Well, hi everyone. Welcome to this week's special edition of the Life Group Leader Podcast. My name is Jared Kirkwood. I'm the lead pastor of Irvine and executive pastor of ministries here at Mariners Church.
And I'm excited to be able to jump into the Life Group Leader Podcast with this special conversation that Scott and I are going to have just about equipping parents to have a really important conversation. And so if you're not used to being in the Life Group Leader Podcast, Scott, why don't you give just a sense of what this podcast is typically for and then introduce yourself as well? Yeah. So my name is Scott and I'm the Discipleship Pastor.
And this Life Group Leader podcast, we normally go through some of the discussion questions that we have for our weekend messages and then equip and encourage our leaders to be able to have some meaningful conversations in their life group. That's awesome. And so for this one, we're in on the table. And while you guys have recorded a great episode of equipping leaders to have group discussion about the material, we wanted to have a conversation that really helps the parents of predominantly elementary age kids.
And this is all about how do you have that first time conversation with your kids about sex? So as Eric taught this weekend, why does God care who I sleep with? We've got to have a conversation about what do parents do as they are starting to have these conversations with their kids? And let me just set this up before.
And I know Scott, you're going to kind of host this and you're going to make sure that I keep moving forward and don't spend too much time on any individual topic. But really, let me set really the expectation of what we're hoping to do here. This is a collection of perhaps some resources and principles and a framework for a conversation. It's not meant to be a script that you're going to then give to your child.
We don't know your kids as well as you do. But instead, what we're going to do is share maybe a little bit of what we did, what we wish we did, what we'd recommend that you do so that you can have this most important conversation with your kids as it pertains to sexuality and relationships and just healthy growth as an image bear of who God is. Is that fair? And I think this is a really important topic because the reality is that our kids are going to hear about this topic of sex from someone or somewhere, whether it's from friends, from media, school, and it's really a question of who do we want them to hear this from?
And so I'm really excited to be in this conversation with you. So we've got some principles, some ways to just think about who, when, why, where, all that kind of stuff, just to get the tone started. And so here's the first thought is just that how we communicate matters. Really, the goal is that we create a relationship of conversation with our children.
I have a 13 year old and a 10 year old. How old is your son? I'm 18 year old. And 18 year old.
Okay. Have you had this conversation already with you? We did. I hope so because that would be really, really late.
I'm just messing with you. So the goal right is that talk is normal. That communication is consistent with our kids. And really, this begins when they're very, very young, talking about all kinds of stuff, creating a home and a relationship in which conversation again is, is normal.
That your kids turn to you to ask you about everything, no matter what it is. And that actually is about our response because they aren't going to keep asking if we don't respond well. Yeah, for sure. And I think building and leaning into that relationship throughout their adolescence is super important.
It's not just this, I will talk a little bit more about that later, but it's not just this one sex talk. That's right. But it is these ongoing conversations and they need to feel safe. They need to feel like they're trusted.
And so yeah, it's still small ongoing conversations throughout their adolescence that really matters to have these bigger conversations. That's right. I'm going to introduce a framework that some of our pastors got together and thought through, how can we really be helpful? How can we equip parents to have some conversations?
And so the framework is going to not begin with the sex talk. Instead, it's really going to start much earlier in that, which is the foundation building to be able to have an open dialogue with your son or with your daughter. But then the tone of that matters too. As we talk about how we talk matters, the tone ought to be similar to what we heard in the weekend message.
That sex is part of God's design. It's a gift and it's beautiful within the confines of how God designed it. And so the tone can't be something gross or distant or something we're afraid. We as parents with our children, as that conversation evolves, we have to just consider the tone of how we talk matters.
So how we talk matters, but also when we talk matters. One of the things that we talked about here is that there's a level of scheduling these conversations and being ready to have them as they show up. Let me just, the schedule thing is, the reason is because it's awkward. It's uncomfortable.
You don't actually want, most parents don't want to have this conversation. And so I found that I needed, and my wife actually is the one who was like, you need to do it. It's time. Let me ask you, but why do you think they don't want to have this conversation?
What are some reasons you think? Well, okay. So the reality is most of us didn't have this conversation. I was just talking to someone about that.
Yeah. It wasn't done well for us. So we feel ill-equipped as parents. And we are afraid of messing this thing up.
And so we avoid. We just don't want to put it on the calendar. And yet, if I don't have it on the calendar, I can avoid really well. Yeah.
