How to Have Ongoing Conversations with Your Kids About Sex

It's me day to day taking up my cross and following Him in my marriage and in the way I treat others. When we model this in our own lives, when we start to live this out, that is going to do more than any words we ever say. And by modeling it, it creates this safety where they're like, I can talk with Him because He's not going to freak out. I like the way He treats mom. And this goes both ways, mom, dad, whatever. Guys, working on our marriage is the best thing we can do to be a good parent. That's Jonathan McKee, and he joins us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And parental discretion is advised as we talk about how to have the birds and bees conversation with your kids.

That's right, Jon. And you know, this is perhaps the most important discussion you're going to have with your children, certainly up there with faith in Christ and knowing God. But this is a big part of the human experience is how to maintain that appetite for sexuality for marriage and how do we train our young people to have that desire and be knowledgeable of those things that God has given us to enjoy within the context of marriage. Having two boys of my own, that's been an important feature for us to talk about age appropriately at different times and I'm looking forward to equipping you as to how to engage in this discussion. And if your kids are older, that's okay. You know, you want to pass this along to your kids in any age appropriate way.

And I have found that adult kids still want to be having these conversations as well. Jonathan McKee has some great insight when it comes to teens and preteen topics. He's a social researcher and a popular speaker. And you've probably heard him on our Entertainment Review podcast, The Plugged In Show. He's written a number of books and the one that forms the foundation for today's discussion is called More Than Just the Talk, Becoming Your Kid's Go-To Person About Sex.

And it's a terrific resource. You can find out more about Jonathan and this book when you stop by the show notes. Jonathan, welcome back to Focus. So good to have you. Oh, thanks for having me.

Glad to be here. What a fun topic. I know. Absolutely.

I'm excited. You guys want to talk about it? Absolutely. This is probably one of the most important topics and one of the least talked about out in the open. So why let me start there.

You know, we'll hit the ground running. Why do you think it is so difficult for us parents to engage in this arena of talking to our kids age appropriately, like we're saying about the issue of sex? Maybe it's because we ourselves never really had the talk. And if we did, it was one talk, right?

It was that one time where mom or dad sat us down and kind of said, now, you know, you know about this, right? Do you got any questions? OK, good.

Let me know if you do. And that was it. That was the talk. And well, so what you're saying is that clumsy thing.

It feels clumsy because maybe we didn't have the talk and we don't know what to do, but it's critically important to have a healthy discussion. I keep saying age appropriate. I just want to give that bridge for the parents listening right now. When you have younger kids, you're observing this in nature and you can see the animals in the field, perhaps on your summer vacation trip or whatever. But you want to kind of age this discussion along with the kids appropriate vocabulary, etc.

Yeah. And I think sometimes parents sometimes are scared because they you know, there's kind of a difference between talking about sexuality and there's a difference between talking about sex. I mean, sexuality is kind of like changes in the body, for example, you know, like biology. I think a big mistake is sometimes parents will stick to only talking about biology and they'll never talk about morality. They'll never talk about spirituality. They'll never talk about God's design for us. And I think we're scared of that.

And it's funny because the Bible is not scared of that, but we're scared of it. And so it kind of becomes that one talk. It becomes that checkbox of, OK, no, honey, you're going to take him out for the camping weekend right now that he's 17 and you can have the one talk with him and you're going to explain everything to him and it'll be done.

Check the box and that and that's it. And I just know that every school assembly I've been at, when kids line up and come up to me and start asking me questions, I always I'm always researching and they don't even realize that I'm researching right then when they come all I say, so have you talked with your parents about this? And I almost know the answer, but I ask it anyway because I'm just so curious. And the typical answer is, are you crazy?

And I go, why? And it's the same answer every time, because they'd freak out, because they'd freak out. And the questions that they asked a safe stranger after the school assembly are much different than what they would ask a mom or dad.

I kind of get that, though. I mean, there's a certain anonymity to asking a stranger about, you know, this issue as a speaker, for example, you come up afterward and say, hey, you mentioned this. And I mean, that's what makes the church so valuable, hopefully, that in youth group and things like that topic could be discussed in a biblical context, hopefully not any other way.

And it's one of those things where, you know, when you look at our culture today and how much things have changed and the availability of these messages they're getting that are usually right in their back pocket, you know, it's so much more than when we grew up. I mean, you know, I think, you know, I got home from school, there was one TV, me and my brother would watch it. We turn on and it was Lassie, you know, or whatever, you know, which was great. I mean, you know, I mean, what other show do you have where you could sit there and say, what is it, girl? What, Randy?

