Posted on 09/01/2014 9:06:31 AM PDT by Kaslin
It was the summer of 2011. We were visiting friends in North Carolina one weekend for a lovely wedding on the beach. Our strong-willed, opinionated and hyper-inquisitive children, a boy and two girls, were, at the time, 10, 7 and 6 respectively. My gorgeous, though Chicago-tough and Sicilian-sassy, wife and I were at lunch with the kids at a little seaside café the following day. A late morning ocean breeze puffed through the eatery’s open bay windows, filling our nostrils with that salty pong of damp sand and faint sea life, forecasting a beautiful day ahead.
We were discussing the wedding ceremony from the previous day. The blushing bride, a delightful young woman, happened to be about eight months pregnant and, to my knowledge, had not been the beneficiary of a second immaculate conception.
As the tsunami bursts forth from still waters without warning, our youngest daughter’s face abruptly took on an air of contemplative curiosity. She looked to me and asked, “Dad, how can she (the bride) already have a baby in her tummy if they’re not married yet?”
I became as a squid in my chair, squirming during the awkward silence that followed and finally responded, “God wants mommies and daddies to wait until they’re married before they start having babies, but sometimes people forget that and start early and then get married later.”
I sat back in my chair, satisfied that I had successfully evacuated “hurricane sex talk,” until our older daughter hit me with the follow-up lightning bolt: “But what about,” she began, “but how do the babies get in the mommy’s tummy in the first place?”
The room began to spin as I was overcome by a sense of utter horror and dread. My wife started laughing and said, “This one’s on you, honey!”
I then spent the next two minutes or so hemming and hawing as I explained to all three children – each transfixed by my words – in as forthright, clinical and age-appropriate a way as humanly possible, exactly “how babies get in their mommies’ tummies.”
When I finished, the children sat in stunned silence, a look of shock and disgust on each of their divine, innocent, cherub-like faces. All at once, and with justice most poetic, three precious little heads wheeled toward my wife. “Mommy, you did THAT?” demanded our youngest with absolute indignation and disbelief.
To which her older sister added, “Three times!?”
Parents, be warned. If it has yet to happen, your day, too, will come. You will, at one time or another, as surly as dawns death and Obama tax hikes, be forced to have “that talk” with your little ones.
It may come without warning, organically and impromptu, as it did with us, or, alternatively, it may come at your direction. I suggest the latter. I suggest you prepare. Be proactive. Board up the windows and lay down the sandbags.
And then strike first.
Either way, they’re going to learn it sooner or later from either you or another. And what they learn may well, most likely will, undermine your values. Severely.
Rocker Marilyn Manson, while certainly no role model for children, is, nonetheless, an intelligent chap. He at least calls it how he sees it. “This is the culture you’re raising your kids in,” he once warned of today’s godless, secularized America – one that he helped make so. “Don’t be surprised if it blows up in your face.”
And blow up it will.
In a culture that slaughters the preborn, mocks purity, celebrates sexual sin and makes a joke out of the institution of marriage by imagining sin-based counterfeits, it remains a daunting task for parents to raise children with the courage and conviction to both faithfully observe, and stand unashamedly for, God’s truths on matters of sex and sexuality. Especially when the enemies of God, marriage and family, insist upon telling your children, at a younger and younger age, that evil is good and good is evil.
Our jobs as parents are further complicated by virtue of the fact that, for many young people, at least for now, popularity is preferred over principle. The prospect of being “hated by everyone,” which, as Christ warns, will, and must, befall His faithful, lacks, understandably, a certain level of appeal (see Matthew 10:22). From an earthly standpoint, it seems counterintuitive to both welcome and find joy in being “hated by the world.”
Even so, stand strong, parents. Persevere – because, ultimately, that’s the price of admission.
So, where to begin?
As with all things, the Holy Scriptures are a good place to start. “Start children off on the way they should go [train them], and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (Prov. 22:6). When it comes to matters of sex and sexuality, parents should universally steep their children and young people in the “word of truth,” the Bible, encouraging them to both submit to and champion (to “fight or speak publicly in support of”) the infallible, unchangeable and absolute truths found therein.
This is so even when the absolute truths of Scripture have become unpopular in a world that prefers the absolute lie of sexual relativism.
Funny thing, absolute truth. It’s absolute. As I’ve written before, it’s like a buoy pulled beneath the lake’s surface and fixed tight with rope. With time, and against the tide of Christ’s love, that rope, the lie of relativism, eventually rots. It snaps under its own weakness, hurling the buoy, truth, from cold darkness to warm sunlight.