So we have to schedule this thing. Did you schedule, did you do that as well? Yeah. Well, first of all, I was a model disc.
We never had this talk with my parents. And so I didn't know what that was going to look like. And I didn't want to repeat that until my wife and I, when our son was in his, I think seven or eight years old, we started looking at some resources to talk to him about these conversations at different age points. Yeah.
You mentioned at the top, this idea that they're going, kids are going to stumble into this material. It's going to be presented to them. There will be opportunities for them to engage in this conversation. We as parents ought to be the first ones.
We want to be the ones that set the tone and the boundaries and the foundation of how this conversation is going to go. And so while we talk about scheduling it, there's also something about being ready for when the door opens that you know what that next conversation is, which teases a little bit to that framework we'll get to in just a second. I will say that there's a level of capitalizing on the culture as well. Culture, social media, movies, television show, Google searches, ads on TV, watching the Superbowl with your kids, that is going to be an opportunity.
Because there's going to be a place in which unhealthy sexuality is put on display. So for us to have something in the back pocket ready to be able to just engage in a small 10 second version of a conversation is what I'm talking about with creating that open dialogue between our kids. So scheduling it, but then also being ready to make it happen. Yeah.
So we talked about how we communicate matters and when we talk matters, how about where we talk? Yeah. How does that matter? So I don't know exactly how transferable this one is.
I just know for me, I couldn't sit on the couch with my son and just say, I'd like to have a conversation with you today. Instead, I needed to get him out of the house. We needed to go. In fact, him and I would go rock climbing together.
We went and got donuts. The first conversation I had with him was over donuts. So it's like, we're going to get out of the house. It's already going to feel a little bit unusual in a sense.
We're going to sit down. And then there's some conversation that happens. I've heard of others that go on long walks together or go on hikes together. I found that as my son has gotten older, being in the car has been very effective because both of our eyes are facing forward a little more dialogue friendly.
Yeah. Yeah. What's so funny is that growing up, I was a child of the 80s and 90s. I would watch these sitcoms like growing pains, family ties.
And I would see the father come to the son's room and have these talks. I was like, I never had that talk. Yes. But that's exactly it.
I think my conversations, meaningful conversations with my son, happened the most when we were hiking, when we were driving somewhere, not necessarily when he was playing video games. Exactly. That's good. Yeah.
I can't go into my son's room and expect a conversation because it just smells. There's just no way I could focus. Yeah. So let's get into the framework.
Yeah, let's do that. I think the goal here is that there's an evolution. There's a way to progress a conversation over time. And so as we got together and we kind of talked about this, I proposed a bit of a framework that I used with my son that begins well before we were having any kind of a conversation about the birds and the bees.
OK. It actually began as talking about words. And so over donuts, I sat with him outside one day. And I just asked him, hey, talk to me about how are you doing in school?
How are your friends doing? Like some of that kind of stuff, just getting some things going. And I said, I want to talk to you about language. And I talked about the words that we say.
Because I believe that the words we say matter. And so he would share some things. And I'd say, tell me some of the bad words that you know. Yeah.
And he'd go, really? Yeah. So yeah, tell me all the bad words. He's like, well, I know the S word.
And I'm like, really? What is it? You have permission. You're not going to get trouble.
What is it? It's like stupid. And I'm like, close. Yeah.
Not quite OK. So you know, I'm getting a feel for what he knows. And then that's the conversation goes on. We're done.
And he goes, actually, dad, there's one other word I know. And it's the F word. And I said, really? You know, in my mind, I'm thinking, if S was stupid, what's F going to be, you know, fart or whatever?
And he goes, I don't want to say it out loud. And I was like, oh, this is peaking my curiosity down. And he spells it. He spells the word.
And I'm like, are you kidding me? How does that seven years old? He had already heard this word. And I can assure you, it was not in our own.
Like, how has this happened already? So I knew at that point, maybe it wasn't that I felt too late, but I felt like, my goodness, I've got to have these intentional conversations. Because he's already exposed to things outside of our house. And the mother of all words was already in his, not in his vocabulary, but it was in his mind.
You guys, you and Kim are doing something right. Because I think I hear many parents when they, when their kids bring a word that they've learned at school from their friends, the immediate response of, who told you that? Sure. Who said that?
And it becomes like this inquisition to kind of shame them rather than a teachable moment for these kids. And so I apologize for that. Well, thank you. So those are like those.
