Sex Ed: A Conversation with my Young Kids

It occurred to me tonight that my oldest son is about to enter 2nd grade. I remember being in 2nd grade. Mrs. Butler was my teacher at Patrick Henry Elementary School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I remember having a love/hate relationship with the opposite sex. Boys were mean...but some were cute. I don't remember anything I learned from Mrs. Butler that year but I did learn most of the major cuss words from my classmates. Nice. I'm so glad they didn't educate me on the subject of sex until 3rd grade. Yikes. 3rd grade. 

My 5 year old daughter Kylie came home saying the word "sexy" earlier this year and I sorta freaked a little on the inside. Really? All ready? When I asked her what it meant, she really didn't know. So I told her that was not really a word children should use, and I told her to say "sassy" instead. Phew, potential public humiliation in the check-out line at Kroger temporarily avoided. 

Honestly, I don't really buy into the idea that the world our kids are going up in is so much worse than the one we grew up in. Sure it's a lot easier to see and hear about the bad, but the Bible says that "there is nothing new under the sun." So that is my truth. Sex has been misused and abused since the fall and will be until Christ's return. The intention for which God created sex has not changed and won't until that same moment. 

We didn't talk about the subject in our house growing up and it seemed like there were only two schools of thought: "Sex is dirty and bad" from the Church and then the rest of the world. So, that being said, I can't sit here and pretend to be any sort of expert, in fact, I didn't fully understand sex as it was intended by it's Creator until about 2 years ago when my much beloved church posted a class on the subject. It rocked my sexy world! As a result, I believe if we, as Christian parents, would get over our completely distorted view of sex, we could start the next sexual revolution through our kids and it would be the opposite of the first. They need to know the truth about sex and their parents need to be the first to bring it up! So there begins the line of thinking that has birthed the imaginary conversation below. Soon we will probably have to have this conversation for real but hopefully my kids will be better off than I was for the education. Mind you, this is a layered, on-going conversation, so this is just the early elementary introduction phase. Here's a practice run:

Sex is a wonderful thing that God created for married people. He made it so that a husband and wife can show each other how much they love one another with their bodies and also have lots of fun together. You know how we are always telling you to protect your body and how no one is supposed to touch your private places? Well it's because your body is a gift from God to you that you will someday give as a wedding gift to the person you marry. We also need to make sure that we don't allow anyone to have that gift before we have committed our lives to loving and serving them. It's one of the greatest gifts you will ever give and it is a beautiful way to serve the person you love most. God is honored when sex is part of your life as a married person and pleased when we respect our bodies and respect the bodies of others. He made you perfectly suited for that special person we choose to marry and that person is perfectly made for you! The world does not understand that God created sex and that He wants us to enjoy it the way He created us to. In fact, sex is so wonderful that it is how God chose for us to be created in our mommy's tummy. The world will lie to you by telling you that you can be disrespectful to your body and to others. But God always gives us the best plan because He is the one who made us and He already knows the person you will marry. He already sees them and has a plan for you to meet someday. So when the world tells you to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it, with whoever you want, remember, that the wedding gift you are holding right now belongs to one special person and never let anyone try to take it from you before it's time. It's too valuable and expensive to just throw away. So what questions do you have about?  (This is when they hit us with the hard stuff, and I look over at Jason and say... take it from here, I'm out.) Until then...