Preparing our Kids in High School to Stay Safe in College
The part about college that no one talks about excessive drinking and sexual assault. Hear what Shafia Zaloom, health educator says parents should do to prepare teens.
Sue: Hi everybody, welcome to Inside Scoop with Sue. And today we are back with Shafia Zaloom. Always happy to be talking to you, Shafia. Shafia is a health educator, parent, consultant, and author whose work centers on human development, community building, ethics, and social justice. Shafia is currently the health teacher at Urban School in San Francisco, and we're going to talk about the part of college that no one really wants to talk about: excessive drinking and sexual assault. And you know, there's a relatively new study out of Columbia, and you sent me to it, so why don't you tell us a little bit about what you found there and why it's so interesting.
Shafia: Sure, so the department of public health at Columbia, the School of Public Health, has an initiative. It's called Shift, and the purpose of the initiative is to really sort of delve deeper into the reasons why sexual assault numbers are so high, how come they haven't shifted much despite educational efforts on the part of schools in the last several years, and sort of what we can do about it to affect change and bring the numbers down and hopefully to a point where we aren't, you know, contending with so much sexual violence on college campuses. It’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month this month, so this is a timely conversation, also because there's a lot in the news right now in particular around sexual assault, as well as the current administration and how it's going to be addressing Title IX guidelines out of the office of the Department of Justice, the Office of Civil Rights and Education. So this study really looked at what makes a difference, and Jennifer Hirsch, who was the head of the study, who's in the School of Public Health there, is an amazing professor doing incredible work, and there are other co-authors as well. She also with Séamus Khan, many people will know the book 'Sexual Citizens' that recently came out, did a more in-depth study, and we can sort of segue into that. But in 2017, what they found through their research with Columbia University students is that if young people had, you know, quality sex education before they got to college that included refusal skills within a context of how what consent is and how it works, they were 50 percent less likely to experience sexual assault on a college campus.
Sue: Well, I just want to interrupt you because that to me was the most fascinating thing. I had never heard of refusal training. Now I’ve sent kids to college. I’d like to know, is there a place for a parent in that story? So they're looking at what can schools do better, but we're talking to parents, and so is refusal training something that can happen in the home, not just in the school, and what does it look like?
Shafia: Oh, absolutely. And that's something they did highlight in the study was that the primary conclusion was we need to start quality sex education earlier in our kids’ lives, and you know, that looks different for different people, right? So there's one thing we lack consistency around in this country in regard to education is how we approach sex education. And it’s pretty—there are people doing amazing stuff, and it's pretty abysmal right now in the United States. And so parents…
Sue: When you say people, so the researchers and the people who are available to educate us is expansive, but the access, like, it's not happening in schools?
Shafia: It's not happening in schools. So of the 50 states, only 23 require that sex education be a part of a high school education. And only 13 of them require that it be medically accurate, and only six require—six to eight, things might have changed since the last time I double-checked…
Sue: What does that mean it doesn't have to be medically accurate? I’m sorry…
Shafia: You can actually see that there's sex education that's out there that's like medically inaccurate and puts, you know, the ideology of people's political ideologies over like public health. Like that's what a huge part of the majority of sex education is happening right now, if there's any, because there's no federal funding for comprehensive sex ed, really very little in the way of—there's a little bit and it was directly tied to research. For the last four years there's been no federal funding at all. It's only been the states, and only six to eight states even require consent to be a part of that education. So it's really, you know, when you think about what our kids actually need and what's going to keep them safe and serve them as they navigate life and journey through life, this is one in which we're really behind.
Sue: I mean, and the formula seems to be clear. There's a lot of research that is supporting that education. You just said 50% less chance. I mean, who doesn't want that for their child? You send them off to college, it's terrifying. You read—I mean, two kids just died from alcohol poisoning, yeah, and in college because of hazing, and it's like how do we keep our kids safe? And there is a formula, and we don't do it. So, right, if it's not happening in schools, what can we do as parents?
