Practical and Effective Instructions for the Sex Talk

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One of the most exciting and bittersweet times in a parent’s life is walking their child through the sex talk. It’s the season that leads them into adulthood. It’s the secret handshake that lets them know that the curtain of childhood is dropping and a brave new world is in front of them. It’s exciting because you are the one leading her. It’s bittersweet because your little kid is growing up.

You may want to read:

• Teaching Your Son Today to Be a Great Husband Later
• Practical Advice Before You Have the Sex Talk With Your Child
• Terrific Way for Introducing the Sex Talk to Your Child

Exporting Jesus

The previous chapters of this book laid out a strong gospel-centered backdrop that prepares a parent for the sex talk. This prerequisite equipping incrementally built a sexual worldview in the child’s life from birth to now. As you know, the talk is not just a talk. It’s a way of living out a God-centered and other-centered perspective. You’re exporting your sexual worldview and experience to your child, which makes your goal much broader than teaching abstinence. Any middle school health class can do that for you. What you’re exporting is the life of Jesus Christ—the gospel—to your child, specifically how that life impacts their sexuality. These prior chapters represent a practical philosophy for gospel-centered sexuality. This chapter is about the actual talk—the weeks before as you prepare and the days you spend with your child discussing the birds and the bees. More than likely, this will be the most emotional time in your child’s life.

Six Months Out

The gospel implies preparation (Ephesians 1:3-11). You want to be intentional during this season. The gospel was not a haphazard event (Galatians 4:4) cobbled together because of an unexpected failure of humanity. God thought about us in the past eternity and mapped out a specific and practical strategy to help us. As practical modelers of the gospel, you want to imitate Him by being proactive in your preparation for launching your child into adulthood (Ephesians 5:1). Few plans you will ever make are more important than preparing your child for this time in their life. One of the things you want them to feel is your thoughtful care as your well-planned sex talk engages them. Important events are planned events. The Lord plans, prepares, and executes redemptive initiatives for His glory and our benefit. Six months out should be sufficient time to begin putting some materials together for your retreat.

What I’m going to lay out here is what we did. This chapter should be filed under the heading of there is “a” way and there is “the” way of doing things. Knowing the difference is wisdom. Where the Bible is not clear on how to execute the sex talk with your child, each parent should exercise purposeful freedom to do what they believe is the right thing for them (Romans 14:23). What we did may work for you; it may not. Choose parts of what we did and add your preferences. In one sense, it does not matter how you do it as long as you are leading your child into adulthood through the means of a practical gospel-centered worldview on sex and sexuality. Your child’s personality, spirituality, capacity, and maturity will determine a big part of your plans. Your talk should be predetermined and pneumatic (Spirit-led). If you have more than one child, you already know a cookie-cutter parenting model does not work.

Talk Time

Knowing each child is different will help you decide when to have the talk with them. We talked with our daughter two months before her eleventh birthday. There were several reasons for this. Her body was changing, and we knew her first period was not far away. It was late summer, just before school started, which allowed Lucia time to take her on a four-day retreat. She was going to middle school, and we assumed the language in her new school environment would be a significant cultural upgrade. She was well-grounded in God’s Word and was mature enough to where we believed she could handle this transitional conversation in her life.

There is no set age for the talk. You’ll have to assess your child, their surroundings, peers, contexts, and spiritual maturity. The timing was right for us and her. We waited until my son was between twelve and thirteen years old. His body was not changing. He was not entering a culturally upgraded school environment for another six months. He was not interested in girls. He was interested in rip-sticking, tree climbing, and Minecraft.

Talk Materials

Around the six-month mark, we began gathering materials for the talk with our daughter. Six months gave us enough time to read and listen to the materials so we could assess them. We assessed the materials’ strengths and weaknesses and considered how they should be applied to our child. We listened, read, and made notes with our daughter in mind, which helped Lucia as she prepared for the talk. If you are a single parent, I recommend you work through the material with another adult who knows you and your child. The gospel is not only proactive in planning but also customized to each person. God’s Word is not a generic Word but a specific Word that speaks to specific people. Therefore, we wanted to adapt the materials to a specific little girl–our little girl.

The main core material we used was from Family Life—their Passport to Purity Kit. This program was adequate, with some tweaks, for what we needed to do. Lucia and I listened to all the CDs separately, making notes and comparing their strengths and weaknesses, as well as discussing how to apply the lessons to our child. (They may have changed the materials since we used them between 2012 and 2016). In addition, we used an article from CCEF, written by Paul Tripp, called, The Way of the Wise: Teaching Teenagers About Sex. While Passport to Purity is excellent on the technical aspects of the talk, e.g., how to have sex, body issues, your period, virginity, and planning the actual retreat, it had some weaknesses. Here are three of them:

1. They do not use much Scripture. You will want to make sure your child has a good grasp of the Word of God. Family Life could assume this essential biblical grounding.
2. There were some man-centered aspects to the program. For example, if you want to overcome peer pressure, they focus on you mustering up the courage. They don’t speak clearly enough to our innate weaknesses or our need to rely on God rather than ourselves (2 Corinthians 1:8-9).
3. The thrust of their curriculum was more about not having sex or getting pregnant. While this perspective is a good and needed goal, there needs to be more emphasis on the motive for purity, which is Godward, not pragmatic.

