Talking about Sex and Sexuality to Your Adolescent1
- Introduction
- Preparing for Puberty
- Continuing the Discussion
- Why It's Hard for Teens to Resist Sex
- Reasons for Teens to Save Sex for Marriage
- Factors that Can Lead to Teens Having Sex
- Reducing the Risks that Can Lead to Teens Having Sex
- The Role of Identity in Preventing Teen Sex
- Spotting Unhealthy Relationships
- Pointers for Parents on Starting the Dialogue
Continuing the Discussion
Your child's adolescence is a time for you to communicate essential points about sex that go far beyond the technical. In these years you will have the privilege and responsibility of emphasizing the wonderful news about sexuality.
- God designed sex to bring new life into existence, to generate a powerful bond between a husband and wife and to be intensely pleasurable.
- It is a wonderful, extraordinary and powerful gift that deserves to be treated with great and abiding respect.
- In the context of a permanent and public commitment, it can be savored, explored and nurtured without guilt or fear of serious consequences.
- But at the wrong time with the wrong person, sex can bring disappointment, disease and derailed life plans and purposes.
Your adolescent, who is curious about and highly interested in sex, needs a clearheaded understanding of its benefits and risks in order to make a serious commitment to remain sexually pure until marriage. Maintaining such a commitment won't always be easy.
1 Adapted from the booklet, Talking About Sex and Sexuality to Your Adolescent (Copyright © 2000 Focus on Your Family), itself an excerpt from The Complete Book of Baby & Child Care (Copyright © 1997 Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved). Accessed on-line January 30, 2007 at http://www.focusonyourchild.com/develop/art1/A0000982.html.