How Do We Talk to Our Children about This Stuff?

Covid has transformed the way we live and therefore the way we view the world.  In an article in the Atlantic on Sunday Morning entitled Where Did 7 Million Workers Go?, Derek Thompson cited a survey by Indeed that gave the four top reasons why unemployed workers are not out actively seeking a job:

They have a spouse that is employed. Being quarantined, working from home, getting rid of the second or third car, not eating out, not going on vacation, working on home projects has changed people. They now realize that families can exist comfortably and happily on one income rather than two.

They have a financial cushion. They got stimulus checks but without being able to spend much of it.  Much of that money was used to pay off debt, or invest in the markets.  The stock market is where that savings money went and most people have made 50% or more on the market since the March 2020 lows.

They have care responsibilities. The horrors of senior-only living and the draconian isolation that occurred during the pandemic have been traumatizing.  People are choosing to risk illness in exchange for the opportunity to be near and care for the ones they love.

However, it is caring for children at home because of school closures that has been most eye-opening.  Children were forced home, and parents were forced to be home to care for them. Distance learning got parents involved in what was being taught at a level they had not been before.  Just as parents were scrutinizing curriculum and teaching the woke movement gained its greatest traction injecting racist and pro LGBTQ teaching into the curricula.

Parents got a wake-up call.

Not only are they appalled at what is being taught, but they are also taking those battles to school board meetings.  Some families are opting out, choosing private schools, Christian Schools, or just deciding to live on one income and home school their children.

A word of caution to parents.

Isolating your children from the cultural conflicts that we are facing is impossible.  You can switch schools or even home school, but the conflicts are ubiquitous. And there is no place to move away from it all as the Plymouth Pilgrims did. You have to deliberately prepare your children to not only survive the confused culture we face, but to confront it, and to be victorious over it.

You must talk about uncomfortable things.

Most Christian parents wait ten years too long to talk about sex with their children.  Years ago, Tim LaHaye wrote a very useful little book entitled Sex Education is for the Family. It was not a political statement but a guide for Bible-based sex education in the home. Children tend to view the first person who tells them about something as the expert on that thing. They will go to that person to get their questions answered in the future.

Ask yourself this.  How did you first learn about the specifics of human procreation? Was it your parents that explained it to you?  Did that conversation continue through the years in an appropriate and biblical sort of way?  My guess is that most of you learned about it from some friend or acquaintance and there never was any real open discussion about it in the home.

Children need to start learning about sex in age-appropriate ways beginning as early as 4 or 5 years old.  LaHaye’s book was a great resource and there are many others available now. This was not a difficult task for the agricultural generation of 100 years ago, but in today’s urbanized culture kids know more about homosexuality than they do about sexuality.  Schools know that kids are talking about it—and doing it—and so they see the need to educate.  The problem is that schools cannot educate children on this issue from a biblically-based perspective.  The public education sector clearly has an agenda that is not biblical.  However, the alternative to wrong education is not to not talk about it all.  Moms and dads, you have work to do, and you need to start immediately.

Children not only need to be taught about sex, but also about homosexuality, marriage, and even transgender issues.  Again, they are already being taught in school, comic books, movies, social media, and by their friends. This can be done in an age-appropriate and non-violating way.

The goal is holiness, not innocence.

Somehow, we think innocence is holiness. Innocence is just ignorance absent guilt. Trying to preserve innocence indefinitely is a formula for disaster.  Your goal must be for your child to have a deep love for God and the knowledge to know how to express that love obediently in an increasingly hostile world.

When your five your old asks you why the man who cut his hair was wearing a dress the simple answer might be something like this.

“The Bible tells us that God made every person to be either a boy or a girl.  Because we believe in the Bible we are happy that God made us that way and we dress like it.  Some people do not believe the Bible and they are trying to be something that God did not make them to be because they think that will make them happy.  After all, not everyone believes in God.”

Talk often about uncomfortable things.

It is almost comical how many think they can have “the talk” once, and then it is finished.  Deuteronomy 6:7 applies to Christian sex education too.

You must answer their questions when they bring them up.  One of the worst things parents can do is tell lies instead of age-appropriate truth. Stork stories are not the answer. You not only need to answer their questions truthfully, but you also need to ask the questions for them that they should be asking so that you can teach them the things they need to know. Be proactive.

Many parents don’t want to talk about these things because their pre-teens and teens seem so uncomfortable talking about them with their parents.  The solution for that is to talk with your children BEFORE they are pre-teens or teens.  If the conversation starts when they are six it will continue less awkwardly into the teen years. Remember that the Bible addresses sex and sin very directly and without awkwardness. If God can talk about it, so can you. Those conversations need to be age-appropriate, but they need to happen.

This is the world in which we live. We did not choose it, and we cannot choose to just withdraw from it.  We must boldly confront it, even in our own homes