Shafia: So all professional, you know, sex educators that I know, we believe parents are actually the primary sex educator in a child's life. And so as parents, it's really important that we be engaging in dialogue all along across the developmental spectrum about healthy sexuality. And a lot of parents are apprehensive for several reasons, and I think it's important to name these so that we can get over it. And the first is that we didn't have this education ourselves, that the majority of us did not get a sex-positive, quality, comprehensive sex education that actually served us well throughout our lives, and so we're pioneers. And we live in a, you know, cultural context in which we try to evade vulnerability and that as parents we need to be all-knowing, and we forget that it's actually really healthy and a gift to be able to say "I don't know" to our child. "Let's figure it out together." And sometimes the hardest conversations are the most important ones to have. The other piece is that as parents, a lot of people are afraid. We—it is our job to protect our children, and a lot of people have the misconception that if we talk about this, they will then go do it. There is no empirical evidence whatsoever that proves that; in fact, the inverse is true. We have decades of research that tells us as parents when we talk to our kids in a judgment-free, non-stigmatizing, positive context about sexuality that they will be more—they will pace themselves, they will be more relational, they will make choices that are more in their interests to protect their own sexual health and safety. And so how we do that is we look for opportunities, and there's a variety—there's so many ways that we can discuss. And the primary one I would say is, you know, make sure your kid—you become the "askable parent." How do you do that? By trying to suspend judgment in approaching this conversation, and that's hard, but we want to lead with empathy because we want kids to be empathetic in their sexual exploration with other people, and to give them language. And this is where refusal skills come in, so I’m going to sort of focus on this for a second. We know…
Sue: So the big picture of what we do with our kids is so daunting to so many of us, me included, right? And so like parsing it out into something called refusal skills. Like I want to do that to my kid who's in college right now, and I can. I feel like I can do it. So if you can give us like, how does it start? What does it look like in some language?
Shafia: Yeah, and big picture too is you're scaffolding this over time; you're collecting moments. It's not one gigantic talk, okay? And that's important to remember. And the other part of it is it's not so mechanical; it's more about how to think about these things than the information itself. Certainly provide information about healthy sexuality, but it's more how you think about it, okay? So when it comes to refusal skills, what that looks like is what are the different ways in which we can say "no," and the most important thing we have to remember as parents is that when we encourage and coach our kids to say "no," we have to remember that there's not saying "no" to the drug, they’re not saying "no" to the naked picture, they're not saying "no" to "let's go have drunk sex." What they're saying "no" to, who they're saying "no" to, is the person who's offering it and this social power that that person has in the social landscape they are navigating. So the proverbial hammer of "just say no" is important, but it can't be the only thing we talk about. They need surgical tools, they need tools for different context, they need to be able to identify context and be able to understand—have a vocabulary to manage what's going on. So they're in a sexual situation—any situation, okay? And you can start with something that maybe isn't about sex because that feels, you know, all of a sudden we're talking about sex. But rather, you could talk about drinking, you could talk about a social situation where someone wants to go out, but you know you have to study, and just to say, "So what do you feel comfortable with in that situation? What are the contextual clues that you can pick up on that help you understand what tool to use, right?" Context is everything in relationships, so when we talk to kids about context, we can use tickling as an example. When you were a little kid and we had a tickle war at home, it was fun, it was joyful, there was hysterical laughter, you were rolling around, it was affectionate, it felt intimate in a family sort of way. When some random person on the street tickled you in the same way, what would the emotional and embodied experience of that be? Ask kids. Tell them, you know, and here's the thing: we have to expand the vocabulary when it comes to how to express accurately the nuanced emotional experiences they have. So they might say like, you know, kids will initially be like, "What? No, I want to punch them," kind of thing. Okay, so you'd feel scared, you'd feel angry, you'd feel confused, startled, surprised, on the defensive, creeped out, you know, all those sort of things. You can explore that. The thing is, it's the same thing, it's tickling, but it's a different context, so our experience of it is a completely different one. And they have to understand and know that. It's also why you can revoke consent at any time because it's variable, and they need to know that too. And so the language then in that situation is, okay, and this is where you do these sort of tabletop discussions and play with it a little bit. And you can use characters in media of shows they're watching, you know, characters in books, stories, something you come across in the news. "What would it take for you to be able to just say a flat out 'no'? What context do you feel like that's reasonable, a reasonable expectation?"
Sue: And even like, has there been a time? Because most likely, yes, our kids have been in situations already. Yes, they either have or haven't. And so how do we, first of all, my first question is how do you get a kid to be interested in having the conversation with you, even if we feel armed from all of your wisdom? How do we get them to participate because they have to be willing?
