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.
When our daughter was about 8 we got a book on her level from our local library about human sexuality, and told her we would answer any questions she had. After that, it was relatively easy to deal with.
To my knowledge, you are the only naturist on FR.
Yep. No livestock I know have any sense of modesty whatsoever. Their indiscretion was my gain.
Circa 1983-4, We sat both of ours down at the same time. 15 year old boy and 14 year old girl.
After my well thought out start, our daughter took over the session and ran down the entire list of what I was going to say.
The year before she did the same thing about drugs. Bottom line they knew where to buy drugs and didn’t want to and could not see that they would ever partake. They knew who the “stoners” were at school, the dealers and the clean kids.
I think if my daughter was in charge none of the kids would have had sex or used drugs in HS.
Life often presents us with situations that are unexpected. That the man can tell the story and do it in a way he did makes it very readable ... and funny.
Very interesting that I had a very similar reaction from my son. He was 9 and I was trying to be non-chalant and was telling him about the technical details of sex on the way to Little League practice. After awhile he put up his hand and said “stop, that’s all I want to hear right now.”
That night as mom tucked him into bed he disgustingly said to her “you let dad do that to you FOUR times?!
I can’t remember how old our son was, but upon hearing the basic gist of it said, “Well - I’M never doing that!”
Sounds like you had a very smart daughter
My parents taught me about sex the old-fashioned way. I learned it from the gutter!
Ha...there were no sheets when he walked in. We were so heavy into it we didn’t hear him come in. We heard nothing until he announced his question. I do think we used the “wrestling” explanation, but his eyes were as big as saucers when we first glanced his way.
Yeah, I had that talk with my daughters. They did not get it until they had jobs. One was a cashier in a meat store. She learned we bought stew meat for dinners. Others bout steaks and filet with EBT cards.
My second daughter worked as a contracted “face painter” at a local six flags. She had to deal with spoiled kids and argumentative parents who wanted everything for nothing.
The sex talk was easy. The real life talks can really be depressing.
“”Life often presents us with situations that are unexpected. That the man can tell the story and do it in a way he did makes it very readable ... and funny.”””
It was slightly amusing. Did you learn anything from reading it? It was clearly written as a form of informational writing. I felt like I was being talked down to.
Nothing like observing the farm animals or other animals to learn about how babies are made. Of course an inquisitive mind helps too. Some kids get experience earlier in life than others.
Yeah she’s still ahead of me.
Hard to find someone more levelheaded.
Naturists are very conservative... Pasco County Florida is a Republican area.. and the Naturist Capital of the world.
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