Talking to your kids about sex can be daunting.

Few parents escape unscathed after explaining what sex is–and what’s going to happen to kids’ bodies!

And yet I think our kids get the worst end of it.

This week we are so excited to be launching the totally revamped The Whole Story: Not so Scary Talks about Sex, Puberty, and Growing Up. It’s an online video based course that parents share with their kids to teach about puberty (and sex!). And it features my daughters, my sons-in-law, and an awesome medical student. They “star” in the videos, like “big brothers” or “big sisters” introducing all the concepts to your kids, while I have videos to give parents pep talks. And then checklists, discussion starters, and parent-child activities help parents to continue the conversation. Check it out here!

It’s not a REPLACEMENT for you.

It’s a RESOURCE to make it not so scary!

Very few of us do this well. I was speaking about sex from the stage, and yet when it came to my own kids, I still clammed up (I got progressively better, and by the time they were 14/15 I was a champ. But it took a while to get there!)

And as the girls and I were commiserating together, we remembered 10 things that I really messed up with when teaching them about sex. I thought I’d share those with you so you can see that you’re not alone!

1. Rebecca thought the penis was like a finger

But don’t worry! I was an equal opportunity offender. I gave her the wrong impression of the male genitalia, too.

When Rebecca was 10 I took her away on a weekend where we listened to the CD-based Passport to Purity (that’s where I got the idea for our course). In it, Dennis Rainey, an older man, was explaining what sex was. And he said that the penis was sort of like a finger. So for the longest time Rebecca thought the penis operated like a finger.

And she could just never figure out, why do guys have to scratch themselves if they already have a finger down there?

2. Rebecca thought sex involved women looking like a starfish

Along the same lines, that CD explained that, during sex, the woman lay on her back with her legs spread out while a man entered her. So Rebecca pictured sex to be a woman lying still like a starfish. She was busy taking advanced swimming lessons then, and they “starfished” a lot in the pool. Yep.

3. I pushed purity too young with Rebecca

Now, if having a finger “down there” and pointing it at a woman who is starfishing doesn’t sound that attractive, have no fear! It only got worse. This course took us through a lot of activities where girls were taught that having sex before marriage will ruin the beauty of sex (because lying still like a starfish, apparently, is beautiful). So girls were asked to promise never to have sex until they were married.

Rebecca was more than willing to promise never to let anyone get his finger-thing near her! Making her promise wasn’t hard to do.

But it was also emotionally manipulative at the time.

But as she grew up and we got talking, she said that this idea of purity being so important really impacted her spiritual life. She grew up thinking that if she wasn’t perfect, she’d lose something precious. And that’s just not what I wanted her to know. Yes, we want our kids to wait until they’re married, but we don’t want to scare them into it or make them feel as if God is inaccessible if they don’t do all the right things. This one made me sad.

4. I paired biology with morality

By pairing the “here’s what sex is” with the “now you have to promise never to even think about it or do it until you’re married” message, it gave sex a negative connontation from the beginning. That wasn’t helpful, and it’s why we made the deliberate decision that the younger version of The Whole Story, our puberty course, would give biological information and tips on how to handle your changing body. It’s only in the older version that we start talking about how to make decisions about sexual boundaries.

In the younger version, we do have videos on necessary conversations about consent, and the importance of telling an adult if you’re ever uncomfortable, but we don’t linger on the idea that sex is somehow threatening or bad. We don’t want kids to have this negative association right from the get go.

5. I waited too long to have Katie wear a training bra

Shortly after I went through the trauma of that weekend with Rebecca (which was rather difficult for her, too!) I started to notice something. Katie, who was only about 9 1/2, was starting to develop. This little girl who still liked polly pockets!

I wasn’t prepared for it. She was just so young. So I tried to ignore it, until finally Keith said that we just had to put her in a training bra.

6. I made Katie think sex was a horrible torturous thing

I handled explaining what sex was a little bit better with Katie, I thought. I had always decided that I would answer any questions my daughters had, whenever they asked. Rebecca never did (hence the weekend), but Katie sure did! When she was 8, she wanted to know all about it.

After I told her the facts, she immediately asked, “How long does he have to put it in for?”

Then, the next morning, right after she got up, the first thing she did was to run over to me and give me a big hug and say, “I’m so sorry you had to do that to get me, Mommy! But thank you for going through that!” Obviously something was lost in translation.

7. I forgot to tell Katie how to shave.

I also forgot to tell her some basic stuff, like how to shave. I kind of assumed Rebecca would, I guess. They did share a bathroom, after all! But one day Katie was crying because her whole legs are bleeding, and it turns out she was shaving dry with a rusty razor. She didn’t know you weren’t supposed to shave dry. Whoops. I think she may still have a scar on her ankle!

8. I gave up talking about the personal stuff once they knew the factual details

Nevertheless, somehow we muddled through. I think I handled periods well with both girls (at least there’s nothing too traumatic they could remember). But somehow the conversations seemed to stop from the age of 11, when puberty hit and we went over everything, to about 15 when I started to become a confidante. I told them the facts; I wasn’t very good at engaging them in making it personal. What about sexual feelings? What about crushes? Nope. Ignored all that.

9. I ignored porn, because, after all, they were girls!

And I especially ignored porn! After all, they were girls, and they were REALLY good girls, and I shouldn’t have to worry, right? Besides, how would I even bring it up? (Yeah, there’s that pesky stat, too, about how the fastest growing group of porn users are teen girls…)

I still remember a conversation with 14-year-old Katie where she was so upset because a lot of her friends were having oral sex, thinking it was okay because it wasn’t “real” sex. I tried to keep my face straight because I didn’t know she even knew what oral sex was!

If I were to do it again, I would talk about these things much younger.

10. I didn’t explain what boys were going through

Finally, I explained NOTHING about what boys were going through with puberty. Nothing about erections. Nothing about wet dreams. Nothing about anything. And so my girls weren’t as sympathetic to the guys in their youth group as they could have been.

That’s one reason why in The Whole Story we tell boys what girls are going through, and we tell girls what boys are going through. They need to know!

But here’s the good news…

I figured it out!

And as they got older, we began to laugh about a lot of this stuff. I found it easier to talk to them. And we really did get over all of those mistakes. When you’re open and honest with your kids, you don’t need to be a perfect parent. Authenticity really matters more. Forging a close relationship where you can talk helps overcome even awkwardness!

You don’t have to make my mistakes when teaching YOUR kids about puberty

Many of these problems were because I told them the bare minimum I could get away with…and didn’t follow up to see if they understood. And I didn’t create an environment where they felt that they could ask questions.

That’s where The Whole Story comes in! Our course features either Katie and Rebecca or Connor and Daniel giving the lessons (because most 10-15 year olds would rather hear this stuff from younger adults), but then it encourages the parents and kids to keep talking, with lots of discussion questions and printables!

It’s YOUR discussions that really matter…but we help facilitate them in a non-awkward way.

So check the course out. It’s our prayer that it makes these talks much easier for you–and much more fun for your kids!

PS: Want to see Katie and Rebecca and me all laughing about how I messed up? Here you go–from seven years ago before either were moms!

Now let me know in the comments–how did you mess up teaching your kids about puberty? Or how did your parents mess up with you? Let’s talk!