Roasted When You Order
Get 10% off and FREE shipping on your first coffee subscription order.
Use code “BREW” at checkout.
Shop Now
Get 10% off and FREE shipping on your first coffee subscription order.
0
Photo: ©Zinkevych from Getty Images via Canva.com
You may want to read:
Some of the people in the group would respond with nervous laughter. Others would respond with snappy jokes. A few of them may be crude. It can be a challenge to distinguish a group of parents from a group of giddy teens when talking about sex. We speak from our experiences, and some parents’ sexual history, experiences, and training were far from ordinary, pleasant, or exportable. Here are a few illustrations from a fictional group of friends.
Some people in the group felt as though they were talking dirty, while others felt dirty. They all had thoughts, but few of them were comfortable sharing them. The shame of Adam was all over their faces, revealing hearts that had yet to come into the practical freedom of the gospel. They were normal Christians. The people who have the most freedom to talk about sex and the clearest perspective on sex can be the most muddled and shame-ridden about sex and sexuality.
Sober talk and thoughtful discussions about sexuality are rare with Christian parents. After you compare the absurdities of the world with the maturity of God’s Word, you’d expect Christians to bring bold and careful counsel to the topic of sex. Our voices should not be muted, and we should not blush. God has given us the gift of clarity and wisdom, which compels us to speak into the sexual noise of our culture, as well as speak into the minds of our children. There is no shame in a biblical worldview of sex (Genesis 2:24-25; Hebrews 13:4). Many believers do not speak with clarity, wisdom, grace, or maturity but cow down to the challenge, or they respond with silly wisecracks.
It is like we come into the discussion with a nervous apology rather than bold wisdom. The result is our kids are left to figure out what sex means through other mediums than in their homes or their parents. The number one sex mentor today is social media. Parents are left behind as children find alternate means to learn about sex as they explore sexuality outside the home, among their friends. Some of these explorations are at the children’s volition, while other avenues are imposed upon our children, whether they want to know about sex or not. The world does not wait for stalling and stuttering parents to lead their children. There is no inhibition from the world when it comes to teaching their version of sex education.
Sex is not going away because God preordained sex into how we relate to each other, which is why Satan created a rival who uses perverted temptations and tactics to twist our minds (Genesis 3:6-7). Bad sex is born out of our shaping influences: what happened to us, how our parents failed to lead us, and the poor choices we have made. Our culture perpetuates our sex problems further through perversion and the intrusion of the social contagion of pornography.
This social crisis should not leave the Christians covered in the culture’s sexual dust. Rather than lamenting our present problems, we are called to step into our sexually dysfunctional world proactively. Sex is for the mature. Jesus came to kill and destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and He similarly armed us to go and do likewise. We don’t need another statistic about how bad porn is. We need proper training that initiates a proactive plan to talk to our children about how to live a life of purity in an impure world.
The number one question people ask about the sex talk is when to have it. I have made a case throughout this book that the sexual education of our children begins before their first birthday. We began having sexual communications with our children before they could walk. What you don’t want to do is pretend sex and sexuality do not exist, and then when they are of age for more in-depth and more complex discussions about sex, you drop a dramatic and traumatic sex bomb speech on them. That strategy does not help children or deepen your relationship with them.
A biblical worldview of sex and sexuality needs a long, slow on-ramp that incrementally leads to appropriate, unique-to-each-child discussions about the intricacies of intimacy. Each child is different; it is every parent’s call to customize how they communicate the sex experience to the child. Our three children are two years apart. They are a girl, a boy, and a girl. God wonderfully and uniquely created each child. We scripted our approach to each one of them according to their individuality, gender, maturity, and unique personality traits. The only similarity is that we started having “sex communications” with them before they could walk.
As you can imagine, it would depend not only on whether your child is a Christian but also on the maturity of their relationship with God. Sanctification is a process, and all children move at their own pace through progressive sanctification. If your child is not a believer, they will not be able to grasp the message the way they should because they lack the Spirit’s illumination and the Bible’s wise guidance. Maybe you don’t know if your child is a believer. That is highly possible since that kind of assessment is subjective. It is even more subjective when they are young and living under your leadership.
Their true faith will be more measurable as they become adults, living on their own. If you’re unsure that they are a Christian, you can still assess their overall maturity and responsiveness to the Word of God. Are they teachable? Are they open to the Lord’s training? Or are they resistant? Regardless of their spiritual temperament, the starting point for all sexual discussions is spiritual in nature because sex is a spiritual matter first and foremost. You will want to determine your child’s spiritual capacity. This idea is similar to a child’s ability to understand and process other things, like math.
