Home Youth Leaders Articles for Youth Leaders 3 Things You Don’t Know About Your Children and Sex

3 Things You Don’t Know About Your Children and Sex

3. Your Child Is Not the Exception. 

After speaking with a youth pastor at a camp, he said most parents live with the belief that their child is the exception. Your child is not.

The camps I went to this summer weren’t camps full of children on life’s fringes that one would stereotypically believe experience these traumatic events or have access to these inappropriate things. You must throw your stereotypes aside.

Most of the children at these camps were middle-class, mostly churched students.

Let me give you a snapshot of a few things I heard from these students:

They’ve sent X-rated photos of themselves to their classmates (or received them).

They’ve exposed themselves to strangers on the Internet or through sexting.

They’ve seen pornography.

They’ve read pornography.

They’ve watched pornography.

The girls compare their bodies to the ones they see in ads at the mall or of actresses, and keep those images hidden on their phone (or iPod, or whatever device they have) so they can try to imitate them.

They question their sexuality.

They’ve masturbated.

They know exactly where and in what movies sex scenes are shown and they watch them for sexual gratification.

They’ve had a homosexual experience.

And they’re terrified to tell you.

(Update: The focus of this article is on the conversation, not the action; though as parents, you need to be aware of the fact that young children are experiencing these things. I feel the need to clarify that none of these actions make someone a “bad” person. While this specific list does contain things many people with a Christian background consider to be sin, it is lack of communication that makes this dangerous at this age. Most of us go through exploratory phases before sexual phases: a three-year-old masturbating because he knows it feels good and a 17-year-old masturbating to porn for a sexual release are two different things. If your child is uninformed or uneducated about things they need to know based on what is appropriate for their age and sexual development, regardless of your beliefs, it leads to shame and self-doubt.)

But maybe you’re right. Maybe your child is the exception. I would argue, at this juncture in life, being the exception is as equally dangerous.

At the end of every session I presented, I intentionally and clearly directed students to ask me or another leader if they didn’t understand or know what a certain word meant. “Do not go to the Internet and look it up.”

Sure enough, there is always the child who stays behind until everyone leaves and quietly asks what the word “porn” means or if God is angry because that boy or girl from down the street told them it was OK for them to touch them “down there.” There is the child in the back row who leans over to his friend and asks, “What does molest mean?” and the other boy shrugs.

This summer, I am beyond grateful that mature, God-fearing adults were available to answer those questions with grace and tact and maturity; that we were in a setting that was safe for questions and confessions. It was entirely appropriate. Not every child gets that opportunity. Most won’t. Most will find out from the Internet or from a peer who isn’t equipped to provide the correct answer in the correct context.