Can The Sex Talk Spoil Innocent Crushes?

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Can having the sex talk with younger children give them ideas that could impact what would normally be an innocent crush? In this episode, Elizabeth Urbanowicz responds to the fears of having the sex talk too early with children and discusses the importance of building a healthy biblical view of others as image bearers of God.

Transcript

Note: The following is an auto-transcript of the podcast recording.

Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the Foundation Worldview Podcast where we seek to answer your questions so that you can equip the children that God has placed in your care to carefully evaluate every idea they encounter and understand the truth of the biblical worldview. I'm your host, Elizabeth Urbanowicz, and I'm thrilled you've joined me for another episode today.

Today's question says, "I've been watching many of your webinars and podcasts on talking to children about sex, and these have brought up a question. My six-year-old has a crush on a friend. I remember being that age and having a crush and thinking I'd marry the boy when we grew up, but nothing about sexual activity crossed my mind because I don't think I had that knowledge. So when I wonder whether or not it's time to talk about sex, I wonder whether those ideas are going to be crossing her mind when she has a little kid crush. Is that something I should be worried about?" That's a really important question for us to think about because we want to make sure that our kids' minds are thinking on things that are true and are good and are right.

Before we dive into answering this question, if you found the content of this podcast beneficial, would ask that you would like and subscribe so that you make sure you don't miss any future episodes and would also ask that you would consider writing a review and sharing this content with those within your sphere of influence so that we can equip as many children as possible to understand the truth of the biblical worldview.

Now, this is a really important question for us to be thinking about because those of you who have followed the Foundation Worldview ministry for a while know that we highly recommend that we have the first sex talk with our kids at age three. And we recommend this for a number of reasons, but the most important one being that we need to make sure that we are the first ones to talk with our children about this so that we can build up a positive biblical theology of God's good design for sex and sexuality. And we also want to make sure that when our children have any questions, that we are the ones that they are coming and talking to about this.

Now, just the fact of the matter is that if your child is around other children, they will be exposed to the concept of sex because the other children that they are around will have been exposed to this concept and many times will not have been exposed to the biblical concept of God's good design for sex and sexuality, but will have been exposed to deviant forms of sexuality within our culture really inappropriately. I know for myself, I went to kindergarten in the nineties and in kindergarten there were kids in my class regularly that were talking about sex. And fortunately, my mom had already had a sex talk with me, so I understood God's good design when I was hearing these kids in my class talk about sex and sexuality.

And then I've shared before that later on in my life, I think I was in seventh or eighth grade, I went to my mom's preschool class one day, she taught preschool, and during one of the play times, one of the boys in her class took two barbie dolls, took the clothes off of both of the Barbie dolls, put them on top of one another, and then grabbed my mom's hand and said, "look, Ms. Karen, gay." How did this little four year old understand that concept? Well, obviously he had been exposed to something inappropriately, and this is back in the late nineties. And so if our kids are around other kids, which I recommend that they should be, they are going to be exposed to the concept of sex. So worrying about our kids thinking about sex should not be a reason for us to not talk with them about sex.

Again, we always want to make sure that we're presenting this in a way that focuses on the goodness of God's design. That God's design is that one man and one woman will be married for one lifetime and that they will enjoy this gift of sex within the covenant of marriage, and that this gift will lead to the creation of families.

And I would really say that unless children are exposed to pornography at a young age, they're not going to naturally be visualizing what exactly does the sexual act involved and what does it look like? They might have some of those questions, but I don't think that they're naturally going to be visualizing all of the mechanics of that.

Now, if we have a child that tends to obsess on something and we know you know that this is going to be a danger for him or her that they are going to be thinking about sexual activity and what does this actually look like and how does this actually happen, that's a direct conversation that we can have with them to say, "you know what? I really appreciate how curious you are about this, and that's a good thing that you're curious about God's good design for sex and sexuality. But you know what? We're not going to let our minds dwell on what this looks like or how this happens because you know what? You're not married and it's not until we're married that we have to focus on these things." However, the vast majority of children are not going to be focused on these things anyway.