He's in trouble where he's in a well, show me. I mean, this is great. I mean, this is great programming, you know, that helped raise me.

Absolutely. You know, I mean, it's a little different now, you know, when they're getting like intimacy advice from their favorite rap star, you know, because they can, you know, message them on social media, which they've got right in their back pocket, you know, the ignorance of being able to flip through tick tock and this and that. So this is kind of what we're battling against. We're battling with. They've got an inundation of lies. And then we've got a lot of parents who, let's be honest, we're scared or maybe we don't really know how to engage them in this topic of truth.

And in a world so, you know, absolutely overflowing in lies, we need to not be scared to talk about the explicit truth. You know, Jonathan, so frequently and I did this, you know, as a as a father, you know, would be all the negative side of it, you know, don't do this, don't do that. And this is what we say for marriage. Those are all right words.

They weren't wrong. But you use Proverbs five. And I want you to, if you could just to quote that scripture and then elaborate on why Proverbs five, I think it's 18, if I remember correctly, 18, 19 why that's such a good instructional scripture for us as parents to use with our teens particularly. It's fascinating that you even asked me to share that scripture. Cause when I've shared that scripture in church, I have sometimes people get up and walk because, and it's funny because when you look at the word of God, I kind of feel like, does this really need to be edited?

And let's be honest, if we've all sat down and opened up the book of Genesis, there's some kind of blushing moments in Genesis that you're like, okay, well maybe I won't take my four year old through this, but for sure our tweens and teens, you know, I don't think we should be scared to share the truth. And Proverbs five is one of those passages where a young man, whenever a young man comes up to me and talks about, man, I'm struggling because man, I either I'm seeing girls and I'm having these thoughts or, or I've, I found this website or this one app or whatever. And when they have that very often, I love going to Proverbs five because it's this passage where the writer basically is talking to married men and he's saying, Hey, married men, you know, remember this. And he basically paints this beautiful picture, you know, he paints this beautiful picture where he says, may your fountain be blessed, you know, and he starts talking about their wives, this loving dough, this graceful deer. And he says, may her breasts satisfy you at all times.

I love the expression on young boys face. When I read that verse to them, they can't believe it. This is in the Bible, you know you know, may her breasts satisfy you at all times.

And and may you be entranced with her love. And then it goes on, it actually goes on to talk about, Hey, but why would you want to embrace and depending on the translation, the breasts or the bosom of a promiscuous woman, why would you want to do that? Why would you be of such folly, the words use and what a great conversation to talk about God's design, Hey, God's design sex is this good thing that he designed to where in our marriage relationship, you know, a man and a woman can enjoy each other physically, intimately. That's the way it was created. This isn't a bad thing. This is a good thing, but why would we want to go share that with a bunch of other people? And it's a great conversation to have, you know, Jonathan, one of the difficulties you see this in adult Christians because of the gnarledness of how parents, I think for the most part have dealt with this, it's not all on the parents lab, but you know, the culture, everybody there's such a, even in the Christian community, there's such a disconnection about God's gift in marriage, you know, especially I think women tend to feel this is dirty. This isn't right.

I mean, this is God's gift to the marriage couple, right? It doesn't, it can lead to shame culture. And there's kind of two extremes. There's this one extreme that's the, Hey, what are we going to do? We can't stop this stuff.

So let's just allow everything. And that's this, this extreme kind of like, Hey, what do you know, let the kid have the devices in the bedroom, let them do whatever, you know, and that, you know, and that that's one extreme, you know, and I don't agree with that extreme, but there's another extreme and it's a polar opposite extreme. And it's this, it's almost this reaction of, Oh, we've got to find some on TV without dirty sex, you know, and it's kind of like, you know, and it's constantly this, and I understand the, the, you know, the motivation is good. It's like, wouldn't it be cool to show something that didn't, you know veer from biblical standards, but it comes out and what kids here is sex is bad. Sex is dirty. And so kids kind of grow up thinking it's that shameful thing.

And they're like, what's wrong with me because gosh, all my friends at school, everybody I follow on social media, it's like this good thing, but yet my parents are telling me it's this bad thing. And that's where we need to have that ongoing conversation about truth of what sex is. And sex is this amazing gift God gave us. And when you read verses like Proverbs five, it's kind of eyeopening to kids that, Hey, sex in the context of marriage is this amazing thing. And it's amazing how often we can have these conversations that share this truth and it's, it's eyeopening for young people and positive.