Shafia: I mean, it's a balance, and part of it depends on the age of your child, right? Like so in—I really believe that if we're talking younger teenagers, like in high school, which is, I feel like, sort of the sweet spot—I mean, we're talking about kids are already in college too, and that's a whole other thing. And you all you have to say to them is, "I know you see this, this is what's going on." It's really important that we approach this from the perspective that we're—we allow kids to be experts in their own experience. Like that's really important too. And that we get really good at asking questions and being genuinely curious, so you're not going to lead with "why." Do not lead with "why." That already—that connotes judgment, right? When you—when you've asked a question, "why." "Why are you doing that, what are you wearing, why would you want to do that?" Okay, there's judgment in that already. Lead with "what," "how," "when," "where." Stay away from "yes" or "no" questions, one-word answers. You really want to explore this topic with your kid. "When has there been a time? What would it take for? How did that make you feel? What could you have done that would have made a difference? Or what could they have done that would have made the difference?" right? So you're exploring in a non-judgmental way. If you want to make an observation, simply use "I notice." "Ah, I notice. Ooh, that's interesting. Help me understand," right?
Sue: So we're not saying, "Come in the other room and let's have a talk."
Shafia: No. And you bring it up, you know, depending on your kid. Some people like the classic car situation. It doesn't feel as intense. You have a drive together, you're not facing each other, but you're there. They know they're trapped. I mean, my kids always joke about the fact that I trap them in the car. And or a hike, doing…
Sue: I want to just tell them when they get their license, that's the moment you realize what a gift you had when…
Shafia: Yes, because for many reasons…
Sue: Well, yeah, but I mean in terms of having these conversations. There, you know, you're done with those non-eye-to-eye kind. You can go to a sushi bar. That also gives you the same experience.
Shafia: Right, well, and I’ll tell my kid, "It's your turn to drive. I drove you around for years, now you need to give me a ride." But there's also, you know, a hike, cooking, baking, something together, making a meal where you're actually involved in some sort of activity and processing which you can explore, and that will also help to facilitate the conversation. Now, if you have a kid that just stonewalls you, you know, and says, "I already learned this in school," whatever, this is your gift, this is your opportunity to say one, to role model healthy vulnerability. "I know this is really hard. It's hard for me too. This is not something I necessarily want to think about. It makes me feel whatever it is that you're feeling. And as your parent, there are some things I just really feel like, you know, you need to know and understand when it comes to this topic." And sometimes this is the most important piece: "The hardest conversations are the most important ones to have. And I care about your safety and I love you a lot, and so we got to find a time when we can actually connect." And you can say it's like when they were younger and you made them feel like there was democracy in your home when there really wasn't. Like, "Here, you can choose from these three foods," but you're the one who supplies the three they're choosing from, right? So it's a little bit of the same thing too.
Sue: But yeah, this—your tone of voice is so, um, like that's the thing I feel like I would have to emulate, even after I got the words, is how do you deliver it with like there's no judgment, it's very gentle. You know, that's a tough thing. I want to point out that we have some comments here, and there's a little bit of kind of talking—it sounds a little bit more about whether kids should be having sex, and I just want to be clear that we're not talking about that right now. There's plenty of opportunity to have those conversations, but right now what we're talking about is arming our kids for when they're done with high school to be able to withstand these terrible stories that we hear in the news all the time, to be prevented, to be protected as much as we can in advance. And Shafia, add anything you want to that.
Shafia: Yeah, I mean, just to say really quickly, because I think it's important, and this feeds into the how we suspend our judgment when we have these conversations, is that it's actually developmentally appropriate for kids to be exploring their sexuality with themselves or someone else during their adolescent years, and as long as it's within—it's on their terms, within an individual sense of readiness, so that kids have actually made a thoughtful decision, they've taken into account their family values, they have the information and access to the stuff they need to be responsible about the choices they're going to make. And so, you know, moving on from that, they are—if they make these choices and they are going to explore their sexuality with someone else—it's really important they be able to manage what's going on. And this is where these sort of refusal skills come in, and I think it's important. So there's lots of different ways to do this, so for instance, and kids will talk about this, a lot of times they don't want—they feel like once they say "no" the whole thing is over, and that doesn't have to be the case, and they need to know and understand that, that you can say "no" to some things and "yes" to others. You can say, "I'm not sure, let's go slow." You can actually have a conversation and effectively communicate with your partner about what your needs, desires, and wants are, and limits are. That's a really important thing. And it's also—it's also about choices, it's about agency. So there's "no," there's "you're making me uncomfortable," or "Let's stay like this for a while," or, you know, and teaching kids to be able to identify what's a consensual question. So they need to understand consent fundamentally, that it's an agreement that both people are on the same page about what they're agreeing to, which is this other activity called "Think of a Bear" which we can go into in a second about how to actually engage in effective sexual communication and how to teach that to your kid as a parent. But, you know, it's "let's stay like this." Every time there's a new level of intimacy introduced, there needs to be an ask, and body language counts, and there needs to be an enthusiastic "yes" if the people involved are going to progress, and you can revoke that consent at any time. Consensual questions allow for "yes" and "no" to be freely given without an answer coerced, and a lot of times there's a lot of fake questions out there the kids don't know how to identify, and so they feel then at fault if they said "yes" when it was coerced from them. So a consensual question would be like, "You good? You okay? How would you feel about oral? Have you thought about this before? Do you feel ready to?" Those are consensual questions. Non-consensual questions that are what I call fake questions with kids would be like, "Are we having sex soon? You're down for oral, right?" There are more statements than they are true questions.