I don't really know. You said, you said, seven years old. That was at seven. OK.
Yeah, so we started with words. And then it moved on from there. You know, we would have some conversations. Of course, we're having lots of conversations.
But it wasn't until maybe a year later, maybe when it was about eight years old, that we moved from words to then talking about bodies. And this conversation with him was about our bodies. So I wanted to spend some time with him just helping him understand not only the anatomical words for things, although that is important as well, that we don't have to give things fake names and make it funny. Like they should know the words so that the words become normal in a sense, but then also to know when to use those words.
Right. So this whole conversation was largely just about our bodies. And then it did progress to make sure that he knows that his body is his body. And it's not intended to be shared or shown to anyone else.
Right. And we talked about parents and doctors are really the only ones that should be able to ask you any questions about your body or to see any parts of your body. You know, as boys get older, that becomes more of a thing. And so we wanted to just talk early on about boundaries, about understanding how to keep safe in environments that he may not be prepared for.
Yeah. No, that's really good. I think what I've seen is like, we don't talk about how it's God. It's the goodness of God that created our bodies.
What I see a lot of times with kids is they either glorify their bodies, they're obsessed with their bodies, or they think their body is ugly. Right. They're shamed by their bodies. And so to talk about their bodies and sex in age appropriate, but in a healthy way is so critical.
Yeah. Yeah. And in that one, it was really just about, because that was my son, it was just about voice. Right.
I would say that similarly, my wife with my daughter, that's still that conversation. They're having a conversation about females. That's it. Right.
Because the next one, as we move forward, if the second part of the framework was, our bodies are our bodies. The next part is their bodies are their bodies. And so that's where my son and I spent some time really talking through, the opposite parts, which in God's design, and this was important, a part of it, this was not a long conversation, but it was one where I wanted to understand opposites are complementary. This is God's design for us.
Right. So just paving the way, you know, and he's maybe nine years old at this point, just paving the way for him to understand that there is design behind this, that there's a way in which it's supposed to work, and that God created boys and girls differently, and that there's a level of respect and privacy. That's very important for him early on, for our boys. And it's true for girls as well, that we have a healthy level of respect and understanding behind things, so that we don't find ourselves, you know, raising disrespectful kids, like no one wants to raise a disrespectful kids.
The only way to do that is to ensure that you are teaching them how to respect and have a healthy distance and understanding for the other. Yeah, that's really good. So we talked about how to have conversations from seven, eight nine year olds, how about with 10 year olds? I mean, this is when we start understanding, like our bodies are changing, how thinking about how we deal with all these sexual desires, hormones, and all these things that are happening.
What does that conversation look like? Yeah, so in the framework, right, this is probably the one that would feel like the talk. Yeah. If we begin with words, then we talk about our bodies, then their bodies, and this again, we're not talking over a period of years at this point.
Him and I are now ready. My son and I are like ready to have a conversation around how does it all work? How does this whole thing come together? And there's an element of I wanted to help them understand God's design, but then also the biological anatomical parts to it.
And we spent some time together having fun that morning. And then I was praying, Lord, help me find any way to begin this conversation. Because it's really the first sentence that's the most scary. Once you're in it, God will give you the words to say, but we found our way into the beginning of it.
And I'm there explaining the whole thing. How's this going? And I'm watching the wheels turn in his head. And I'm wondering what he's thinking and I don't want to ask him what he's thinking.
But at the end of it, it ended up, I was making sure, do you have any questions? Is there anything that you want to ask? And he had a couple of small things here or there, but that is a conversation was wrapping up. I was it was very clear.
He had all he needed. He was done with this conversation with dad. Dad, how about ongoing conversations? We looked at from seven to 10 years old, but this doesn't stop there.
Yeah, it continues on. What now? What do you want to say? Right.
Well, I mean, I really believe that. It's not just a it's not a whole thing that's culminating in the birds and the bees talk. It's really about cultivating a relationship with your child where you can have these conversations. And there will be from ages 10, 12, 13, there will come a point where they just are no longer going to talk to you about stuff.
They're they're not interested in learning from you anymore. It starts to become through puberty and through some other things. It's going to become increasingly more uncomfortable for them. And so as parents, it's unfortunate because we spent years creating this environment where open dialogue can happen.
And then as kids peel away from their parents, they want to have a bigger sense of independence. They're going to be still curious about things. They're still going to want to talk. And so this is a really important thing where you still create an open environment for them.