Yeah. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and our guest today is Jonathan McKee. And we're really covering some of the ground in his great book, More Than Just the Talk, Becoming Your Kid's Go-To Person About Sex. We want to encourage you to get a copy of this book.

We've got the details in the episode notes. Jonathan, in fact, you had kind of the don't freak out example, parenting example in the book with your friend, Aaron, what, what happened? Yeah.

Yeah. I, I'll always remember this because, you know, again, as, as this researcher, I'm constantly asking stories from friends and, and this was a youth pastor friend of mine who, when he was a kid growing up, he had an experience where he was really struggling with pornography and pornography is a real struggle. I mean, right now today, it's a real struggle.

Barna's most recent study shows that actually 54% of committed Christians struggle with pornography right now, compared to about 68% of just all people out there. So, I mean, this is, this is a huge struggle and it has been for years, but even back, you know, this is about a decade ago, my friend Aaron was having this struggle and he was out hanging out with some friends and he came home and when he walked in his house, he looked and there his mom and dad were sitting in the living room and he goes, they weren't watching TV. So I knew something was wrong. And he sat down and he said, and, and, and his mom starts crying and we found these images on the computer and how could you in this house and this, and it was very like, you know, this is disgusting and blah, blah, blah. And he was like, well, I, you know, I don't know. And she, it was just kind of this blame and blame and blame. And finally she was like, how could you, how could he? And he said, he just burst out and said, I don't know.

All's I know is I can't stop. And he says that his mom immediately started again saying kind of like, well, well, well I understand on it. And then he said, I saw something happened.

I had never seen that before. He goes, my dad kind of reached over and he put his hand on my mom's knee and he said, honey, our son wants our help. And he said, the conversation changed at that moment. And that's the kind of thing that we need to be able to do. And maybe without the freaking out, you know, we need to be able to create this comfortable climate of calm, continual conversation where our kids can come to us, where we can be that go-to person, where we talk with them about real struggles and about this amazing gift that God's given us and what that looks like in a real world where there's temptations everywhere.

Yeah, that's good. Well, Jonathan, one of the things that Jim has mentioned is that age appropriate nature of the conversation. So speak to the parents who have younger kids, like let's say pre-K or elementary age. How did they start to have these series of conversations to normalize God's design and the beauty of sex within marriage? I think the answer to that is we live in a culture where stuff comes up all the time and there are natural springboards for conversation in most things we do.

Most families watch some TV together, whether it be football or, or maybe an innocent show they found together. And guess what? Sometimes there's an image or something that comes up and we have an opportunity to ask questions, you know, you know, if our kids are sitting there looking at the cheerleaders or whatever, and we're asking, Hey, why do you think they have cheerleaders?

Hey, why do you think they're dressed like that? That's interesting. Just start asking questions, create a safe place where kids know, Hey, mom and dad are safe when it comes to talking about this subject. Yeah. You know, young people particularly, and we'll hook to an article. I think we have an article on age appropriate discussions because that fuller point is four or five year old, seven, eight year old, 10, 11 year old. I mean, those are very specific age moments that you need to be on your game, so to speak, to be ready to have that age appropriate context and conversation.

But those are kind of the breakdowns. You're not going to speak to a 12 year old the way you do a four year old, obviously, hopefully you don't want to make that mistake either. So we'll connect to that article and parents can take a look at that grandparents too, if you want to send that along.

Jonathan, as I was starting that question, young people are pretty blunt. I remember speaking to at the time, Rick Lytle, who was on our board here at focus, he was the Dean of the business school at Abilene. And he would bring, I don't know, 100 students out to Colorado for a getaway. And he invited me to speak there a couple of times.

And we'd have a Q&A with the guys and the girls would have a Q&A with a female leader. And I mean, those guys were brutally honest about sex. I can remember one of the comments being if sex is so good, why do we need to wait till marriage?

How would you respond to that? There's a course the biblical context of that. But these are Christian kids. And this is happening throughout the culture. cohabitation is huge within the Christian young people community now, just like in the world. So when somebody says, Well, if sex is so good, why wait for what do you say?

Yeah, no, that's, that's a great question. And whenever I'm addressing young people in a Christian setting on that, I actually attack that with three different reasons. I attack it not only biblically, you know, and but I also attack it the same two ways. I attack that question where I literally talk in public school assemblies about abstinence. And I talk about research wise, and just plain old common sense. And I have kids come to me afterwards and they would thank me and it always thanked me the same way they say, Hey, thank you for just telling us, you know, they just thanks for just saying it not holding back.

