Talking To Your Kids About Sexuality and Gender

And that is one of the keys that I think a lot of kids are missing, especially teens, because think of social media. Social media grooms teens to follow a firm retweet because you don't want to be seen as bigoted and unfollowed and unfriended.

But when we say no, when you look at Jesus, you can stand firm in the faith, not compromise truth and still be loving to people. Hilary Ferrer and Amy Davison join us today, addressing how you can discuss gender and sexuality with your children. Thanks for joining us. This is Focus on the Family.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller. As we begin, a note to parents that we'll be addressing some mature topics. So you'll want to direct younger children elsewhere. John, sexuality and gender are two hot button words in today's culture. And it seems like everything in the media orbits around everybody's sexuality. It's just in our face all the time.

And as a parent, it can be so difficult to navigate this with your children as they encounter it among their peers at school, their friends in the neighborhood, maybe going over to a friend's house, they're going to see and hear things they would never see at your house. And then of course, a church that's going to happen there too. There are ways to approach this topic with grace and truth to point others to Christ, which is the goal. And, you know, in Christ is where we should ultimately root our identity. In a world where your truth seems to be glorified, your truth, not the truth, it's important for us to remember God's truth, His word. It's right there.

We just need to read it. John 14-6 says, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

And that's a good verse to memorize. You can have confidence that God provides truth and hope so you can prepare your children to have these conversations when they encounter them. Yeah, and our guests are going to give us some insight on this topic. Hilary Ferrer and Amy Davison are two mama bears. Hilary is the founder of Mama Bear Apologetics, which provides accessible faith building resources for busy moms. And she's the chief author and editor for the ministry. Amy Davison joined the Mama Bear team a few years ago, and she writes about sexual ethics and God's purpose in sexuality. And she's the co-host of the Mama Bear Podcast. And together, they've written a book. It's called Mama Bear Apologetics Guide to Sexuality, empowering your kids to understand and live out God's design. And you can learn more about the book and our guests.

We'll have a link in the show notes. Hilary and Amy, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having us. It's great to be here with y'all.

It's good. Amy, let's start with you. Your, I think, daughter saw a cartoon somewhere and came home and described this. And how did that go down? And what was the cartoon about?

So close. It was my son. Yeah, no, so no, it'll be hilarious that everyone confused him for a girl. My younger boys are going to love that. Oh, yeah, because he's got brothers.

Yeah. So we just arrived in Texas. We're not native Texans. And one thing we didn't realize was that Texas summers try very hard to kill you. So we were doing about the only thing we knew how to do to survive the heat, which was stay inside, binge popsicles and Nickelodeon. And so we had been watching a show on Nickelodeon called The Loud House, which is a fairly cute show. It's about a boy who has 10 sisters, which if you have a sister, I mean, you know, and then add 10 of them in a small house. That guy had no bathroom time. Oh my gosh, no bathroom time, no peace and quiet.

I think he slept in a closet. I mean, it was just a hilarious show. So throughout the episode, they're going up to each one of their crushes and confessing their, you know, their teenage and elementary school love for their crush to figure out if they were the recipient. And one of the sisters was like, Well, I don't know if I can go talk to Sam.

I'm really nervous. And so her sisters were like, No, go ahead, talk to Sam, it's gonna be great. And in every scene where we see the supposed Sam, it was like this 90s heartthrob of a guy.

I mean, he had the plaid shirt, he was deep and brooding, he carried a guitar everywhere, like, who does this in middle school? And so you think that Sam and she finally works up the gumption at the end of the episode to write out her profession of love and like all middle schoolers put it in the locker and run away. And so we see Sam coming up to the locker and we're like, Okay, this is the moment he's going to open it and find the Valentine. And instead of guitar boy opening the locker, it was the girl that was always in the background right next to him that goes up to the locker and open it and she reads the note and the sister and her have that googly eye look to each other and then the scene cuts.

It was all of two seconds. And my younger two, they were so oblivious playing with Legos, but my oldest who was 10 at the time, he watched it and he looks at it and he looks at me and he goes, Wait, mom, in the episode before, she was crushing on this boy tutor. And now she likes a girl.

What is that? And all of a sudden, I had to have a discussion about bisexuality with a 10 year old and I was completely unprepared. And I didn't know what to say. And Christy Torrel Corbin, who is the she's like the head of childhood education and early intervention. She said, Oh, it's so great when we can get this information to kids at a young age, because when they're little, they're so accepting. It's only later when they're taught biases that they learn to adopt these biases. So if you remove biases and implant Christian worldview from their parents, they know that parents are not having conversations with their young children. And if they can start speaking, the parents aren't talking and they can now evangelize the kid do a secular sexual worldview right under the parents.

