Talking to Your Children about Sex

How do we train our children to have a godly, biblical understanding of sexuality? What is appropriate to say at what ages? How do we help them interpret false messages about sexuality from media and culture? How and when do we talk about sexual pleasure, attraction, and romance?

These and other questions are addressed in Jay Younts’ series on the Shepherd Press Blog:

1. Talking with Your Children about Marriage and Sex
2. When to Talk about Sex and Marriage
3. What to Talk About (Part 1)
4. What to Talk About (Part 2)
5. Talking About Sexual Attraction
6. Celebrate Sexual Purity

Jay Younts teaches a balance between having the proverbial “talk” and the importance of having many preliminary, incremental discussions all throughout our children’s development. Building a biblical worldview about marriage and the nature of self-giving love is foundational and is to be taught throughout childhood and adolescence. As important as comprehensive birds-and-bees discussions can be, they cannot replace the value of regular formative instruction in the home.

Younts firmly believes the promise of Proverbs 6:20-25,

My son, keep your father’s commandment,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching.
Bind them on your heart always;
tie them around your neck.
When you walk, they will lead you;
when you lie down, they will watch over you;
and when you awake, they will talk with you.
For the commandment is a lamp and the teaching a light,
and the reproofs of discipline are the way of life,
to preserve you from the evil woman,
from the smooth tongue of the adulteress.

What will keep our children from the smooth tongue of the adulteress, whether she is found on TV, on the computer, or in their school? It is the commandments and teachings that loving parents use (the light of biblical revelation) which shape young minds.

I wholeheartedly recommend these posts and many other resources from Shepherd Press.