Talking to Kids About LGBTQ+ Ideology

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Today's question says, "My daughters, ages eight and five haven't been exposed to LGBTQ ideology, but I know it's inevitable. What are the first steps to take in having that conversation? We have had conversations about the goodness of sex and the purpose of God creating it already."

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 that you've joined me for another episode today. Today's question says, "My daughters, ages eight and five haven't been exposed to LGBTQ ideology, but I know it's inevitable. What are the first steps to take in having that conversation? We have had conversations about the goodness of sex and the purpose of God creating it already." Well, this question I think is a really important one, and also that last sentence made me smile because I know the person who submitted it must have listened to a lot of Foundation Worldview podcasts before because if you have you know that, the first thing I always say when people ask, "how do I handle this situation with regard to sexuality or this situation," I always respond by saying, we have to start off by developing the positive biblical theology. So this person has already made clear that they've already done that, so I won't go into that again, but if you are listening and interested in how to do that, I recommend you go back and listen to former Foundation Worldview podcasts on questions of gender and sexuality where we talk about that.

Now, before we dive down deep into this question today would just ask if you have found the content of this podcast beneficial, please consider liking and subscribing so that you don't miss any future episodes, and would also ask that you consider writing a review and sharing this content with those within your sphere of influence so that we can equip as many adults as possible to get the kids in our care thinking critically through the truth of the biblical worldview. Also, if you have a question that you would like answered on a future Foundation Worldview Podcast, you can submit that question by going to FoundationWorldview.com/podcast.

So we're going to dive into this question today of how do we take first steps in having the conversation with our children about LGBTQ+ ideology? Such an important question today. And another thing, those of you who have listened to many podcasts before know that I usually ask in regard to most questions is, what is the goal? So as we're thinking about exposing our kids to different forms of sexuality that deviate from God's good design, we want to think through what is the goal. And so the goal in all of this, I would say, is really threefold. One, we want to help them understand the goodness of God's design. We want our kids to be able to understand the goodness of God's design. The second goal I would say, is we want to prepare them to understand why deviations do not align with God's good design.

That we're not just sitting here and saying, oh, we don't like this, or we don't like that, but we're actually saying, "okay, what is this and why doesn't align with God's good design for us?" And then the third part of the goal, I would say, is to train them to love their neighbor as they love themselves. So three parts. One, understanding God's good design. Two, preparing them to understand why deviations do not align with God's good design. And three, training them to love their neighbor as they love themselves.

Now, I think for so many Christian parents, this idea of everything that's going on with gender and sexuality, it's been in our culture for a long time. However, the push over the past five years, the increase in the push to really indoctrinate children into these alternate forms of sexuality and sexual identity has become pretty overwhelming.

And really, we know that we cannot hide our children from this. And that's why I really appreciated this question because this person says, I know it's inevitable, and that's true. And whenever we're exposing our kids to something that deviates from God's good design, we want to make sure that we get to talk with them about it first before somebody else does. Because whoever talks with them about a situation first, they're going to view that person as the expert. So we want to make sure that we have this conversation first. And a lot of times we tend to get really overwhelmed thinking about this, and we think, "okay, maybe we shouldn't have this conversation until they're eight or until they're 10." We're really at a much younger age, they're able to handle this and we can answer their questions and help them think biblically.

I think in my own life, I was growing up in the nineties and my mom just had this philosophy of parenting where she wanted to be very honest with her children. And so she taught us about sex and God's good design for sex when we were two or three years old, like her goal was she didn't want there to ever be a time in our lives when we couldn't remember not knowing about sex because she just wanted it to be something that we understood was a part of God's good design. And I remember I was probably four or five years old. I might have even been a little bit younger because I remember I was sitting in the shopping cart, the little seat that you can sit in the shopping cart. And my mom was pushing it, and there was a picture, I think it was on the cover of Time Magazine or something like that, and it was a picture of a gay rights rally. And the picture on the cover of Time Magazine had a lot of men with their fists rays and were yelling and shouting.

And I remember saying, mommy, why are the men on this in this picture so angry? And my mom was just really honest with me, and she said, Elizabeth, there are some people who think that men should be able to have sex with men, and men should be able to marry men. And so the men on this cover, they want to be able to marry another man. And so they're upset that our government doesn't allow that. And so some of you with three, four and five year olds might be clutching your pearls, thinking about explaining that to a three, four, or five year old. But I was able to handle it at that age, and I had some other questions for her about that, but it wasn't this big huge thing because it was just I had asked her a question and she answered it.

And so I think we can really talk with our kids at much younger ages than what we think.And it doesn't have to be this super serious and grave conversation. It just be a continual conversation with our children. And actually, as I'm recording this episode, I'm currently doing research for an upcoming curriculum, Lord willing, that we will be writing at Foundation Worldview for children 4 on up that we're going to call God's Good Design. And this curriculum, Lord willing, will cover these topics of gender and sexuality in showing little ones just what God's good design is and why there are deviations from that good design. So if you're watching and listening right now and you think about it, if you could be praying for us at Foundation Worldview as we create those resources, we would greatly, greatly appreciate your prayers on that.

