askable parent – In a conversation about the shift from sex education to comprehensive sexuality education, educator Shafia Zaloom describes how students bring classroom questions into digital spaces, how “clamping” and other boundary-crossing behaviors show up on campuses, an
On a museum field trip. the laughter can sound like it’s just for fun—until a student is being poked in the butt crack. Shafia Zaloom. a health educator and author. builds those kinds of campus moments into her work because the details matter: kids use euphemisms. adults often miss what’s happening. and the outcome is rarely just “a joke.” It’s about consent. dignity. and the values kids are learning in real time.
Zaloom. who teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and works as a high school health educator in San Francisco. discussed what students ask now—and what schools are no longer providing—with MindShift host Ki Sung. Their conversation focused on the evolving shift in the United States: sex education is increasingly expected to be more than preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections; it now emphasizes comprehensive sexuality education that starts earlier and covers relationships. ethics. and decision-making.
Zaloom said sex education in the traditional sense is mostly information-based and grounded in medical and sexual reproductive health—focused on preventing unintended pregnancy and preventing passing sexually transmitted infections. Sexuality education. by contrast. is “more holistic” and includes what people do with the information. the meaning they assign to it. and how they relate to themselves and others. At the heart of comprehensive sexuality education. she said. is an ethical aspect centered on decision-making that promotes relationships grounded in mutual respect. empathy. and dignity.
That shift shows up, she said, in the questions students bring to adults. She has been doing student health education for 30 years. and she described a pattern: some questions “transcended time. ” while other questions have changed as digital media has become part of everyday learning. For younger students in middle school. she said. questions tend to be direct and basic—how to know if someone likes girls or boys. how to tell if someone really has a crush. or how to tell a best friend you don’t like being hugged all the time.
But Zaloom said newer questions reflect what students see online. She described middle school students asking about pornography, and she said the language has become specific to digital spaces. Students have asked what “popping the cherry” means, what a “grundle” is, and what “gooning” refers to. As kids get older in high school. she said. the stakes feel higher—questions about shaving. about how to make sex hurt less when losing virginity. and about when it’s okay to have sex with someone. She also said students ask how to tell what real trust is.
Zaloom added that students increasingly ask her to legitimize what they’ve heard—“I heard that. or is it true that…”—often tied to media exposure. She gave examples including “what’s a blue waffle?” and whether “girls pee out of their vaginas” is true. In her description, students often try to confirm misinformation by searching online and then bring their doubts back to class.
The parent conversation becomes the point of tension. Sung described a study he had seen where the average age kids encounter porn is 12 and that it can happen at school when students click through links without realizing what they’ll reach. Zaloom responded by saying more parents are trying to talk. but that many end up “checking the box”—talking about consent. STIs. and birth control—especially with teenagers. Then, she said, a student may come back with the harder follow-up: what does respect actually mean.
She argued that students are not just turning to pornography because of a lack of information. She said “because we’re not providing” comprehensive sexuality education courses in schools—and that such courses are “currently rolling back”—kids are turning to pornography. which she described as “the default sex ed of this country.” Her comparison was blunt: she said it’s like watching “Fast and the Furious” to learn how to drive.
Zaloom also said that friends. social media. and Google are part of the funnel for information. and that this makes the home conversation unavoidable. She said the guardian is the primary sexuality educator in a child’s life and that. in her view. this has always been true. She described parenting as challenging—especially if a parent hasn’t had a positive experience with sexuality education themselves.
In her book. Zaloom said she addresses what happens when boundaries are crossed through concrete language. including “clamping. ” which can also be referred to with euphemisms such as “fish in the creek.” She described it as poking someone in the butt and in the butt crack area. often treated as humor. In the scenario she referenced, it begins on a field trip as students walk upstairs in a museum. She said the poking is part of kids negotiating social power and “social power and currency. ” and how students relate to one another.
When it comes to addressing it. Zaloom said adults need to do multiple things at once—sometimes even when students are the ones raising it. She described an approach that distinguishes between snitching and reporting. She said it’s important to recognize the child who brings the behavior to an adult’s attention. and that “snitching” is telling on someone on purpose to get them in trouble. while “reporting” is sharing information to ask for help. support community. and right a wrong.
