Talking to Your Children About Healthy and Unhealthy Relationships
A Guide for Parents and Carers of Children and Young People of All Genders
Before You Begin: What This Guide Is For
This guide is not about lecturing your child or scanning their phone with suspicion. It is about opening conversations, and keeping them open, so that when something worrying does happen, your child already knows that you are a safe person to come to.
Young people today are navigating relationships in a world that includes pressures most of us did not face growing up: constant digital contact, social media performance, pornography at the click of a button, and content that sends very powerful messages about what men and women are supposed to be and do. None of us can protect our children from all of that. But we can give them the tools to think critically about what they encounter, and a relationship with us in which they feel safe to talk.
This guide is for parents and carers of both girls and boys. Unhealthy relationship behaviour affects and involves young people of all genders, and so do the conversations we need to have.
A Few Things Worth Knowing Before You Start
There are no stupid questions in these conversations, and that goes for you as much as for your child. If you do not know what a particular app does, ask them to explain it. If you are not sure what they mean by something, say so. Young people are more likely to keep talking if you are honest about your own uncertainty than if you perform a confidence you do not feel.
Open questions are almost always better than closed ones. 'What do you think about that?' gets further than 'That's wrong, isn't it?' A question that invites your child to think is always more useful than one that invites them to defend or perform.
You do not need to have all the answers ready. 'That's a really important question; let me think about that' is a perfectly good response. Coming back to a conversation the following day, after you have had time to think, is fine.
Timing matters. These conversations rarely work well as formal sit-downs. Walking the dog, driving somewhere, making dinner: side-by-side activities where neither of you has to maintain eye contact are often the best conditions for honest conversation.
The Topics: What to Talk About and How to Start
Communication: How They Talk and How Much
Digital communication can be a way of staying close and feeling connected. It can also become a way of monitoring, controlling, and overwhelming someone. The volume of messages someone sends, the expectation of constant availability, and the panic or anger when a message is not immediately replied to are all things worth exploring with your child.
Conversation starters:
• 'How do you feel when someone takes a while to reply to your messages? Do you think that's a normal thing to feel?'
• 'If a friend or partner was texting you constantly and getting upset when you didn't reply straight away, how would that feel?'
• 'Do you think there's a difference between wanting to stay in touch with someone and needing to know where they are all the time?'
• 'Has anyone ever made you feel guilty for not being online? What did that feel like?'
What to listen for:
Anxiety about replying quickly, fear of someone's reaction if they do not respond, or the sense that they owe constant availability to a friend or partner are all worth exploring further. These patterns can be early signs of control in a relationship.
Bombarding with Messages
Sending someone dozens of messages in quick succession, particularly when they are not replying, is a form of pressure. It can feel flattering at first and frightening later. Young people may not recognise it as a form of control because it does not look like traditional aggression.
Conversation starters:
• 'If someone sent you 50 messages in an hour because they were worried about you, do you think that would feel caring or overwhelming? What's the difference?'
• 'Why do you think someone might send lots of messages when they're not getting a reply? What might be going on for them?'
• 'If a partner got really upset when you spent time with friends and weren't texting them constantly, what would you think about that?'
What to look out for:
A child who seems anxious about being out of contact, who checks their phone compulsively, or who becomes distressed if a particular person cannot reach them may be experiencing this kind of pressure.
Managing Jealousy
Jealousy is a normal human emotion. What matters is how it is managed. In a healthy relationship, jealousy is communicated and worked through. In an unhealthy one, it is used to justify control: who your child can see, where they can go, what they can wear, who they can talk to.
Conversation starters:
• 'Do you think it's normal to feel jealous sometimes? What do you think a healthy way of dealing with that would be?'
• 'If a partner said they were jealous and used that as a reason to say you couldn't see your friends, what would you think?'
• 'Can you think of a difference between someone caring about you and someone wanting to control you? What does that difference look like?'
• 'Has anyone ever made you feel guilty for having other people in your life How did that feel?'
What to listen for:
Language like 'he just loves me so much he gets worried' or 'she gets upset if I don't tell her where I am' can indicate that controlling behaviour is being reframed as love. Help your child hold both ideas at once: I can understand someone feels insecure, and that does not make controlling behaviour acceptable.
Coping with Rejection and Embarrassment
Learning to handle rejection is one of the most important developmental tasks of adolescence, and one of the hardest. The content many young men are consuming today tells them that rejection is a form of humiliation, something to be avenged or escaped by gaining dominance. This is a dangerous frame. Young people who have not been taught that rejection is normal, survivable, and not a reflection of their worth are more vulnerable to both experiencing and causing harm.
Conversation starters:
• 'Everyone gets rejected sometimes, whether it's a friend group, a job, or someone you like. How do you usually deal with it?'
• 'What do you think is a healthy way to respond if someone doesn't like you back? What would be an unhealthy way?'
• 'If someone felt so embarrassed or angry after being rejected that they wanted to get back at the person, what do you think about that?'
