Monday, April 13, 2009

Talking About Sex With Your Kids

Okay, sex keeps coming up with all of the moms at my kids class. Then I saw Oprah had a show on talking to your teens about sex. Now I gave up watching Oprah a long time ago with the exception of the occasional Dr. Oz and such. I saw she had Dr. Berman on and it made me nervous.... Dr. Berman seems to be a big advocate of porn and masturbation for all age groups. I'm a porn hater....... as for the other thing well, I really don't have a clear interpretation of what God thinks about that. I know it was a sin to spill your seed for men during the law giving chapters but at that time women on their periods also weren't allowed in Church either so....... who knows.

Anyhoo, it has been so disturbing to me lately about my "sex talk" with my kid's friends moms that I thought I'd discuss it. BTW, my hubby came home early Friday and flicked on the TV. He yelled at me to come look and they were doing a snipet from the sex talk show and Dr. Berman was encouraging us to tell our teens to masturbate and talk to them about vibrators. YIKES!!! Uh, thanks but no Dr. Berman.

My friends are nervous about their 5th grade kids going to middle school and since I have a 17 year old girl in high school they are seeking advice about what to tell their kids about sex and want to know what the middle schoolers are doing. I have a couple of middle school moms wanting to know about what the high schoolers are doing. My teen is beautiful and pretty popular and a Varsity Cheerleader so I'm guessing they assume lots of boys are trying to get her to sleep with them so I'd know. And they are correct!!
The odd thing to me when we are in these groups discussing kids and sex is that these ladies don't talk to their kids about sex. They only have discussed what sex is and how babies are made. I want to be very very clear about my position of talking sex. You have to talk about sex with your kids because the TV, the radio, and all of their peers are talking sex with them. If you are not, then you are just about the only thing in their lives that is capable of speech that is not talking about sex to them. Okay?
Talking about sex with your kids is not just the mechanics. It is actually talking about sex. I openly discuss everything with Lexi and now Brandon too since he is 11 has been included. Just telling them not to do it is not enough. Just telling them to save themselves is not enough. Showing them pictures of sexual diseased body parts like the schools do is not enough. You've got to discuss it. Lexi still laughs about the time when I told her it's not even worth it to have sex so young when a lot of her ninth and tenth grade friends were doing it like rabbits because I told her the guys don't even know what they are even doing and they are going to go in and take care of themselves and it will all be over in less than 10 minutes and you'll be laying there sore and saying "that's it?". BTW, she asked her friends and they confirmed that fact. Duh, I said. Being honest early gave me major creditability with her. Now we can discuss anything. And we do. Her friends discuss their sex habits sometimes too. I tell her how I feel about teen sex and we also discuss how our Christian beliefs come into play on this. I also tell her that I don't want to raise another baby, I have four kids and the last one is 2 and I am 39 and I am tired. I told her that if she wanted to have sex then she needed condoms and birth control and to tell me so I could get her on the pill. Lots of pregnant teens around here, middle schoolers too. Not my kid. I'll give her the pill myself every morning. As for now, she is not ready to do the deed, thankfully. But she is made fun of big time for it and the guys call her "the waste". Why, 'cause she's so hot and all that hotness is wasted they say. Is that a compliment in a weird way?
Anyway, the middle schoolers are having lots and lots of oral sex. It's no big thang to them. Really, you wouldn't believe how nonchalant oral sex is for our children. Sex, well, a great deal of them are already doing it before they leave middle school. And if you think you are safe because you home school...... wrong. Your Church is filled with those same kids. They are hearing it in Sunday School and children's church too. So you'd better be talking to them about it because their friends are not to mention TV. You can't keep your children away from our heavily prevalent "sex society" so equipping them with good moral life skills is really the way to go. I start at a young age because it's easier that way. You can't just come up to your 13 year old and try to start talking about sex. You have no credibility on that subject, you are a dork parent telling them to just say no (even my eyes are rolling!), and they already have their own opinions about sex because their friends, the TV, and the radio have already been talking to them about the subject for years now. Of course it's never too late but the later you wait to be open about sex the more honest you have to be so you're not a dork to them but so they know they can believe you. Being open and honest means you can't have a freak out reaction when they do share. When Lexi is talking about how a boy kisses or that she made out with a guy my stomach is rolling....... but she is honest and I know what she is up to and isn't that more important? So I say start young and be honest!! Be very very honest because they know if you are lying and they will remember when they are older what you have said in the past and if they can realize you lied then you have lost your credibility. We don't discuss how to do "it". I'm not goin there. But we talk about it, we talk about God, we talk about our faith. The lines of communication are open and we both know where each other stands. My friends? They have only ever discussed what sex is and told their kids to wait. Oh boy, they have some surprises waiting for them because their kids may never open up to them now.
I know several parents that think their kids don't do pot or have sex. They say, I'm so glad my kids don't do that and so and so is still a virgin thank goodness. Um, I want to say..... your kid hasn't been a virgin for 3 years now and she smokes pot too. The other thing is to not be one of those "not my sweet baby" parents. You know the kind of parent who would not welcome someone telling you about something your kids was doing and would instead get mad at the person telling them about it. That's how these parents are so I don't tell them and they go on blissfully thinking they are safe. I tell all my friends I want to know what they hear about my kids and that I would never get mad at them for telling me. We only know a couple of other couples who reciprocate that and we do share. I told one single dad about 4 years ago about his daughter sleeping around (in a nice and delicate way of course) and he got mad at me!! Well, all I have to say is that he is now a proud grandpa of a 3 year old.

So talk sex while they are young. When a racy commercial comes on discuss it. It's as easy as that. Tell them why you dislike those Victoria Secret commercials if you are like me and hate them. Love the undies, hate the commercials. So that is how I always start with my kids. We see something and we discuss it. I don't just walk up and say "Let's talk about sex.". Ugh, yuk. They don't want to have that conversation with me. But after years of being open and honest and proving myself honest ('cause she's checked with her friends) I have gained the respect of my teen and my almost 12 year old son and they both ask me questions and tell me what they are up to and thinking and what their friends are up to. If their friends parents were more open I would share what their kids were up to..... so I highly recommend talking about sex and being open. It's better than wondering what they are up to.

BTW, I spent years in a Southern Baptist Church School and most of those kids were doing it like crazy also. Being told not to do something doesn't stop kids from doing anything, much less sex. Putting them in a Christian environment also doesn't stop them from having sex. You gotta talk to them, just like everything else or somebody else will. Brandon's friends are Christian kids too and a good majority of them look at porn on the family computers. So I highly recommend parental programs for computers too. We had the cyber centennial and that was great. If any nude pictures come up it locks it up and diverts the computer away from the page. If any "naughty" words come up it prevents the page from being viewed. Plus, it captures the images, pages and words for you to see if the computer has captured anything. You log in with your password and the Cyber Centennial shows you what someone was trying to view or type. NICE. Great for keeping tabs on those hubbies too. Men. Eyes rolling. But that's another subject. I would like to encourage you to be open and honest. Being silent isn't going to keep them from learning about anything, they'll just get the world's point of view instead of yours. Start young discussing something you see or hear. It's really easy to begin and the rewards are great when they come to you about things most kids normally wouldn't.

2 comments:

Still Learning said...

Wow, okay. This is such a controversial subject I thought I'd get quite a few people telling me I'm a dork and a few who agreed. I thought I'd comment myself and tell myself how much I agree with me.

I know... I'm a dork

Tasha Simons said...

Thanks for sharing. I try to talk openly with our kids who are 8 and 10. Middle school: I'm not ready for that! So glad they are still in elementary.