I because I would take that I take research, and then I'll take like, some current lyrics of a song. You know, I remember this one rap song that was popular at the time where it was talked about this rapper really bragged about how he would have 301 nightstands a year and he kept a pack of, you know, Costco condoms on his nightstand because he had so much sex. And so what I would do is I would literally school assembly, I would pull up a box of condoms, and I'd flip over on the back of like 98% effective. I saw a friend here says he has 301 nightstands a year.

Okay, math students here, pop quiz. If you have 301 nightstands and use a condom every time effectively, statistically, how many girls are going to get pregnant and literally kids would yell out six, you know, and I said, Okay, you know, and what about STDs and I'd have these conversations. And kids would thank me because I'm just addressing Hey, not only Hey, here's what you're hearing. But here's what's out there. When I finished addressing, I told you, there's two things I would do.

One, I would address the statistics and that kind of stuff. But I also just talked about common sense. I said, Hey, all that stuff aside for a second. I said, just think about for a second.

I said, think about it. You know, regardless of what you believe, you know, whether there's a creator out there or something like that, who knows if it's true or not. But what if just everybody out there for some weird reason, picture a world where everybody for some reason or another believed in God's plan for marriage and intimacy. Then there's who cares about anything else. There's still war.

There's still pain in this world. But for some reason, we live in a world where everybody thought I'm going to wait for one person. And when I marry them, my intimacy is going to be reserved for them and nothing else outside of that. I said, close your eyes and picture that world for a second.

And I start to paint that picture. This is a world with no, and I started naming the STDs. I just went through, you know, no chlamydia, no HPV, no syphilis, no gonorrhea. I said, this is a world where everybody's waiting for marriage for sex. So there's no rape. There's no incest. There's no abuse. There's no prostitution.

There's no sex trafficking there. And I just go on with this list of if for some reason, everybody believed let's just wait. And intimacy is only within marriage.

And I would paint this picture and I'd say, okay, now open your eyes. I said, that's if everybody just believed one thing. God said, one thing is planned for marriage. Does that sound so bad? And it's amazing how you could just see eyes open and kids just kind of pondering that from that, wait, God's way actually makes sense.

That is so good, Jonathan. I mean, if you have that conversation with your teen, you're going to make significant headway. I think let's in this idea of the parent toolbox, that's one thing.

If it's so good, why wait? You've addressed that. The other one is how far is too far for that Christian teen? How does a parent talk about those boundaries?

No, absolutely. And young people today, especially as they move through adolescence and they start, you know, uh, really vying for independence more, they're not looking for rules, you know, because if we sat and gave them a list of rules, you know, kissing, okay, hugging, okay. You know, touching over clothes, not okay. You know, touching toes only if you're wearing socks, you know, I mean, they don't want rules like that. They want to kind of understand something and make a decision for themselves. Now I know that doesn't always work that way, but when it comes to something like this, we're honestly, they are going to be making a decision. Our daughter is going to be making decisions whether to get in the backseat of that car, whether to go out with that guy to this place, our sons are going to be premeditating on whether or not to take our girl, a girl to that spot. They're going to be making these decisions on their own.

The best thing we can do is equip them to make those decisions. One of the things I always think is very helpful is helping them understand that sex is a process and sex isn't just intercourse because otherwise when that whole, how far should I go conversation, the very shrewd kids will go to the Bible and be like, it just says, don't have sex so I can do everything. But, but when we start to help them understand that sex is this process that sometimes starts with kissing and getting excited and, and it's one of those things where in the book I actually get kind of, you know, scientific with what happens to the human body as we start to get excited and why it's hard to stop. And I always tell kids, I say, you know, cause kids always this, well, why was it so hard to stop? The answer I give is because you're not supposed to stop. Once you get it started, you're supposed to keep going because it's this process. God made this design where you find the right person and you commit to them for life in the covenant of marriage and teaching covenant, by the way, is a great thing to do.

And as we teach them the covenant of marriage and I'll sit in there with that person, they've waited for this moment and it starts with kissing and it gets better and better. You don't want to halfway through go, okay, let's stop. It's not meant to stop. It's meant to keep going. And so that's why I tell kids, it's don't get hot and heavy.

Don't do anything you wouldn't do with grandma sitting right there in the living room. You know, that's how far to go. Yeah. It's not a line of here's what you can touch.