In today’s culture, moral and sexual truths have been pulled deep beneath the surface. If steeped in Scripture, children – even the prodigal child – may be pulled under and tied down for a time by relativism’s glittery allure. But when the relativist rope rots, fear not, for those who have been fastened to “the way, the truth and the life,” who is Christ, will burst back into the light.
On matters of sex and sexuality, tether your children to absolute truth.
Then trust God to do the rest.
I have come to find, that if I don’t fill my role as father, someone else will. Scary,but true.
I grew up in farm country.
One of the benefits of kids growing up with livestock. They understand from an early age where babies, hamburgers and chicken nuggets come from.
My wife and I forgot to lock the bedroom door one night.
Really? This man was overcome by horror and dread and became a spineless jellyfish over the thought of explaining to his children (not baby goats) how they came to be? I am supposed to learn something from this man?
Reminds me of the old old story of the man and boy walking down the street and they see two dogs going at it.
The boy says, “What are they doing daddy?”
Being honest the man says “They are making a puppy.”
That night the boy accidentally opens his parents bedroom door and there the man and wife are going at it.
The boy says “What are you doing daddy?”
The man, being honest says “We are making a baby.”
The boy says...”Turn her over daddy! I want a puppy!”
I remember very clearly when I had to have “The Talk” with my son. Only it was not the one about the Birds and the Bees. It was the one about the ineluctable fact that, one way or the other, he and others of his generation will be paying for my retirement and health care, and the retirement and health care of his mother, his aunts and uncles, and all the other boomers. I had to give him the sad news that there was no “Lock Box,” and if there was one, it was empty. He was not happy.
The best thing for kids is to have two parents - a male and a female - who love each other and show it and who are solid rocks when it comes to setting a good example.
A lot of problems are caused by bad example but parents need to be the kids best role model. And that means that you don't let anyone take your place. If the school you have your children in teaches either immorally or amorally remove them immediately and find a situation that does not allow your children to be perverted away from your morals.
Teaching sex? Most of what they learn is the affection they see you extend to your wife/husband. They learn that what mom and dad do in the bedroom is for them only. But when they see you hug and kiss your mate, that does more for that child in re-enforcing true love outside the bedroom where most of our living takes place.
You are the only one who can answer their sex questions with sensitivity and tact. No schoolroom sex ed teacher can do that.
When my son began to date I began to have a series of talks with him. I let him know that he needed to respect his girlfriend's body. That her body as well as his is a house for the Holy Spirit. And to show that respect he should not touch her anywhere a modest two piece bathing suit would be. And that if he was not intending to get married right away they should not spend a lot of time necking. They should do things together and with friends rather than make time to be alone. He and his girlfriend married as virgins.
Because I had carefully watched out for his moral training all his life and I was in that pair who was his best example, it made talking to him much easier.
Young people are capable of withholding their sexual desires for future benefit.
Delightful story of parents teaching children. God bless them.
**The best thing for kids is to have two parents - a male and a female - who love each other and show it and who are solid rocks when it comes to setting a good example.**
Amen!
BTTT
The virgin birth isn’t the result of the immaculate conception. I see this all the time. It’s wrong.
Yup. Very common misunderstanding.
Being a naturist family, our boys knows where babies come from.
Reminds me of the "we child-proofed our house, but they still got in" story, which I very much like.
Here’s how:
Start with this one: http://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-I-Come-From/dp/0818402539/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409590922&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+talk+to+kids+about+sex
Use this one as your kids get older: http://www.amazon.com/Talk-Child-About-Step-—Step/dp/1582380570/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1409590922&sr=8-3&keywords=how+to+talk+to+kids+about+sex
The key is not to make sex taboo or let your kids learn about it from friends, movies, music or the street. It’s precious, it’s part of God’s procreative power that we’re granted by Him and it belongs in marriage. Emphasize that while teaching and your kids will get it.
My friend tells this joke:
How long does it take for a baby to be born?
The first baby can come any time after the wedding. The next child will take nine months.
Getting pregnant before marriage doesn’t destroy our relationship with God. The Atonement can overcome all sorts of mistakes big and little.
Correct. They refer to two completely different and separate births.
I’ll never forget the night when our youngest son, then 5, walked into the room while we having at it, and exclaimed, “Is what you’re doing legal?” After we got him some water and tucked back into bed, we couldn’t help but laugh, and hope to this day that he has erased that memory from his childhood. Probably scarred him for life, but I hope not.
“Wrestling” and the sheets can cover a lot for a little one needing a glass of water.
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