So the first thing that I recommend is just being honest with our kids and just saying, "okay, so we've learned about God's good design and what is God's good design for marriage, that God has said that one man and one woman gets to become one flesh for one lifetime. And God made sex as a good gift for a husband and a wife, and what comes from sex children, children do, and children are part of God's good design. And so in marriage, we have one what? That's right. We have one man and we have one what? One woman, right? One man and one woman. And from what we've talked about is we need a man's body and a woman's body to make a baby. And that reflects God's good design." And then we can even talk can bring in the verses about how the man in the marriage represents Jesus and the woman in the marriage represents the church. And so marriage is a picture of Christ and the church.

And then say, "okay, so the man represents Jesus, the woman represents the church. What if we had two men? What would that represent? Oh, that would represent Jesus and Jesus. Oh, that's a little bit different. And if we had two men, could we have a family then? Can two men's bodies make a baby? No, they can't. What if we had a woman and a woman? What would that represent? Oh, that would represent the church and the church. Does that match with God's good design? No. And can a woman's body and another woman's body make a baby? No, they can't. Well, you know what? There are some people that think it would be okay if a man and a man got married or if a woman and a woman got married. Let's think about that according to God's good design. Is that a marriage? No. According to God's good design, it's one man and it's one woman."

And so then a game that you can play with your kids is you can just play a game like what I just like to call it. What is this game? And so you can make cookies together, make cookies together, practice measuring and rolling out the dough, and then bake them. And then talk about as you're eating the cookies, "okay, what is a cookie? What is a cookie?" And then talk about, "okay, so a cookie is something that's usually round, and it includes flour, it includes butter, it includes sugar, it includes eggs. And what is a cookie? Something we usually eat for breakfast? No, I mean, maybe someone might eat a cookie for breakfast, but a cookie is a dessert and it's made of flour and sugar and eggs and butter."

And then pull an apple out of the fridge and say, "okay, what is this? Okay, this is an apple. Okay, where do apple, where are apples made? They grow on trees. And then say, okay, what if I pulled this apple out of the fridge and I said, this is a cookie. This is a cookie. Would this apple become a cookie? Would it become made? Would it become a dessert that's made out of flour and sugar and butter and eggs? No, it wouldn't. Well, what if I kept calling this apple a cookie over and over and over and over and over again? Would it become a cookie? No, it wouldn't become a cookie."

For those of you who have taken your kids through Foundation Early Childhood Worldview curriculum (now Biblical Worldview), you can talk about true versus not true, because that's the game that we play in that first unit. And you can even ask, "okay, what if I called this apple a cookie and I called it a cookie over and over and over and over again? Would that be the truth about this, that it's a cookie? No, that would not be. Why? Because it's not made out of flour and sugar and butter and eggs."

And then talk about, "it's kind of like that with marriage, that sometimes people would take a man and a man and they would say, this is a marriage, but what is a marriage? A marriage is a man and a woman. Or sometimes people might take a woman and a woman and when they come together, they would say that is a marriage. But what actually is marriage? Marriage is a man and a woman. So no matter how many times people call that a marriage, is that a marriage? No. Just like no matter how many times people call this apple a cookie, it doesn't make it made out of flour and sugar and butter and eggs." And so just to give our kids this idea that even though our society might call something some by another name, it doesn't actually turn into that thing.

The same is true when we're thinking about transgenderism, which transgenderism is something that is completely different than homosexuality. So with transgenderism, it's a person defining who they are by their inner emotional world and denying the biological reality. And so we can talk with our kids and say, "you know what? Sometimes someone who is born a boy says that they're actually a girl." Now, if you have children of opposite genders, this is a very easy conversation because if your children have taken baths together, they just very obviously know that there's a difference between boys and girls when they take a bath. I know that my friends who have opposite genders children, they say that it's really easy as soon as the younger child is born, if there's boys in the family and they're looking at a girl's diaper being changed, they're just like, "mommy, where's her penis?" And the mom can explain, "you know what? God made us different. And girls, girls have different parts body parts than boys do."

And so those of you who have played the truth, not truth and feelings game in the Foundation Early Childhood Worldview curriculum, this is where you can bring that game in and you can say, "okay, so if somebody says that on the inside, they feel like a girl, but on the outside their body tells them and everybody else that they're a boy. What is the truth about who that person is?" And you can talk through that. Even if you have never taken your children through the Foundation Early Childhood Worldview curriculum, you can just play this game where you give them some sentences that are true and you have them spread out their arms like an X and say true when you say a true sentence. Then you can have them cross their arms in front of them when you say a not true sentence. And then you can have them hug themselves when you say a feeling sentence.

