I recently hosted a parent workshop with the topic of talking with your children about healthy sexuality and tying that into making a commitment to "purity for life," as it relates to the Legacy Milestone Model that our church has adopted. These kinds of gatherings are some of my favorite times, as it draws together parents of different ages and of various-aged children and allows great dialogue and conversation to happen.Our format started with a young man of 25 years of age sharing what he wished he would have known about sexual health and relationships during his growing up years. It was a great springboard for the remainder of the evening. I then shared Jim Burns's short video clip called "Teaching Children Healthy Sexuality" (you must have a RightNow Media account to view this). We had some great discussion about the reality that kids are learning about sex from media, the Internet, their friends, and so on...so they better be hearing about it at home, too, from a biblical worldview. Ideally, these "at home" conversations will be happening proactively during the growing up years of a child, through adolescence and the teen years.
The bottom line of our gathering is that it is crucial for these conversations about sex, sexual health, pornography, modesty, and purity to be happening in an ongoing basis in our homes. God's design for sex is good! And it's important that our kids understand that.
Below are some resources that we mentioned at our gathering...I hope they're helpful to you as you tackle this very important (and very difficult and awkward) topic in your home! Please comment if you have a favorite resource that isn't listed below.
- Our senior high will be using Doug Fields's series "The Truth about Sex" (you must have a RightNow Media account to view this).
- Jim Burns is one of my favorite go-to gurus on the subject of talking with your kids about healthy sexuality. He encourages an approach of starting when they're just toddlers and having conversations that evolve over time and become more age appropriate and relevant to what your child is dealing with. Here are some of his books that were discussed at our gathering:
- God Made Your Body (ages 3-5)
- How God Makes Babies (ages 6-9)
- The Purity Code (ages 10-14+)
- Teaching Your Children Healthy Sexuality
- Dannah Gresh has a number of really quality books that tackle topics of sexual health, modesty, and purity. Check out her Amazon page here.
- Preparing Your Daughter for Every Woman's Battle by Shannon Ethridge contains helpful insight into how to prepare your daughter to combat the sexualized messages that the culture will be bombarding her with.
- Preparing Your Son for Every Man's Battle by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker is filled with practical advice about how to have very frank and thorough conversations with your son about sexual integrity.