Sue: There's a pressure. There's a pressure attached to it.
Shafia: Yes, there's a persuasion. Either you're leveraging a social power dynamic in the context, you're using persuasive language, you're making a statement more than you are asking a genuine question, you're infusing your desire, and by doing that you're coercing an answer.
Sue: So if I—if I mean, everything you say is amazing, but I don't have control for both sides of that story, right? Like so I’m coming into the story with one side, and we send our kids, if our kids are college-bound, to a place where we don't get to follow them around, right? And which by the way, I know it's not healthy, but I would love to, because I’ve seen my kids in college and I want to take them home when I see what's going on in college. So that being said, we also know that the first few weeks of their first college experience as a freshman, they are the very most vulnerable for sure.
Shafia: So, and yeah, well, so it's called the "red zone." I mean, that's typically what it's called, and most of the assaults happen in this zone, and it's typically when they first get to school. And there are a variety of factors that may contribute to that being true, right? So kids are used to when they are a senior in high school, they're like, you know, leaders of the school, everything. They have all this confidence, things are—they're familiar with the environment, they've been navigating it for a long time, depending on their social standing, you know, how they're—how they're—what they're—how they're looked up to, they know their teachers, they know how it all works and operates. They get to college and suddenly all of that, and they don't realize that having a home that they can retreat to with familiarity and a full fridge and, you know, all that sort of stuff, how much how grounding those structures are for them. And then they go to this whole new place, and they don't have the grounding structures anymore, and they have to recreate them at the same time that they're on their own for the first time, they're trying to figure out how to be in college, they're also very concerned about making friends, they still have an undeveloped brain. There's so much shift that's happening in their lives that they're thrown off balance, and when you're thrown off balance, it's really easy then when you're off balance to sway in different directions without a whole lot of your—out of your—feel out of control, if that makes sense, or to not be able to see something coming or to make a decision that you may not otherwise, if that makes sense.
Sue: The piece that to me, you know, it's a hard conversation to have, but it's like you get to go wherever you want to go, and it won't be your fault, but do you have to go there? So like I felt like can I tell my kids not to go to frat parties, you know, which they're not going to listen to, but, um, you know, the feeling like why enter the space where it's—you're vulnerable and it's so much more vulnerable to be in that space?
Shafia: In the—in the study 'Sexual Citizens' is a book which is an entire study which is all about exactly what you're talking about, so the context that creates sort of these moments in which assaults are taking place. So it's more of—it's all about this context that actually creates—um—makes college a place conducive for certain types of behavior and things to take place, which is why we're not seeing all this change, because we're so focused on moments of perpetration and being a survivor or victim in that perpetrator versus like—which is important—but we're not focused enough on, okay, what are the variables and the factors in the—what's the context that's leading to this? And some of that is for instance, fraternities, and that fraternities are only allowed—it's who's given the social leverage and currency of geography on a college campus because most dorms are dry, there isn't public drinking that's allowed. And so who's given spaces in which parties can happen? Fraternities and sports teams because they tend to live together. When it comes to frats and sororities, sororities are dry because, you know, the association of Greek life when it comes to liability and insurance and all those sorts of things afford it to—there's a great article in The Atlantic about it—afford those things to men. They're privileged in that way, but not to sororities. So whose turf are you on when you're navigating all these different things—drinking, socializing, exploring sexuality, you know, attraction, all that sort of stuff—when it comes together in this synergy, whose turf are you on to navigate it through?
Sue: So the thing is that so we know that that's—that that situation can be a setup. Yeah, how do we arm our kids? Telling them not to go is not going to be so effective.
Shafia: No, it really isn't. I mean, I think it's important to state what we think and what our values are and to also acknowledge that they are now operating of their free will and making decisions for themselves. And that it's a "both/and," right? So we also always tell them to wear their seat belts, but at some point when they get in the car, it's going to be up to them to put it on. And so I really think that, you know, giving them information, making sure they are—they have access to that information before they get there, talking through situations again, "How would you think about this?" And I do that through scenario work. So stories that kids tell me from college in high school—there's a hundred of them in my book. Like it's basically all these true stories that I have the opportunity to collect because I teach…
Sue: Tell us the name of the book.