You have said so much in that and you know, even us having this discussion will make some Christian listeners and maybe even some stations a little uncomfortable. But it's so critical to have this conversation and encourage parents to engage with their children. And I would think most of the introduction is going to occur just like you described, it's going to be some external entertainment, maybe a conversation, but probably phone or a TV show where they're going to see this and then they're going to be puzzled. Because now it's derailed what they were learning was normal. We crowdsourced this before we started the book and just asked on the Mama Bear page how many parents had noticed these themes in their in their children's programming. And we had over 150 comments within an hour.

Yeah, all affirming that they had seen that they say which program it is that they see all different shows. Here's the great truth. God created sexuality. It is a good thing. And he created a context for it called marriage. That's what the culture is just destroying, right? That the God's gift of sexuality in the context of marriage is no longer that's, that's passe. It's oppressive even. It's oppressive. And I love the fact, Hillary, that you reset that and you say no, God's order for sexuality is pure and true and good. Yeah, you know, these are the things that Paul and, and the disciples were dealing with practices in the early church, where there was church prostitution, and they thought that was okay. So there's nothing new under the sun with this.

It's just we have this media funnel now that can just wash us over and over and over again with these situations. Hillary, in the book, you gave a fire illustration. I like this fire is a great metaphor. It's kind of like how Jesus used parables. Yeah, fire is pretty simple. We understand it as human beings.

How do you apply it in this context? Yeah, so a little bit of context for that is one of the things that parents kind of don't know how to start these conversations with their kids when they're young. And so I like to affirm to them that kids are creating categories in their heads, that they then know where to put things. So we're going to create a category that we can later on put sex into. So the category for fire is things that are so powerful that they need to be guarded or things that are powerful enough to create and destroy, or things that are good or bad, depending on how you use them.

And so all three of those categories are things that sex can fall into. So if you ask a kid, is fire good or bad? There, you know, some of them might be picturing a candle, and we'll say good, or they're picturing a cookout, they'll say good, or maybe they just saw images of a forest fire, and they say, oh, fire is bad.

Well, you show them, no, fire is good, and fire is bad, depending on whether or not it isn't within proper boundaries, and depending on how it's used. And so now they have this category of something that actually is kind of value neutral in some ways, that depending on the use, can be good or bad. And so we say, well, how do we keep this in the good category? Well, we need to have proper boundaries around it, because we have another category, things that are so powerful, that they need to be protected. And that's another place where sex can fall into this category. And you can bring up all sorts of different things, maybe an untrained giant feral dog that needs to be on a leash.

Yeah, he's so powerful, he needs to be guarded, or the nuclear, you know, that the key to the nuclear bomb or whatever, so powerful, it needs to be guarded, because it can it can create and it can destroy. And so once they have this category in their head, later on, when you start having that conversation, you can say, hey, remember those things that we talked about that are so powerful, they need to be guarded or so valuable that they need to be guarded much like, you know, some of the art, you know, like we talked about the Mona Lisa, remember those things? Well, that is where sex fits in. Because right now in our culture, kids are seeing sex as this is what you do the very moment you realize you're attracted to someone.

That's the category that it's being placed into. Like even when I was growing up, it was at least things that you do with someone you're in love with, right a boundary. Yeah, it's like there was at least some kind of boundary. And it's gone from, you know, things that you do with someone you're married to, to things you do with someone you're in love with. And now it really is things that you do with someone that you just realize you're both interested in each other.

And we, we really don't take enough into consideration these categories that these kids are filing things away. So true. And then, you know, what's so amazing is how science catches up with theology. And what I mean by that the bonding mechanism that God has put in us, especially women have this more than men, but that when when intimacy occurs, there's this bonding hormone. Yeah, that's, you know, this is my person, is what your body is being taught and told by the brain. So it's kind of fascinating in that degree. Again, God's design is that you're going to get married, you have a sexual relationship, and that person hopefully is bonded to you for life.

And that's the intimacy that he outlined for us. Yeah, but the culture is totally torn that apart. Let's get to one of the hot button issues, gender identity. I mean, this thing is blown up here at Focus on the Family, we get so many and we want you to contact us. But we get so many calls from parents who are struggling with this or grandparents who are struggling with this that their grandchild is coming over and the adult child is saying, you know, let Johnny dress up like a girl because we've decided he's kind of gender dysphoric.