That you still ask questions cautiously with wisdom, but allowing them to know that you are there for them, giving them the room to know. And again, similar to what I said about when a kid says a bad word for the first time, how you respond is going to change if they come to you again the next time. So when a kid comes to you with a question to create an environment where you with gratitude, remind them that you're glad that we can have this conversation together. And by the way, as a parent, it may not be a conversation you can fully have on your own.
You may need additional support. You may need additional help, but that we create a place where that kid can feel safe enough to have some conversations together. So for me, the ongoing conversation piece is that they're going to have all kinds of questions. And honestly, in a short podcast, we can't really run out all the scenarios.
But the point of it and the helpfulness, I think, of the framework is to think that this is not just a singular conversation. It's a framework for ongoing conversation that hopefully creates an openness and a dialogue. And if nothing else, it reminds that child of yours that you are a safe place and that you care deeply for their experience in the world. And you want to help them navigate whatever, not only questions they have, but curiosities, the things that they're seeing and hearing and watching others.
And then as they get older, and this is where it gets a little difficult at times, is they start to make mistakes, as they start to stumble into things, as they start to feel the feelings that they have for others, or perhaps the shame that they're feeling for themselves or the decisions that they've made. This is where things, if we've yet to cultivate a relationship of conversation, of open communication, we're going to unfortunately have a division in a house where kids just do not feel like they can shoulder any of it. They can't shoulder it on their own, but they don't know if they can go to mom or dad about it. No, I think that's really good.
I think when they know that their parents are coming with shame or condemnation or judgment, that it is a safe place for them. And to also know that God's grace and his truth is with them as well too. Yeah, this is really good, Jared. Obviously this is just a starting point.
We can't cover all the details. Are there some resources that we can recommend to the parents to be more equipped and encouraged? Yeah. The first resource that I always want a parent to turn towards is the church.
I want to be able to build healthy relationships with parent to parent and also parent to youth leader that we might understand that our kids are here in our church and they're going to be looking for conversation wherever they can find it to some degree. And so turning to the church as we raise up leaders, as we equip leaders, we're learning how to have those kinds of, not this conversation, but learning how to partner with families for the ongoing spiritual formation of a child, of a pre-teen into high school years. And so being in a church community, I cannot downplay that enough as a massive resource that opens the door for a whole bunch of other things as well. And then with that too, just to note before I give a couple of additional resources here, it can be easy for some, perhaps, parents listening to this to think I've already messed up.
I've already missed it. I'm too late. My kid has already made a mess of their life and I'm not sure if there's anything else that I can do. God's word is not silent.
His love for us, he is so forgiving, he is filled with mercy and grace. It's not too late. It's really never too late. We may be behind in some conversations, but we're never behind in the forgiveness and grace of Jesus.
It just isn't possible. I think that there's a number of great resources out there that we could recommend. Jim Burns is a friend of our church and somebody who has written a wealth of books. He has a series of books about this and he has a couple of specific ones.
We'll put these, in fact, we'll make these show notes available too so people can just grab all this information. But teaching your children about healthy sexuality is one of his. And then the real foundational books that honestly would probably pair really well with these evolving conversations is how God makes babies. That's as practical as it gets.
But they are very helpful. I also want to point to the, if I had more time podcasts in this podcast, one podcast for a different podcast because Eric sits down with Sam Albury and has a beautiful conversation as well around sexuality. And just as parents, being better equipped with words and a framework is always helpful. And then lastly, Access is a parent resource website that has a ton of information and they have a great guide with some follow-up questions about the actual substance of a conversation, the content in which a parent might consider bringing to various scenarios.
I think that's an excellent resource as well. And so we'll make sure we link that. Right. Well, there are any closing thoughts before we say farewell?
The only thing, I mean, as I just think about parents, we are all trying to do our best. And none of us is doing it perfectly. And so having grace for ourselves and being in a community where we can ask for help is really a gift. It's a gift.
And so I'm so grateful for our church, Scott. I'm grateful for the way you disciple, particularly here at Mariners Irvine, your team, you and your team are creating great environments for us to be together. And so I'm just very grateful for that. Yeah.
Well, thank you. Thank you, Jared. And thank you all, Life Group Leaders and Parents for joining us for this special podcast episode. And as pastors at Mariners, we just want you to know that we are here for you to partner with you, to equip you, to encourage you, and also to shepherd and guide your kids to further the mission that we have to follow Jesus and really see change the world.