5 Essentials for Talking to Your Kids About Sex

Talking to Your Kids About Sex: Five important aspects of parenting your kids in biblical sexuality.

Number one: you need to address any unresolved issues in your own life.

This could be things from your past, maybe sexual trauma from your past, sexual sin that your spouse doesn’t know about or you haven’t shared with others in your life, and of course, ongoing current sexual sin issues like pornography use. You need to take seriously your own sexual redemption. Any sexual sin that’s in your life, or brokenness from your past, is going to absolutely impact how you parent your children in this area. So it’s really crucial that you resolve those issues and focus on your own sexual redemption.

Number two: you want to be proactive.

You want to take the initiative in addressing these things with your children. And you need to anticipate that this is a lifelong process. This is not a one-time, you know, preteen, gut-wrenching conversation. And that means from the very beginning, when your child is two or three years old and asks where babies come from, being ready to have an answer, all the way through their teen years and into college, engaging them on the sexual activity that their friends are engaged in, or the issues that they’re wrestling with culturally, the messages that they’re hearing in the classroom or in culture about sexuality.

Number three: you want to be positive.

One of the reasons why I wanted to write this book is there are all kinds of profound theological truths behind human sexuality. And I want you to have a message to share with your kids that’s more than just the guidelines and boundaries for human sexual expression.

Number four: it’s incredibly important that the only motivation for obedience is out of love for Christ and in order to honor him.

One of the concerns I have about the abstinence programs of yore is they held out, “If you obey now, there’s going to be a great sexual payoff later.” There are two problems there. Number one, God doesn’t promise anyone a spouse. Teens that are living with unsatisfied desires can’t be told, “Oh, don’t worry, once you get married it’s going to be great.” God might not have a spouse for them. They need to be committed to obedience because God promises that he rewards those who seek him, because God calls us to seek first his kingdom. We don’t want to give any other motivation for obedience. And of course, I’ve worked with many couples who did wait for marriage, and their sexual experience in marriage hasn’t been what was promised to them by the abstinence programs. It has been fraught with all kinds of difficulties that married couples need to work through. So we don’t want to give any other motivation.

And then finally, the fifth point: you want your marriage to be a testimony of why marriage is worth waiting for.

If you tell your kids, “Just wait for marriage,” and they look at the relationship that you have as husband and wife and they don’t see something worth waiting for, it’s going to really undercut your message.

Now, I realize that could be disheartening to hear. We need to be honest: all of us have failed in significant ways in front of our kids. All of us have places where we can repent. But I want to encourage you that because the gospel is real, because the Holy Spirit is in you and active, no matter where your marriage is, there are ways that you can rebuild and move towards each other and build intimacy.

Do the work that you need to. That may mean starting to be more intentional with planning date nights with each other. Some of you just need minor tweaking. Some of you really significantly need to enlist the help of counselors and pastors and other people to help you rebuild. No matter the negative messages that have been sent from your marriage to your kids, you doing the work of rebuilding together is going to demonstrate that the gospel is true, that the Holy Spirit is active, and it will send a profound and wonderful message to your children.