So this is happening. It's happening in Christian families, and we get it and we're here to help you. We will give you advice, give you resources, even like this book, to help you deal with some of these things. But speak to the gender identity problem in public schools and what's happening today. And first, let me say, I mean, we always get criticized for being the homophobes, the bigots, the anti people.

It's not that. It's just that we know how God has designed us to live as Christians. And we want to make sure people at least consider that and the culture consider that before they certainly engage with our children.

Yeah. When it comes to gender, one of the things that Amy and I've talked about is people have turned gender into basically personality or interests. So it's like to say gender is on a spectrum.

No, gender is not on a spectrum. You have egg producers and you have sperm producers and then you maybe sometimes have intersex where you have a biological abnormality, but we don't define the normal by the abnormalities. And it's very rare.

Yeah, it's so rare. And some of the ones that are even defined as intersex really aren't intersex. I've talked to some mama bears where it's things where like maybe some of the tubes just haven't closed up all the way. And they're defined that that is intersex, even though everything else in the girl is very much a female. And the doctor actually right now will not close up that tube just in case she wants to identify as a male later. So she's getting bladder infections all the time and all these problems.

They won't fix what's wrong just in case because it will make it harder if she wants to transition in the future. Well, there's been this twisting of language too, because, I mean, Hillary writes extensively on linguistic theft, but sex and gender were synonymous. And, you know, like we've discussed, you know, we used to define, you know, you've got a tomboy or maybe you've got a more sensitive boy. And we understood that biological sex, that's universal. You have male and you have female, and then you will have different personality and the different interests. But these do not determine who you are. And now that's been completely shifted by gender theory to where now we're saying, okay, no, your personality is now your gender identity and your style, your sense of style is now expression. And this now determines who you are. And your biology is now it's vilified.

It's on a good level. It's seen as irrelevant, but at the worst case, it's seen as a stumbling block and something that is actually going to hinder you from growth, happiness, success. And it's deeply toxic because now these categories are arbitrary and we can now manipulate emotionally vulnerable children into falling into gender theory and conversion therapy, having surgeries and going on hormones purely because they're just trying to figure out who they are. And whereas like when we were kids, like the big thing is, oh, you're trying to figure out who you are. Maybe you would dye your hair black or goth, or you, you know, you would join the popular kids or that sort of thing. Sometimes I wore camo.

Sometimes I wore a dress with sandals. It's like, it was the mood that you were in. And I think if we could have something that we keep telling kids, gender is not on a spectrum, interests and personality are on a spectrum and these are not the same thing. And you repeat that over and over again until they can imbibe that to where when they hear gender is on a spectrum, they automatically hear mom and dad's voice saying, no personality and interests are on a spectrum.

Yeah, that's good. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. We're talking today about how to help your children navigate this culture. Our guests are Hillary Ferrer and Amy Davidson, and we are so glad that they're here. They've written a book called Mama Bear Apologetics, Guide to Sexuality, empowering your kids to understand and live out God's design.

Reach out to us today for your copy or as Jim said, if you're struggling with this in your family and you don't know where to turn to, we're a phone call away, 800, the letter A in the word family, or stop by the show notes for details. Hey, we have the right to push back. And I think not only science, but I think truth and biblical truth certainly is on our side. The way we do it is critical, the tone in which we do it. One of the first things we have to do is equip our children to be able to recognize these things. So give us some practical ways to teach our children to navigate these conversations with truth and grace at the core. Yeah, and absolutely.

And that's it, right? When we look at how Jesus interacted with unbelievers, I mean, when he was meeting them one on one, he never reduced their humanity to their sin. Like he never stripped them of their humanity and just hyper focused on their sin. There was a wonderful speaker that I heard that she said, Satan knows your name, but calls you by your sin. Jesus knows your sin and calls you by your name. And when he was interacting with Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, he knew what they were struggling with, but yet he ate with them.

He spoke with them. He had fellowship with them, not to affirm them in their sin, but to reach them with the gospel. And that is one of the keys that I think a lot of kids are missing, especially teens, because think of social media.

Social media grooms teens to follow a firm retweet because you don't want to be seen as bigoted and unfollowed and unfriended. But when we say no, when you look at Jesus, you can stand firm in the faith, not compromise truth and still be loving to people. They may not team it as as loving. However, loving is truth. It is a vital aspect of the nature of God. And it is the only way we can speak truth and love to that individual. And one of the great ways in doing this, especially with teens and young kids is really having a worldview approach to sexuality is understanding this is not a materialistic act between bodies.

