Don’t Wait Until the Teen Years To Talk With Your Kids About Sex. Here’s Why.

When should Christian parents start having conversations with our kids about their bodies, sex, sexuality, marriage and singleness?

The answer is, “Probably sooner than you think.” Lots of parents believe we should wait to have these conversations until our kids are teenagers. But the longer we wait, the more likely we are to lose the privilege of leading our kids along this part of their journey at all.

And if we don’t step into the gap and start discipling our kids, the world around them will disciple them instead.

Here are four reasons I encourage parents to start having age-appropriate conversations about these topics with our kids well before their teenage years:

1) You Can Be Your Kids’ Anchor.

Psychologists talk about a phenomenon called “anchoring bias.” Basically, whatever we hear first sticks in our minds, and whoever we hear it from first naturally becomes our authority—our anchor. For instance, if our 8-year-old son first hears about sex on the playground or from his teacher, he will end up evaluating what his parents eventually say about sex by what his friends and teachers have already said.

As Christian parents, I want us to flip this script around. I want us to be the default authority—the anchor—in our kids’ lives. I want the gospel vision for marriage and singleness to be the gold standard by which our kids measure the world’s vision for
sexuality.

2) Kids Need To Prepare for Puberty.

On average, girls start puberty between ages 7 and 13, and boys between ages 9 and 14. When kids notice changes in their bodies, it’s natural to get curious about what’s happening. And it’s even natural to feel afraid—especially if no one has warned them these changes are coming.

Where do we want our kids to go with their curiosity and fear about their bodies? I certainly hope it’s to us, their parents. But if we wait until age 13 to help our kids interpret the ways their bodies are changing, we’ll almost certainly be too late to help guide them through some of the most tender years of their lives.

3) Pornography Is a Terrible Teacher.

Statistics about the prevalence of pornography today are horrifying. At least 15% of kids see porn by the age of 10, and over half see it by the time they’re 15. The average age of first exposure to pornography is 12. While there are lots of practical steps we can take to protect our kids from pornography, no strategy is perfect. Even a perfect parent (which none of us is) might still have a kid who stumbles onto pornography well before their teenage years.

Instead of taking the risk that pornography might become our kids’ first teacher about sex and sexuality, I want us as parents to have early conversations with our kids about how God designed our bodies for something good and beautiful. That way, when they do stumble across pornography’s distorted vision of sexuality in the future, they can compare that distortion to the strong foundation we’ve already laid for them.