the feminist librarian reads

I suggest parents talk to their kids about consent—and permission to touch and be touched—in infancy or toddlerhood, and certainly not as late as their teens. Even before your child can talk, you can model consent. Have you watched parents change diapers? Some of them will just grab their kid, throw them on the table and start doing all sorts of things to their body without any gesture of consent-seeking. Even with an infant without language yet, you can express what you want to do: “I’m going to touch you right now, in order to get you a fresh diaper so you can feel better, okay?” Starting early, in ways that you can, normalizes consent—rather than non-consent—right from the start. You’re not going to talk to a two-year-old about sexual assault explicitly, but you can both demonstrate and express that people need permission to touch each other’s bodies. By the time you do get to the point where it’s more stage-appropriate to talk about sexual assault explicitly, they are already going to know about consent and that it really matters.