There are an estimated one million teen pregnancies each year in the United States alone, so it is very important to discuss teen pregnancy. Learn how to talk to children about teen pregnancy in this parenting video.
DR. F. FELICIA FERRARA, PhD: Hello! I'm Dr. Felicia, the parent coach, and I've been working with families and children and teenagers for over 25 years now, and I'd like to share with you today about how to discuss teen pregnancy with your child. Now, a lot depends on what age your child is to begin with. For the smaller children, say elementary school age, you would want to focus on the fact that that's not something that you necessarily encourage. You would want to focus on the fact that it shouldn't have happened or that the child--the teenager was not prepared to be a parent and only talk to them on a level of maturity that they can understand. There's a wide range of maturity levels amongst elementary aged children. Some are very mature and can handle information, some aren't, but remember you're talking to a child, not an adult so keep it kind of light. Now, when you're discussing this with your preteens, your middle school aged children or your high school children, you can get a little bit more detailed and more descript because they have the ability to understand. So, you might talk about the negativity of the loss of activities that the teen's going to have, but you also want to emphasize how important a child's welfare is and that it's not fair for the child to have a family that might not be prepared to raise it. So by all means, put the infant's needs first, remind them how 24 hours everyday of the week that infant is going to need care and that the teenager will now miss certain activities that they normally would participate in. You certainly don't want to condone it. In today's media, it's loaded with teen idols that are becoming pregnant and we have a lot of our middle school children and our high school children getting influenced by that, thinking it's glamorous. You do not want to glamorize it. You want to de-glamorize the fact that pregnancy is not something to be coveted when you're a teenager. It is definitely hard work, and if you want to reinforce that with getting a baby doll that cries and actually needs care, they do have those for sale and you can use those with your youngsters. They use them in a lot of teen parenting programs to teach them how to care for children, but you can give your child or your adolescent an idea of exactly how much time and patience and feeding and care it takes to raise a small infant child even if it's the doll. I do wish you luck. This is a very important matter to discuss with your children, so please do so wisely and good luck and so long for now.
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