Here's what you can't touch. It's Hey, you know, you shouldn't be getting hot and heavy to the point where it's difficult to stop because then you've started this sex process. Yeah. I mean, that's the energy that it's created and that's what's intended for your wedding night. And it's a good thing.

Yeah. Well, that, that sets up really the last question we can have time for today because, uh, you know, the parent that has not been that thoughtful perhaps are in the game as much, especially around this area of sexuality. Um, and their kids are older, maybe late teens, they're still at the home, but they're on the way out the door and maybe this has even become a wall in their communication. They just never talk about this and it's not, uh, received well if the parent attempts to engage in that way. What are those important longterm things, those bridges that we need to build in, even though we're frustrated that they're not listening or being obedient to what we're suggesting to them, what are those things we need to do to build for the future so that when their adult brain catches up, uh, we haven't damaged or destroyed the relationship to the point that there is no communication or very little.

Well, one of the best things we can do, and I don't, let me speak very candidly, um, to guys for a second, because I think one of the best things we can do as we're raising our kids and then as they get out of the house and as they're on their own, when it comes to communicating this kind of truth is modeling this, our own marriage, our own way that we treat others. Um, most of my, uh, good friends and, and even followers and stuff know that 2020 was a very rough year for our household. And uh, man, it was a tough time where we made a lot of changes. And that year for me was a very humbling year where I ended up literally, I wouldn't even say on my knees, I'd say on my face, on the ground, just in prayer, crying out to the Lord saying, help me please. And that humbling moment of realizing Jonathan, you don't have all the answers.

You absolutely need help here. Making my way through the Psalms, crying out to God daily saying, God, I need you. God transformed my own marriage. And as he's done that, that's helped my relationship with my kids more because it's not me just saying something.

It's me day to day taking up my cross and following him in my marriage and in the way I treat others. When we model this in our own lives, when we start to live this out, that is going to do more than any words we ever say. And by modeling it, it creates this safety where they like, I can talk with him cause he's not going to freak out. I like the way he treats mom and this goes both ways, mom, dad, whatever. But for me, I'm talking to guys here, guys, our marriage, working on our marriage is the best thing we can do to be a good parent. And so that's the first thing I would honestly say is to folks is if we're going to have these ongoing conversations with our growing kids, they're going to look and they're going to be like, Hey, do I respect these people or not? And if they respect you and they see something in your life, that's different, which is Jesus, then they're going to be like, I want to talk to them.

Cause what is that? I'd like a little bit of that in my life. That's when they're going to come to us.

It has to be authentic. If we're faking it, they're going to see it and they're going to go somewhere else. This has been so good. And I hope parents both listening and watching are encouraged and can embrace this journey. Uh, you know, this is part of parenting and this is probably one of the most challenging areas for us is to have the discussions to drip irrigate on this topic of sexuality so that your kids can be as healthy as possible.

Uh, this culture will bombard us young and old with over sexualized content. And the thing we need to do is to build up a young person's ability to discern what is good and what is evil. And that's all we can do. We can't own the outcome. We can only try to equip them and to help them as best as we can. A good way to get that start is with Jonathan's book, more than just the talk of becoming your kid's go to person about sex. That title says it all.

That's exactly the outcome that we want. And I hope you can, uh, I hope you're motivated to get a copy and we'll make it easy. If you can make a gift of any amount monthly would be outstanding. Uh, but a one time gift as well. We'll send you a copy if you can do that as our way of saying thank you for being part of the ministry and helping other families to be as healthy as possible in this area.

Yeah. Support this show and our efforts to equip parents. We make that monthly pledge or one time contribution. You can call 800 the letter a in the word family to do that and request the book or stop by the show notes for all the links. Also, John, you know, so many people don't realize focus is a resource rich center for you to get parenting help and marriage help of course. But on the parenting side we have launched into the teen years, which is a curriculum that is this topic.

How do I talk to my children about sex? So if you're in that spot where you're needing that kind of assistance, in addition to Jonathan's great book, get ahold of us for that as well. And once again, our number, if we can be of any help to you, is 800 the letter a in the word family. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. How do you and your spouse connect spiritually?

Would you like to be closer? Focus on the Family invites you to listen to the Loving Well podcast. Season eight just released and your hosts, Dr. Greg and Erin Smalley, share insights and humor from their own marriage of over 30 years. And they'll offer you practical ideas to strengthen your marriage by focusing on God. Listen, follow and grow together with the Loving Well podcast. You'll find it at focusonthefamily.com slash loving well.