• 'Do you think boys and girls are expected to handle rejection differently? Why might that be?'
What to explore:
Ideas that rejection is an insult, or that the person doing the rejecting deserves punishment, need to be gently but clearly challenged. Make clear that rejection hurts, that is normal, and that the only acceptable response to it is to feel sad for a while and move on.
Sexual Images: Sending, Receiving, and What Happens Next
The sharing of sexual images, sometimes called 'sexting', is far more common among teenagers than many parents realise. It is also far more risky. Images shared in a relationship can be used as leverage, shared without consent, or become a source of significant harm to the person in them. Young people need to understand this before it happens, not after.
Conversation starters:
• 'Have you heard of people sharing intimate photos? What do you think about that?'
• 'Why do you think someone might feel under pressure to send an image they weren't comfortable sending? What would you say to them?'
• 'If someone received an intimate image of another person, what do you think the right thing to do with it would be?'
• 'What do you think it says about someone if they share intimate images of an ex-partner to embarrass them?'
Key messages to convey clearly:
• No one has the right to pressure another person to send images.
• Sharing someone's intimate images without their consent is a crime in England and Wales and can result in prosecution.
• If your child receives or is asked for an intimate image, they can come to you without getting in trouble.
• If an image of your child has been shared without consent, you will support them and take action. This is never their fault.
Pornography
Most young people have accessed pornography online by their early teens, often before they have had any meaningful relationship or sex education. The research on the effects of pornography on young people's expectations, relationship attitudes, and sexual behaviour is consistent: early and regular exposure to pornography shapes beliefs about what sex is, what women want, and what relationships look like. These beliefs rarely align with reality and frequently cause harm.
This conversation does not need to be a lecture. It can begin with curiosity.
Conversation starters:
• 'A lot of young people come across pornography online. I want you to know you can talk to me about what you've seen without getting in trouble.'
• 'Do you think what's shown in pornography is what real relationships or real sex looks like? What's different?'
• 'Pornography often shows women being treated in ways that look very different from how you'd want to treat someone you care about. What do you think about that?’
• 'Has anything you've seen online made you uncomfortable or confused? I'd like to know if it has.'
What to hold clearly:
The goal is not to shame your child for curiosity, which is normal. The goal is to help them develop a critical lens on what they are watching, so they understand the difference between a commercial product designed for a particular effect and what healthy, mutual intimacy actually involves.
Judgement and Whose Is Right
Young people are navigating constant social judgement, much of it expressed online and much of it gendered. Girls are judged for their appearance, their sexual behaviour, and their choices. Boys are judged by status, dominance, and whether they conform to particular codes of masculinity. All of this judgement shapes how young people see themselves and each other.
Conversation starters:
• 'Do you think people your age judge each other harshly? What kinds of things get judged most?'
• 'Do you think boys and girls get judged differently for the same behaviour? Why might that be?'
• 'What do you think about people who share or comment on embarrassing things about someone else online?'
• 'If you saw someone at school being talked about badly online, what would you do?'
What to explore:
Conversations about judgement can open into broader discussions about respect, about how we treat people when we think they cannot hear us, and about the difference between having an opinion about someone and acting on it in a way that harms them.
Signs That Something Might Be Wrong
No list of warning signs is exhaustive, and none of these individually means your child is in trouble. But a pattern of several of the following is worth taking seriously and worth talking about.
• Significant withdrawal from friends or family, particularly if linked to a specific relationship.
• A change in personality that seems to be driven by a partner's preferences: clothing, friends, activities.
• Anxiety or distress if they are not immediately able to respond to messages from a specific person.
• Making excuses for someone's controlling or aggressive behaviour by reframing it as love or care.
• Using language about relationships that sounds like it comes directly from online content: hierarchy, dominance, entitlement.
• Becoming secretive about their online activity in a way that is distressed rather than simply private.
• Minimising or dismissing concerns you raise about a relationship.
If you are worried, the most important thing you can do is stay connected. Keep the relationship open. Do not make the relationship the enemy, or you risk losing access to your child at exactly the moment they most need you.
When to Seek Support
If you are concerned that your child is experiencing abuse in a relationship, or that they are behaving abusively towards a partner, specialist support is available. You do not need to have all the answers before you reach out. MyCWA provides specialist domestic abuse support across Cheshire and operates the Interrupt intervention for young people and families. Our services are confidential and survivor-led. You can contact us through mycwa.org.uk. If you are worried about an immediate risk of harm, contact the police on 999. For non-emergency advice, call 101. The National Domestic Abuse Helpline is available 24 hours a day on 0808 2000 247. If a sexual image of your child has been shared without consent, the Internet Watch Foundation can help have images removed quickly. Contact them at iwf.org.uk.
This guide was produced by Saskia Lightburn-Ritchie, Victims Advocate for Cheshire Youth Justice Board. It may be shared and reproduced for non-commercial purposes with attribution. March 2026