Some children understand mathematics. They get it. Other children have a harder time grasping math concepts. Your child’s spirituality will be similar. At the transitional age from child to adult, girls are usually more mature than boys. You will need God’s insights and wisdom as you consider your child’s specific needs, strengths, weaknesses, and capacities. Regardless of age, start early. Guide the train slowly out of the station, but by all means, bring it out and get things moving. Be appropriately sexual in your speech and expressions. Let your children experience a purer version of sexuality long before they ever understand the deeper meanings of sex, especially before the culture starts indoctrinating them.
You do not want the talk disconnected from your ongoing, transparent relationship with your spouse or children. I’m not suggesting you have inappropriate discussions before it’s time for them. I’m suggesting you have a biblically appropriate, intimate, affectionate, and spiritual relationship with your spouse and child, regardless of the child’s age. A child does not need to hear the talk from someone they have never cried with, sinned against, confessed to, or talked to profoundly. By the time you get to the talk, you need a relational history with your child that is meaningful and spiritual. You need to be their friend as much as you need to be their parent. No matter where you are with your child, you can begin an ongoing, meaningful, and transparent relationship with them now.
If you have not had this kind of relationship with them, then you can build one by walking out repentance with them. Let them know how you have failed them and how you’d like to create a new kind of relationship with them. Humility can go a long way; God gives favor to the humble (James 4:6). Your future sex talk should be a natural progression of communication within the context of doing life together. It should not be an out-of-left-field, overly-punctuated event that freaks them out. If the talk is in the context of a life lived within a relational, familial context, and there are many appropriate talks along the way, then the actual conversation will not be awkward.
Suppose your children are older, and you have not established a relational context. In that case, I recommend you talk with your church leadership about how to reorder/restructure your home so you can serve your child more effectively when the time comes for the talk. If you are in a two-parent home, the dad needs to lead your daily conversations about life issues. He should set a pace and trajectory for sex and sexuality from a complementarian worldview. Complementarian parents build a biblical partnership, with the dad leading and the mom complementing their leadership model (Genesis 2:18). Though the mom leads the talk with a daughter, you do not detach it from her husband’s leadership, care, and insights. Sex is a relationship between a husband and wife, which is a united front they want to practice in every context of their lives, especially when instructing their children about sexuality.
I do not recommend parents use immature synonyms to communicate anatomical body parts. Call them what they are. Our son doesn’t have a pee-pee but a penis. That’s not weird to him. It is what it is. A cup is a cup, a book is a book, and his penis is a penis. Immature language or immaturity about words is not wise, and it’s not helpful. You don’t want to export weirdness to your children. It breeds insecurity while solidifying their shame, creating communication distance between the parent and child. Don’t export your taboos, silliness, or crudeness to your children; use the right words. As your children mature, your hope is for a seamless transition to more in-depth and profound sexual discussions with them.
It’s the idea of building blocks incrementally being stacked one upon another. You begin with the language, which will lead them to future drawn-out discussions about the act of marriage. Imagine spending a few days with your child, walking them through teen and adult sexuality issues, and the first two days are spent getting comfortable with a new kind of language. That’s unnecessary because you can be pre-emptive. Children have an incredible capacity to understand complex things and to be mature about them if you let them. Do not be embarrassed to talk about what God was not ashamed to create and entrust to our care and stewardship.
Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear (Ephesians 4:29).
Sexuality discussions at a young age involve more than accurate anatomical language. Sexuality is a way of life. While your children are young, you want to build a foundation for sex as you lavish them with affection, encouragement, and edifying communication. These concepts contextualize the anatomical aspects of sex in the framework of a loving relationship. Without them, then, your sex talk will be theoretical, sterile, and laborious. The best sex flows out of other-centered, God-saturated relationships.
Distant, harsh, neglectful, critical, impatient, and generally frustrated parents do not prepare or equip their children with a biblical understanding and experience with sex. How many women have complained about the emotional detachment of their husbands? How many women have complained about their husband’s sex on the brain mentality? One lady told me she felt like a Christian prostitute because of her husband’s pornographic understanding of sex. His sexual practice was all physical, not spiritual. He learned the mechanics of sex on the streets rather than from the Bible or his parents. He was not equipped to relate well to the opposite sex.
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).