I already told you that by the time I was in kindergarten, my mom had had a sex talk with me, and it was actually when I was two that my mom had the first sex talk with me because she was about to go into the hospital to deliver my brother, and she wanted to explain to me truly how babies were made. And now, so did she give me all of the graphic details? No, she didn't. But I knew the basics of how babies were made. And did I ever think about the mechanics of how this happened or anything? No, not at all. It was the first time that I was exposed to what I would consider at least semi-pornographic material when I was in junior high to see the movie Titanic. And there's a sex scene in Titanic. I had never before thought before I was exposed to that. How does this happen? What does this look like? When I had crushes on boys and I thought maybe I would grow up and get married to them one day, and I understood that if I got married to someone, I would be having sex with them, but I never focused on that or thought about that. It wasn't until I was exposed to something that was actually inappropriate because it was pornographic material that I was like, oh, wait, how does this actually work?

So I think you don't need to fear that with your child because if you are not the first one to talk with your child about sex, your child is not going to view you as the expert and they're going to go to other people and they are going to be exposed to the ideas of sex and sexuality, even if it's not from the perspective of God's good design just by being around other children. So I think it's only in very rare cases where we're going to have a child that's going to be wondering, asking questions about all the mechanics and how this stuff happens. And when that happens, we don't need to think like, "oh no, did I just make a mistake?" No, we didn't make a mistake. We should be talking with our kids about God's good design for sex and sexuality. What we need to do then is to address, "you know what? I know you're curious about this, and I'm glad that you understand God's really good design, but this is not something that we need to be focused on right now." And you can just give them something that they can focus on instead. Every time they wonder, "what does this look like? How does this happen?" There's something else that they could focus on of what God's design is so good. I want to follow God's good design.

Now, when thinking about young kids having crushes, whether we're talking about a child that is six or a child that is 12, but just really isn't in the phase of getting into boy, girl romantic relationships, we want to make sure that we handle these in a positive way. We don't just want to say, "oh, you're too young for that. Forget about that," because they can't just forget about that. They can't stop feeling what they're feeling. They can choose not to act on how they're feeling, but they can't change the way that they're feeling.

So what I would recommend is when we know our child has a crush on someone, that we actually directly talk with them about it, that these feelings are a gift from God. "These feelings that we have are a gift from God, and they will hopefully one day lead you to get married to somebody who really loves Jesus and have children with that person, and start a family where Jesus is honored in your marriage and in your family." And then say, "you know what? We can thank God for these feelings. We can thank God. 'You know what? God, I thank you that I feel really drawn to this person.'"

And then our focus should be on caring for that person as a friend and as a fellow image bearer. That the focus should not be on the romantic because one, they're too young for those feelings to be fulfilled. And two, those of you who are married know that those feelings don't last forever, that those feelings ebb and flow. So we don't want to have our kids focus on those feelings and just put a lot of stock into how they're feeling, even when our kids are teenagers, if we allow them to date, focusing on caring for the other person as a friend and a fellow image bearer really should be their focus in dating as well.

If you'd like more information on this, several months ago, I did a whole podcast on dating advice for our kids, and how do we help our kids biblically navigate relationships with the opposite sex? So we want to focus on how can we honor this person as a friend and as a fellow image bearer. And now in our culture that is just overly sexualized, that just sexualizes everything. We really want to help our kids focus on friendships because the concept of friendship has really been lost in this day and age, but it is a beautiful gift from God.

So we don't want to, every time our child has a friendship with someone of the opposite sex to make a joke about them having a crush on that person or maybe getting married to that person, will your child maybe get married to that person? Who knows? Maybe. But we don't want to joke about that because we want to focus on friendship and on loving that person as an image bearer of the holy God.

So basically, we want to affirm God's good design without overly focusing on the romantic, so that we are training our kids to love God and to love others in every and any situation.

Well, that's a wrap for today's episode. If you have a question that you would like for me to answer on a future Foundation Worldview podcast, you can submit that question by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast.

And as we leave our time together, my prayer for you is that no matter the situation in which you and the kids in your care, find yourselves that you would trust that God is working all things together for good by using those circumstances to conform you more into the image of His Son. I'll see you next time.