And once they have those categories in their mind, the true not true feeling, then you can talk about transgenderism in that way. Okay, what is that person saying is real? That person is saying their feelings are what is most real about them, but we've already learned, do feelings always point us to truth? No. Sometimes feelings trick us. That's that fourth lesson in the Early Childhood Worldview curriculum. Sometimes feelings trick us. And so you can have these conversations with your kids.

Now, the problem with having these conversations with little kids is little kids, whatever is running through their mind usually overflows from their mouth. And so this is a really good opportunity to teach our children what I would like to call the biblical grace of keeping our mouth shut, that everything that comes through our mind does not need to come out of our mouths.

Then we can have the conversation with our kids. "What if we see two men holding hands or kissing or the same with women? Is it our job to go up to them and say, ah, God said marriage is just between one man and one woman. No, that is not our job. It's not our job to go up to them and to say that whether it's a stranger or whether it's someone we know." But we do want our kids to be thinking about the goodness of God's design. So once we have that conversation of we're not going to go up to people and we're not going to say this, we can talk about what are we going to say in our minds?

So this is where you can teach your kids just a little catechizing frame that every time they encounter something, whether it's a person or a couple or something on a show that they're watching or something they encounter in school that has to do with homosexuality, that in their minds they can say this sentence, "God made marriage for one man and one woman. God's design is so good." And so then when they see that, they can say that in their mind and then they can come and tell you. And the same with you. You can say that phrase in your mind and then talk to your children about it.

Or when it comes to transgenderism, when we see a man who is dressed as a woman or a woman who is dressed as a man, a catechizing phrase is that "God made us male and female." Or if you're working with really little kids, you can say, "God made us boys and girls. God's design is so good." So that they have this phrase that they can say in their mind so that they're speaking truth over themselves even at this young age, but they're not just going up to someone and blurting something out that shouldn't in that moment be said. So this is a helpful exercise that we can go through with our kids.

Now, I know the temptation many times for those of us in charge of kids is we don't want to expose our kids to media that has gay couples in them or a character who's using different pronouns or things like that, where I understand the hesitation there because we're like, oh, we don't want this to just become normal in their lives, where I don't think that by exposing them to these things, we're just normalizing this. Because guess what? We live in a world where sin is normalized. In fact, we live with sin in our own hearts. We are all people who have been broken by the fall. But what we want is we want our children to recognize deviations from God's good design and to be able to speak truth over themselves.

So I would say if there's a form of media that I know on the PBS show, Arthur, Mr. Ratburn marries a man, I think on the show, odd Squad on PBS, there was a gay marriage. I know there's other shows on Netflix. I saw a clip, I don't even know what show it was, but there was a transgender cow who explained his preferred pronouns to his grandma. We want in those situations for our kids actually to be exposed to those things while they're still within our care so that we have the opportunity to teach them how to respond appropriately in those situations. And I think with those catechizing phrases of God made marriage for one man and one woman, God's design is so good, and then God made us male and female, God's design is so good so that when they see those things in culture, as they're inevitably going to be exposed to them, they're able to remember the truth of God's good design. And they're also thinking about loving their neighbor as they love themselves.

And so that's something that I would also encourage that we just as we would have non-Christian couples over and families over our house, that we would also include those in our neighborhood who are lesbian or gay or bisexual or transgender, so that we can love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and that we're modeling this for our children, and that we're not just affirming everything about this person, that we're inviting these people, whether they're sinners like us, who are attracted to the opposite sex or presenting as their biological sex, or whether they're individuals or couples who are living in homosexual relationships or with a transgender identity, that we invite our neighbors into our homes and we show our children how to love them well. And that doesn't mean affirming everything about our neighbors, but it does mean showing them the love of Christ and just loving them as people.

So I just really encourage you just interact with those in your neighborhood to be a gospel witness and to show your kids how to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Now, I know that this is a bit of a heavy topic, and I know every time we do post these videos on YouTube, if I'm being honest, my stomach kind of turns a little bit because I know that there are so many in our culture right now who do not agree with what I have just presented. And it's really hard to live biblically faithful lives in a culture that views any such non celebration of deviations from God's good design as hate speech, or as something that is hateful. So I would just encourage all of us to make sure that we, as we are preparing our children for this, that we are remembering the cost of following Jesus, that following Jesus will cost us everything.

And we want to make sure that we are loving him through staying faithful to his commands, through staying faithful to his design, that we are loving our neighbor as we love ourselves by building relationship and by being honest, that God has a wonderful plan for our lives and that is to rescue us and redeem us from our sin. And many times that wonderful plan, actually daily, that wonderful plan involves dying to ourselves because Jesus is worth it.

Well, that's a wrap for today's episode. But as we leave our time together, my prayer for you as always is that no matter the situation in which you and the children God has placed in your care, find yourselves that you would trust that God is working all things together for your good by using all things to make you more like His Son. Jesus. I'll see you next time.