood has partnered with groups as diverse as the Metro Deaf School, Girl Scouts, St. Paul Urban League and Women’s Association of Hmong and Lao.

Besides providing accurate and age-appropriate information about human sexuality and puberty, the retreat allows both parent and child a chance to speak and be heard without interruption, to let go and be led, to empathize with one another and to celebrate their relationship through artistic expression.

“Parent-child connectedness is a super-protector against many negative adolescent life outcomes,” said Weisel, manager of parent-child programs for Planned Parenthood. “That includes everything from unintended pregnancy to risky sexual behavior, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy and gang involvement.”

The rewards can be sweet. “I never realized how much I loved the sound of my daughter’s voice,” one mother said after being blindfolded and taking verbal cues from her daughter during a “blind trust walk.”

For more information, go to www.ppmns.org and click on “Parent-Child Programs.”