Beyond the Birds and the Bees

A guide to healthy sexual development for children, covering topics that include promoting positive body images, protecting children without scaring them, and teaching values without encouraging rebellion.

Nationally renowned psychotherapist Beverly Engel goes beyond sex education in a comprehensive guide that will help parents raise their children to become vibrant, confident, and sexually healthy adults. For each stage of your child’s development—from age three through the high school years—she demonstrates the best ways to handle even the most difficult and unexpected situations with step-by-step instructions and sample conversations.

From straightforward advice on dealing with nudity, homosexuality, masturbation, and sex roles, to helping prevent and detect sexual abuse, this book assists you in communicating the well-balanced attitudes toward sexual behavior that will carry your children into a healthy and responsible adulthood.

Beverly Engel has been a psychotherapist for thirty years, specializing in the areas of abuse recovery, relationships, women’s issues and sexuality. She is also the bestselling author of twenty self-help books, many of which have been featured on national television and radio programs (Oprah, CNN, Ricki Lake, Starting Over) as well as national print media (O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, Redbook, Psychology Today, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune to name a few). She is considered one of the world’s leading experts on the issue of emotional abuse, as well as a pioneer on the issue, having written one of the first recovery books on the subject (The Emotionally Abused Woman).