Talk Prep

They were trying to do two main things: how to prepare for the talk and how to talk. On these points, they excel. You will not be disappointed. You may preview the Travel Journal for the parents for the purity retreat and the Tour Guide from Passport to Purity. If you want a more Godward focus, you will have to add your preferred teaching to your plans. While I don’t want my child to have sex before marriage, the more important key is how she rivets her heart to God rather than the shame of fornication or the liabilities of having a child outside of marriage. We also added the Alex and Brett Harris book, Do Hard Things.

This was not a book we used on the retreat. We gave it to our daughter just before the retreat to read, which she began. She finished it after the retreat. There were two reasons we gave her this book:

• We wanted to heighten her awareness and anticipation for the upcoming retreat. Though she did not know the specifics of the retreat, she knew she was going to something special—we built it up.
• We framed it as a time for her to be with her mommy and talk about the next phase of her life. We did not tell her about the sexual aspects of the retreat, as that would have confused her.

She was ecstatic about the adventure, and giving her a book about being a teenager heightened her anticipation. Though she loved Nancy Drew mysteries and other girly-type books, we wanted to add “Do Hard Things” to her reading list. She embraced this idea as she was looking forward to being an adult. The last piece of material we used was the location for the retreat. We picked the mountains of North Carolina, which were about 90 minutes away. Our daughter and mother love God’s creation. The mountains were the perfect place for them to romp around the woods, walk in the creeks, and slide down big rocks. We wanted it to be fun because we knew there would be embarrassing and fearful moments. She needed to go romp in the creeks after hearing where babies come from. I took our son to the beach.

Two Months Out

With your location determined and your materials in hand, it’s time to start working through them. If you live in a two-parent home, I recommend both parents read and listen to the material. You can plan some date nights for discussion. Because my wife was going to have the talk with our daughter during the late summer, we used several Vacation Bible School nights to go on dates to discuss the materials. This time gave us opportunities to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the materials as well as the strengths and weaknesses of our daughter so we could practicalize the one to the other. These times were also opportunities to pray through the plans. These date nights proved to be rich, not only because they were related to our daughter but also because they strengthened our relationship.

The Retreat

We had some friends who owned a house in the mountains, and they were willing to let Lucia and our daughter use it. Because there was no school, we planned a four-day retreat. They left on a Monday morning and returned late Thursday afternoon. The Passport series does a good job of laying out the plan for the retreat. You can actually do it over a weekend, but because we could add an extra day, it was great as it gave them more time for additional discussion points:

• We wanted to carefully unpack her relationship with Christ, which the Passport series does not do.
• We wanted to learn how we could parent her and her siblings more effectively. It was a wonderful time for us to learn how to be better parents.
• Lucia planned all the meals and snacks and bought all those items prior to the retreat.
• She also went online to research the area to see what fun things they could do while there. This was an important aspect of the trip.
• She knew parts of the talk would be heavy and embarrassing for our daughter, which it was. There were a couple of times when they needed to stop the audio and discussion to climb some rocks, which made a huge difference.
• She also planned downtime for our daughter so she could work through her passport journal. She took her journal writing so seriously that she wrote everything on paper beforehand and then rewrote it in her special passport journal. She didn’t want to mess up her special journal for her special occasion.
• Another heavy moment was the all-important trip to the drug store to buy feminine products, which also required another trip to the rocks and creek. She handled all these things extremely well, and I was praising God that she had a capable mom to walk with her every step of the way.

Lucia’s faith in God grew during this time. Her affection for her daughter grew deeper, too. The bond between them was strengthened, and we all celebrated God’s kindness to us (Isaiah 55:8-9).

Post Talk Events

On the way home from the retreat, Lucia planned a time at the salon for both of them to get their hair styled and get manicures and pedicures. It was a great way to cap off her time with Mommy. Later that evening, I met with them for a prearranged dinner, during which I had the opportunity to encourage our daughter as we celebrated this transitional week in her life. I gave her a promise ring and walked her through our hope that she would glorify God not only in her body but also in her heart (Luke 10:27). It turned out to be four full days of celebratory seriousness and fun. Though she was back playing in the woods and acting silly again, we knew things would never be the same. Our little girl walked across the bridge from being a girl to becoming a young lady. It was the beginning of a new adventure with her.

Call to action

1. If your child is a toddler, I recommend you read through this book now. If you are married, it would be best for you and your spouse to read through it together. Though the sex talk may be years away, your child’s sexual worldview is developing now.
2. If you are a single parent, I recommend you talk with someone in your local church to discuss the ideas in this book. You do not have to go through this alone.
3. Perhaps you have put off the sex talk until the last minute. That does not have to be a problem. For many of us, the sex talk was put off permanently. If you’re like me, you learned about sex and sexuality as an adult after you became a Christian. There is much grace for people like us, and if you’re in my boat, you can appropriate that same grace into your life.
4. Even if you’re a last-minute parent, I recommend you begin at the beginning of this book. You may not be able to implement some of the teachings into your child’s life, but you can adjust and shape your thoughts by these truths, so when you do have the talk with your child, it won’t be from a blank slate.

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Rick Thomas

Rick launched the Life Over Coffee global training network in 2008 to bring hope and help for you and others by creating resources that spark conversations for transformation. His primary responsibilities are resource creation and leadership development, which he does through speaking, writing, podcasting, and educating.

In 1990 he earned a BA in Theology and, in 1991, a BS in Education. In 1993, he received his ordination into Christian ministry, and in 2000 he graduated with an MA in Counseling from The Master’s University. In 2006 he was recognized as a Fellow of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors (ACBC).