It's very Darwinian. It's no, this is actually sex is an expression of your entire worldview. And, you know, we've been giving this talk. I've been giving this talk for a year and a half. And every time I do it, whether it's teens I'm speaking to or adults, I ask them, you know, what were you told about sex? How many of you were told that sex actually expresses what you believe about reality, God, truth, morality, sin, salvation, human history. What are human beings?

I asked him this. I've only had four people raise their hands in a year and a half, and I've talked to thousands of people. And it's because people don't know, but that's exactly what sex is. And that's why we are commanded in scripture to bring up our children in training and instruction. And when they understand the why behind God's design for sex, that is where reverence is nurtured because kids, right, you'll tell them no.

And or you'll say, no, don't do that. And when you want to do the thing, however, when you understand, wait, why does God say no? Why does God put boundaries on his design? And it's because it is the only it is within these boundaries that human dignity is affirmed and validated.

Once you get out of that design, all sorts of brokenness, oppression, degradation occurs to the human being. It's only within the Christian worldview of sexuality where you find your humanity affirmed. Let me, let me ask you, Amy, you share a list of statistics on another topic, which is insidious in the church to pornography.

Speak to the issue of pornography and how we need to guard against that danger. And why is it insidious? Why is it bad?

Oh my gosh. Well, like we talked about, you know, when you have pornography, it is reducing the individual to an object to be used and consumed and tossed aside. So you are taking a human being with the Imago Dei imprinted in them, and now reducing them and saying your value is determined on what you do for me in the bedroom.

And then the second I'm bored, the second you get a little older, the second a couple pounds pack on, now you're useless to me and I'm going to find somebody else. It really is this consumeristic mindset of the human being that is ultimately degrading. But now we've seen this huge shift within pornography and now you can get pornography faster than you can get coffee. And there are children, the average age for children to be exposed to pornography is eight and it's actually rather high. The majority of children are exposed to pornography prior to the age of 13.

And it's intentional. I mean, the porn industry, the top three porn sites, they do between five and eight billion hits every month. I mean, this is 139,000 hits every minute. And most often between the hours of nine to five. So even at work, we're seeing this happen.

Teens nowadays, young teens between 40 and 60 percent are consuming pornography regularly monthly. And they actually see this as this is just normal. This is what you do. I mean, this has been heavy. We got to give the dose of hope. So I want to run through some questions here that kind of lay out what to do.

Hillary, it's important, you say, to demolish these arguments, not the people. We kind of touched on that. But describe that for me. Yeah. So there's a couple of different passages in scripture where it talks about we demolish strongholds that raise themselves against the knowledge of God. But also we take every thought captive. And so you say you're either taking your thoughts captive or you're being taken captive by unhelpful and harmful ideologies. And so if we see people more as captives instead of rebels, a lot of times that's going to change our approach to what is going on, to see it with the compassion that Jesus had and kind of going off what Amy was saying, how he identified people with their name, not with their sin.

I would say I've met some other ladies who say, well, we feel called to be going into the legislature and to be going into the school boards. How do we do this with love? And I think this, again, we can get back to Jesus's model that when he's with individuals, he is so loving, so gracious. And when he sees them where they're at, when you get Jesus in front of a giant group, he is pretty blunt. Like people think that the Sermon on the Mount is this beautiful passage about, you know, love and tolerance. It's like you look at that.

It is the greatest smackdown of all smackdowns. So you are, we are bold and without apology for truth when it comes to the public sphere. And we treat people as captives on the private sphere, knowing that it's the public sphere that is fostering this way for people to be taking captives. It's two different kind of battle fronts. One is going to be more the battle.

One's going to be more the therapeutic. And we can't confuse those two. Often people will take the persons and they will make that the battle. And then when they're speaking out to the majority in public places, they'll make that the compassion.

They've got it completely backwards. And so being able to say that there is a place for really being able to speak boldly with authority, where scripture speaks boldly with authority and to speak compassionately and quietly and with love when you're dealing with individuals, if we can keep those two separate, I think we could make a very huge difference. Perhaps the most important question, I think, you know, even watching Jean, my wife raise our two boys, this was a hard area, difficult area for her. It's kind of the tender area of her heart.

It's where the enemy could throw that dagger into her where the boys, what are they looking at? And so many moms and dads are concerned about that for their sons and now and their daughters because of the way things are going. So I guess the question I'm thinking of is the issue.

It seems overwhelming. Even churches now are dividing on this issue of human sexuality and expression. You know, some are saying it's okay. And we'll marry same sex couples.

And we don't see a difference. And it's all about love. And it's not about judgment. And this is a big, just a big storm that seems insurmountable. Like, are we really going to get through this?