Shafia: Oh, 'Sex, Teens, And Everything In Between'. There's about a hundred scenarios, real-life scenarios, you know, that kids have experienced, and deconstruct them and talk about them with those questions. "What would it take? What happened? Did they both get to walk away with their dignity? What got in the way of that? If you were in this situation, what would you have done? What are the options for how to deal with it? Which do you think more align with your values? Which do you think are more realistic and could actually happen? What's some of the concrete language you would use in this situation to manage what's going on? Could this have been prevented? You know, if you were to intervene, what would have happened? If you were to try to prevent it, what could you have done?" So the critical thinking of social context is so important, and then, you know, what tools do we have and could use given the situations we're presented with. Now there's a caveat, and I had a student who came home once from school and visited me, and she had gone on to college and came home and she said, "You know, Shafia, everything we talked about in health class I saw on my first weekend at school." And she was like, "And you can, and we did, and you can talk through all the scenarios, you can discuss all the stuff, but in the end there's always going to be something that comes up that you didn't anticipate." And so it's really about being able to think on your feet and having someone in your group who is able to make a decision to keep people safe in a moment. And I think that's really true. So advice to give to our kids is to say, you know, "If you are going out into this context, what are some things you can do to take care, right? Let's talk about language. Let's talk about how you would use it. Let's talk about when it's appropriate to use it." Refusal skills—there's "no," there's "you're making me uncomfortable." But then what if someone doesn't listen to you? What do you say then? And when we talk about this, you know, I always tell my students there's these levels, right? And we don't want to escalate things, we want to de-escalate things, and so how do you do that with words if that's all you have? And then of course there's the factor of drinking and how when we drink—and this is true of all people—the more we drink, the more we diminish our capacity to make good judgments. And on college campuses, the higher the risk that you will experience an assault or perpetrate an assault. So, and we all make calculated risks all the time, right? So this is part of the information. When you look at the research, the people who are actually perpetrating assault don't believe that that's what they're doing. So, they're always like, "Okay, what's the zinger? Like what's the one word?" And always within the context of look, these things happen, you can prepare yourself as much as possible, it's really important to do that, and it isn't necessarily a guarantee, but if someone isn't listening to you and you are trying to manage what's going on, you can say, "If you continue, you will be raping me." That'll get someone's attention, right? And you—and you don't have to say it in a way that's going to escalate and engage in a power struggle, but just to say, "If you continue, you will be assaulting me or you will be raping me."
Sue: I mean, it completely brought me into like, yeah, you're like, "Whoa!" And I have students who have used it, and it has worked for them. And so I’m not saying…
Sue: I think that is the like the greatest gift you just gave us today, to tell our kids that that language, said in a not screaming, not escalating way, could diffuse the whole situation, not—I mean like getting full peace, right, but it gives you some power in that situation.
Shafia: Yeah, you're taking it back, right? Like, you know…
Sue: Is your book more for parents to read or something we should give to our teens?
Shafia: It's written for both, and it reads—it's—it reads in a way that it's for both. Half of each chapter—so it's all about consent and practicing consent. So not just what consent is, what it looks, sounds, and feels like, but rather how you actually put it into practice and what's needed to cultivate—what you need to cultivate in your kids so that they can actually do that, because I know lots of kids who can talk about consent in sophisticated ways, but they can't actually put it into practice in their interpersonal dynamics. And then the other half is just frequently asked questions that I get from kids that are all the same across the nation because I consult nationally. And little sound bite answers as if they were raising their hand in my class, so it role models the language you can use and how to answer the question. But also for them, it feels like I’m directly talking to them, and it's the way by which they now digest information, so it's helpful. And then there's conversations…
Sue: Based on real-life experience…
Shafia: It's all real-life experience, and then I also provide resources that you can give to your kid that they can access, that you can educate yourself with, and then all the language, the concrete language, the questions, the ways in which you can engage in the dialogue, and what to actually say and do, because people want a script, they want a script, so it…
Sue: I mean, the thing about trying something new is that, you know, or being told not to say something is something that, you know, you can hear and you can say, "I won't say it," but you have to replace it with something else, so the script is so helpful. It's just—it's so constructive, and Shafia Zaloom, I mean, there's so many more things we could be talking about. We'll get you back on here again, but thank you so much for this morning. It was really instructive. Thank you.
Shafia: You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.