At nearly ten, my eldest son is a bundle of contradictions. The world of demographics and marketing calls him a “tween,” and the description seems apt. He is somewhere between a child and an adolescent, a gangly boy five feet tall with a video game addiction and a touch of acne who still sleeps with stuffed animals and sometimes pretends to be a car. (Vroom.) One minute, he’ll roll his eyes at me and tell me I don’t know anything; the next minute he’s crying and asking for a snuggle. He’s tech savvy and computer literate, but he still can’t tie his shoes.
For the past two years, he’s had a sort-of girlfriend, a classmate he adores and who seems to like him back. Most of the time, they play together like little kids, but sometimes they go to the movies. He once told me they’ve talked about running away together when they are older to live in the woods (obviously, they’re both Hunger Games fans) and then maybe getting married and having babies.
Obviously, I nixed that idea (the running away bit, not an eventual marriage). But hearing him talk about starting a family, combined with the fact that his friends in public school (he attends private) will start sex education this year, made me suddenly aware that I really need to have “the talk” with him, and soon – before he learns it from a friend … or worse yet, an internet search.
The problem? I have no idea how to talk about sex with a child.
My parents never actually had “the talk” with me. I learned about sex at age eight, when my mom came home from a shopping trip and handed me a two-inch thick paperback science book. The book had been written for a teen audience, but I was a voracious reader, addicted to learning, and children’s books were no longer enough to satisfy my cravings. I’m sure my mother just wanted an afternoon of peace and quiet, and figured a massive book of scientific information would be enough to pacify me for a few hours. I don’t think she had any idea it contained a detailed chapter on human reproduction.
Imagine my surprise when I suddenly found myself face-to-face with explicit drawings of what my friends and I called “our privates.” It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before – both my grandfathers were doctors, and I’d been flipping through Gray’s Anatomy since toddlerhood. But on the next page, I was stunned to learn that “our privates” were capable of a lot more than just bathroom functions. A graphic explanation, complete with diagrams, showed me a whole other use for parts of my body I had never really given much thought to before. And finally, I learned how babies were made.
Upon receipt of this information, naturally, the very first thing I did was accost my six-year-old sister and tell her all about it. “Ewwww, sick!” was her horrified reaction, as I proudly showed her the pictures and read the text aloud. In the end, our parents were spared from having to have “the sex talk” with either of us. By the time they broached the subject, we could both answer, “No, thanks. We read the science book. We’re good.” To this day, I still don’t know if this was a stroke of genius on my mothers’ part or an innocent mistake.
As tempting as it is to hand my son a primer on anatomy and be done with it, I’d like my husband and me to have a more active role in the process of shaping his young mind when it comes to sex. We’re living in a highly sexualized culture that will soon try to drown him in the message of “if it feels good, do it.” It’s up to us to give him a fighting chance to swim against the tide – to give his inner voice a script for shouting down those loud, seductive outside voices.
We’re Catholic, so, this being the 21st century, the first thing I did was run a Google search for “catholic sex education.” I came back with a lot of hits, and some seemed promising.
It turns out the Vatican actually has guidelines on sexual education. Released in 1995, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality is a goldmine of information – assuming you can get through it. Like all Vatican documents, it’s dense and wordy. I’m a theology nerd, so I’ll probably read through it, but what I’m really looking for is a “how to,” not a philosophical framework.
Purely You is a sex-ed program designed by two mothers from the Diocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and it carries the imprimatur of Bishop John Nienstedt, who is well-known for his traditional beliefs on life and sexuality. The program’s creators like to call it “Theology of the Body for Preteens,” as it draws heavily from Pope John Paul II’s landmark work. Purely You uses a combination of DVDs, books and scripts to help parents or teachers explain sex to children nine and up in a way that treats sexuality as a gift, albeit one to be enjoyed chastely. It’s also reasonably priced, at only $30 for a single-sex curriculum or $40 for a curriculum that includes both the boys’ and girls’ programs.
Another series that heavily references John Paul II’s work is Theology of the Body for Teens: Middle School Edition. Its content is more sophisticated than Purely You, leading one reviewer to warn, “If your student is not yet ready to learn about the existence of pornography, sexting, and fornication, hold off on this course for now.” It’s also expensive – a bundle of books and DVDs costs $115. My kid isn’t ready for this, but for those who are, it may be a good choice – the same reviewer who warned about the program’s sophistication also said: “I myself, a grown-up, NFP-using, CCD-teaching, cave-dwelling bona fide catholic dweeb lady, found this to be a course that pushed me to grow in my Christian life.”
Greg and Lisa Popcak’s Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Raising Sexually Whole and Holy Kids is a book for parents on how to address the topic of sexuality with children of all ages. It was easy and cheap – $10 – for me to download this to my iPad, so I did. I’m hoping it will help.
I also found a well-regarded secular resource called The Boys’ Body Book that highlights all the physical and emotional changes a boy can expect as he heads into his teen years, without addressing sex at all. It won’t provide any kind of spiritual perspective, but it will at least explain why it’s important to shower more than once a week and that it’s perfectly okay if the other boys in the locker room are more, or less developed than he is.
So that’s what I found out. I now have the Popcaks’ book waiting to be opened, and I’m tempted to purchase “Purely You.” But it occurred to me that there’s probably a better resource than Google for recommendations on quality, pro-life, chastity-based sex education: You.
Yes, that’s right; I’m crowdsourcing “the talk.” LSN readers are smart and insightful, and many of you have raised wonderful families of your own. Who better to advise me on this tricky issue than you?
So I ask you: How did you talk to your kids about sex? When did you do it, and why? Are there any programs or books that you found helpful in the process? If you had to do it again, what would you do differently?
I hope to see a lively discussion in the comments. If this post gets a good reception, it may be the first of many “reader discussions” about topics related to family life. I would love to see LSN readers encouraging each other as well as our writers in our everyday fight to end the culture of death.
Please post your thoughts in the comment box below!