It's inevitable: the media (and often friends) will arouse your kids' curious about sexualized images. But if these outside influences introduce your child to the XXX world, you may never find out until it's too late. Instead of prevention, now you're talking about recovery. (Believe me, I've heard countless stories to back this up.)

I get this question all the time: "Won't I make my child more curious about pornography if I start talking about it too early?"

Let's think about that.

The last common area, which I can relate to, is Mood-affective sexual addiction. This type is characterized by a pattern of using sex to placate or control the highs and lows of mood swings. The two most common medical diagnoses related to this pattern are depression and bipolar disorders. The fact is that sex addicts deal with mood issues at a rate of nearly 4 times the general male population 26% for the former, 7 for the latter.

Intimacy-aversive (sometimes called 'sexual anorexia' or 'intimacy anorexia') addicts have more trouble with "acting-in" than acting-out in the context of a relationship. This can be evidenced by behaviors that tend to sabotage or erode the intimacy in that primary romantic relationship: withdraw, withholding, blaming, shaming, avoiding, hiding, controlling, etc. Sound familiar?

The third most common type of sexual addiction is called Trauma-Induced and is the result of sexual trauma. Sexual trauma means "any event that alters or damages a person’s self-perception or understanding of healthy sexuality." This can range from normal childhood experiences like “playing doctor” or exploring to actual acts of rape, incest or molestation.