Sex, Kids and the Big Discussion

It’s Sunday afternoon. You’re watching an NFL game and yelling at the quarterback for even thinking he could execute such a low percentage play when your five year old daughter, sitting next to you on the couch, decides to help you out by firing the F-bomb at him. After your wife jumpstarts your heart, you ask your daughter where she learned such an interesting expression. She informs you that one of the kids in her Sunday school class was using it that morning at church. I remember the day this happened. Karis, our first born, was 5 years old and this was our initial encounter with the whole issue of when and what to tell our kids about sex.  We might have been able to avoid the discussion, but her response to Darcy’s admonition that “That isn’t an appropriate expression and you’re not allowed to use it anymore,” was “Why? What does it mean?” When it comes to talking about sex, too many parents would rather put off the discussion until the child is at least a few years into their second decade on earth. They often tell me that their reluctance is because they feel embarrassed, ashamed, or unqualified. Hmm. You know how to make these kids but you feel unqualified to explain to them how you did it. Why do you think that is? I’m convinced these feelings are directly fueled by the powers of darkness that work overtime to keep us off of our game. Satan knows that the single most effective way to keep kids from being ruled by their urges or mastered by their temptations is the level-headed leadership of a loving parent mentoring them through the cultural minefield that surrounds their youth. So he goes for our emotional jugular and gets us feeling inept, self-conscious and off-the-chart guilty about discussing this vital issue with our kids. It’s really simple logic. Satan wants to have the first crack at discussing sex with our kids. He knows that it is far better to be first when it comes to transferring information to a child than it is to be correct. The first information in gets the honor of being the imbedded message. Whatever follows is forced to do the hard work of displacing the information that’s already entrenched. How am I so sure it’s Satan making us nervous about discussing this with our kids? Simple: Do you think it is God who wants you to be uncomfortable and embarrassed about discussing His amazing and beautiful story of love and procreation? Do you think it is God who wants you to allow the sins of your past to forever disqualify you from speaking truth into your child’s heart? See where I’m going? The answers to those two questions are only and obviously, No and No respectively. If you’ve struggled with the standard push backs to discussing sex with your kids, then you’ve been face-to-face with the devil. Get in line. Suggestion: why not turn the tables on him? The best way to do this is to implant the truth before he gets a chance to sow his lies. So … when would that be? Do the math. Unless you’re intentionally raising your kids in a hermetically sealed environment isolated from culture for the bulk of their childhood (which I’m convinced is a trap for fools), then you’ll probably need to have this discussion about the time they start Kindergarten; sooner depending on the context of their life. I’ll pause for a second while you get the oxygen back into your lungs. Remember, our job as parents is to both protect as well as prepare our children. Between their sexualized culture with its family hour commercials for erectile dysfunction, (which is the mild side of the invasion), to friends, siblings, and school (whether public, private, Christian or home school collectives), the message is relentless. In addition to this, their anatomy and gender make sex an on-going back-story of their daily life. Darcy and I faced the same challenges as you. We wanted to guard our kids from the world’s lies. But we were convinced that the best way to guard them was to equip them with the tools they needed to filter the information they would have coming at them every day. About the time they were starting Kindergarten, we sat down as a couple with each of our children. We didn’t go into a bunch of graphic detail but we covered the issue thoroughly. Here was our checklist for discussing sex with our young children: The Story of Life: an elementary course in sperm and egg biology. The Story of Love: God has made the act of sex a very pleasurable and exciting private dimension of a married couple. It’s something they can look forward to in their future married life. The Truth About Lies: because this is such a vital and personal gift from God, Satan is going to work overtime to ruin it for them. He’s going to bombard them with all kinds of lies and half-truths to get them to squander all of the good that God meant for sex to represent in their lives. The Hormones: in a few years, hormones are going to start to create a natural interest and yearning for sexual outlets. God wants them to trust Him for His best; Satan wants them to surrender to him for his counterfeit. The Promise: we’re going to be there to walk with them through the confusion of their culture. That means if they hear anything—a word, a slang expression, conflicting information … whatever—and they wonder what it is referring to, just ask us, and we’ll explain it. It also means that we’re going to be there to walk with them through the temptations they’ll battle from hormones, attractions, and the pull from their culture. What if you feel unqualified to weigh in on this because of a promiscuous past? First, who do you think would put a thought like that in your head? Second, the truth indeed sets you free. You don’t have to go into the ugly details, but you can explain that you know first hand just how awful it is to turn your back on God’s best and buy into Satan’s scam. Fortunately, God has rescued you from the trap you were in and has forgiven you through the power of His grace. But your youth and your adult life would have been spared so much heartache if you would have known the truth and/or followed God’s path from the beginning. Dr. Howard Hendricks of Dallas Theological Seminary said “We shouldn’t be ashamed to discuss what God wasn’t ashamed to create.” There so much in the balance when it comes to the issue of sex and the heart of our children. I don’t know about you, but the last person I’d like lecturing me as to my qualifications and comfort level on this subject is that nightmarish snake from the Garden of Eden. Dr. Hendricks is right; parents who are proactive leaders on this subject are the ones who most often give their kids the high ground for the battle ahead. © Copyright Dr.Tim Kimmel2009