She also said there are usually two other groups in those moments: the student who experienced the unwanted poking and the student who did it. Her method, as described, centers on removing the audience for the person who did it. She said adults may address the situation publicly enough to signal that the teacher or caretaking adult is aware and will take care of it. but not so publicly that adolescents feel shame and shut down. The balance is crucial: accountability without turning it into humiliation.
With discretion rather than secrecy. Zaloom said. adults should support the student who experienced the unwanted behavior by finding out how they felt and what support they might need. With the student who did it. she said the goal is to understand what need they were trying to meet through the behavior—whether they were looking for connection or affirmation through attention—and then make clear that the choice didn’t serve them or anyone else. She framed it as social learning: a chance to review consent. bodily autonomy. asking permission. accountability. and what relationships and community are actually for.
Sung asked how Zaloom handles another pattern that shows up when boundaries are crossed: students responding “I was just joking” or “I didn’t mean it.” Zaloom said adults should recognize behavior. hold students accountable. and guide them to what’s behind the behavior. She said students are being socialized constantly through gender and sexuality instruction they receive every day—often modeled through social institutions—and that kids learn that humor can be a way to “get away with” behaviors.
She argued that this perpetuates sex stigmatization. because it tells kids they can talk about sex only if it’s veiled in humor. When adults react with shame or fear avoidance, she said, it teaches the wrong lesson. Her alternative is care. love. and affirmation—contextualizing what happened so students understand feelings and values. and how behavior erodes relationships and community rather than building them.
The conversation also moved to what these early experiences mean later. Zaloom described social learning as something that makes young people more available to feel socially connected and improves their capacity to learn effectively. She said learning requires practice and scaffolding over time. and she connected comprehensive sexuality education to cultivating the capacity for love and being loved—skills that need to be practiced. In her framing. students become more considerate. more able to be attuned to themselves and others. more empathetic. and more able to ask for help and verbalize what they’re thinking and feeling. She said this should be balanced between self-awareness and becoming community-minded.
For parents who struggle with discomfort. Zaloom said the task is to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. and to model that hard conversations can be important. She pointed to scripts and resources. and urged parents to educate themselves. start early. and provide medically accurate. credible information first. She also said values come first in practice—not just facts.
To make it concrete. she offered examples of everyday openings: in the car. when listening to a song. asking whether something is about infatuation or authentic connection; while watching a show. talking about whether consent was “wordless” and whether a character’s choice was honored. She described “becoming the askable parent” as staying attentive to children’s questions. including in adolescence when it may be “late at night.” She said parents can ask what a child is hearing from school and how they think it’s going. and she described children as having a “keen sense of justice. ” making them responsive to questions like whether something a speaker said is true and whether they’ve seen it come up.
Zaloom was equally clear that being askable doesn’t mean being a friend. She emphasized the need for boundaries and the willingness to do “the hard stuff.”
She also addressed myths adults should “unlearn.” She said a major myth is that if we tell kids about sex. they’ll go do it. She argued there’s no evidence for that fear and said the inverse is true. She pointed to the example of the Netherlands. where she said age-appropriate sexuality education starts in preschool and kindergarten. continues through adulthood. and focuses on responsibility and joy rather than disaster prevention. fear. and avoidance. She said student outcomes there include low STI and unintended pregnancy rates.
The throughline in her response to both students and adults was practice and values. In her words, skills have to be scaffolded over time in developmentally appropriate ways. And when kids get that reinforcement. she said. the goal isn’t just preventing harm—it’s building the ability to navigate relationships ethically. with empathy and language to ask for help.
The episode ended with the reminder that Zaloom’s book. Getting Real About Sex Ed: What Today’s Students Need. is newly published. She teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. works in a high school in San Francisco. and consults schools across the country in states across political leanings—where. in her telling. the stakes of what students can access next are too often decided by what schools roll back and what parents do—or don’t—offer at home.
sex education comprehensive sexuality education Shafia Zaloom MindShift Harvard Graduate School of Education parenting consent pornography digital misinformation clamping bodily autonomy