It feels like the Christians of Rome, the stuff that they saw the way that human life was degraded, and the gladiator events killing each other and babies thrown out of the dump because they were unwanted and this out of control sexuality. We're kind of right back there. So where do we find hope? And how do we trust that God God knows what we're going through, that he's aware, and that he's got a plan, and that he's moving through it. And somehow, how do we find that hope and that diligence to simply teach our kids be faithful and truthful and be honest with friends and be bold. And so many leaders right now are saying, where are the convictional Christians? Where are the people in the public saying, no, no, no, this isn't going to work. This is a dead end. And humanity has been here before.

What do we do? And it's great because we all have different perspectives. One of the things that I love, Jason Whitlock's podcast host, and one thing he says is that, you know, we have a spirit of boldness. And when we are fearful before a holy God, we are fearless before culture. So recognizing that God did not give us a spirit of meekness, he gave us a spirit of boldness. We also need to recognize that what we're seeing on the news and the media, it may seem overwhelming, but it's also just one side. We are fortunate to where we are traveling to churches across the country.

I was just in the Dominican Republic. And there are revivals that are going on right now. Parents are passionate grandparents. The revival of grandmama bears is, oh my gosh, they are a force to be reckoned with. But it's fantastic because you're not going to see that on the news, but churches are speaking up and speaking out.

So you're probably not going to see it on CNN, but it is occurring. And then one of the ways that Satan is so effective is he makes you feel alone. And he tries to get you to be silent because if he can get parents to be silent, then what it does is it doesn't remove their children from the battlefield.

It removes mom and dad from the battlefield. And just like Jesus is right there beside us in the valley of the shadow of death. So we are to model Christ with our children and be right next to them in the battlefield. And to an extent, the entertainment industry both reflects and cultivates culture. And so parents, Christian parents have bought into this lie.

They're uncomfortable about sex, but no, if it's God's creation, we speak boldly about it to our kids. We want it to get to the point like we play pause games with my kids to where if something comes across the TV, we'll pause it and discuss. And we've been doing this for several years now to where it's hilarious because I'll pause at the TV now and they'll go, oh my gosh, mom, we know. And I'm like, that's awesome.

What do you know, baby? That's right. We say the rolling of the eyes. That's a sign that you're doing something great. You nailed it. You nailed it. You nailed it. No, that's good. And this has been so good and we've run out of time, but the content's been so wonderful and, you know, we can't cover it all, but thank you for your courage.

Thank you for your braveness. I love the, the mama bear aspect, the grandma bear aspect. My only question is where's daddy bear grandpa bear. Every single thing we come to, they say, do you have stuff for Papa bears? And I got to tell them, you know, the information in this book is great for Papa bears too.

We've had some, we've had some pastors go through the book from the pulpit saying, everybody needs to read this book. You just got to make it through a couple of mom jokes and you're fine. But some of it's like we're at the school board meetings. Where are the dads? The moms are there and I'm sure some dads are there, but we need more dads stepping up saying, okay, you're not going to molest verbally or visually my child in third and fourth grade.

It ain't going to happen. We need that kind of courage from both moms and dads. Right. They've been quieted by people say this is toxic masculinity and stop mansplaining things to me that I think we just need to stop listening to the lies that they're saying and go and be men.

Even if they're telling you, they don't like what a man is. That's so true. Well, great content. And your wonderful book, mama bear apologetics guide to sexuality, empowering your kids to understand and live out God's design.

Doesn't get any more straightforward than that. Thanks for the effort that you had to put into the book, the writing of the book, the talks that you're giving. I think you're very brave young women. And I think you should just keep on going until you change the whole country. How about that? Let's start by getting a copy of the book into your hands.

Get ahold of us here. Focus on the family. And if you can make a gift of any amount, either monthly or one time, we'll give it to you as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry. Yeah. Donate monthly.

If you can, or one time gift is certainly appreciated either way. Contact us and ask for your copy of the book. 800 the letter a in the word family, 800-232-6459. And further details are in the show notes. And plan now to join us next time. As we hear from Karen Wingate, she'll describe how she experienced God in a new way after miraculously gaining her sight. Ask yourself, what am I seeing? Look for those details.

Look for the craggy mountains and the snow caps. And then ask yourself, what does this tell me about God and his nature? On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Your marriage can be redeemed, even if the fights seem constant, even if there's been an affair, even if you haven't felt close in years, no matter how deep the wounds are, you can take a step toward healing them with a hope restored marriage intensive. Our biblically based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face challenges together. We'll talk with you, pray with you and help you find out which program will work best. Call us at 1-866-875-2915.