We need to have an awkward conversation about an awkward conversation.

Kids need to know about sex. And they need to know about it from you.

That doesn’t mean that you have to do anything perfectly, or that it’s not allowed to be awkward.

It just means it has to happen, and it has to happen repeatedly. You need to be a safe place for your kids to come to with their questions, and you need to keep having age appropriate conversations with them as they grow up.

But what do you say? When do you say it? And more importantly, HOW do you say it?

We’ve got something that can help you. But first, a little background of our research.

There is no downside to more information.

We found some really interesting data about sex education in our research for our book She Deserves Better. We surveyed over 7000 women about their experiences in church circles as teens, and here’s just a few of the things we learned:

Basically, the more girls knew, the better they did.

And while we didn’t specifically ask men the same questions, other studies have found similar things for boys. The more they knew, the earlier they knew it, the healthier their relationships would be.

Last night, at the Emmys, the teenage actor who starred in the Netflix series Adolescence won Best Actor in a Limited Series. It’s such an important show, because it shows how online social media specifically targets young men, taking them in a dark hole of misogyny and racism and incel culture, to absolutely devastating effects.

Our kids need us to be having these conversations with them, now, more than ever. 

There’s a mistaken belief that if kids know about sex, they’ll do it

For years, Christians have practiced telling kids “don’t do it” rather than telling them lots of information about sex and contraception and the arousal cycle and porn and sexual assault. But this hasn’t worked. It’s amazing how stark the bar charts are in our data between Gen X and Millennials. Gen X largely received comprehensive sex ed; evangelical millennials largely did not. And you see the effects, and they aren’t pretty.

I used to believe that if I talked to my girls about something, they’d try it. Or if you prepared them with talks about contraception, it was like telling them, “I assume you’re going to do this”, and kids live up to expectations. So I had to show them that I expected them NOT to do this.

But in their early teen years, I realized that they needed all the information for a lot of reasons, and giving information did not mean relaying the message “I expect you’re going to do this.”

Here’s why:

1. One of my daughters had a lot of trouble with regulating her period, and so we had lots of convos about cycles and ovulation and fertile windows and hormone medications, because this was her body, and she needed to understand what was happening. And by extension her sister needed to understand as well!
2. Even if my own daughters weren’t having sex, lots of their friends were. And those friends tended to come to my daughters for help and advice because my daughters were seen as safe and wise. And so my daughters needed info so they could help their friends!
3. My daughters also understood a lot about abuse dynamics and coercion, and were able to recognize when some of their friends from more vulnerable backgrounds were in over their heads. And you know what they did? They came to me so I could fix it. And I did intervene, a few times. Because teens need adults to care and intervene! Their friends wouldn’t have come to me directly, but I think they came to my daughters because they knew my daughters would rope me in.
4. Having talks about healthy attitudes towards sex also helped my girls figure out what were serious red flag behaviours in the boys around them (and, it turns out, in some youth leaders too).
5. Knowing that they understood stuff, and could talk to Keith and I about anything, gave them a confidence that meant that the predators around them never looked twice at them. That’s not to say that you can guarantee that your girls won’t be targeted. But in retrospect, we now know that my daughters had predators in their midst who have since been discovered. But predators tend to target the more naive and the more vulnerable. My girls were so confident predators stayed away, and the data does show that confidence lowers the likelihood of being targeted (though nothing can ever make it zero).

We never raised boys, but I can make a similar list for boys based on our research.

It would include things like:

1. Most boys get their sex ed today from porn, and they need to know that’s not real (so do girls!).
2. Boys who understand that respecting women and girls is an absolute necessity, and who understand what sexual coercion is, are more likely to develop healthy relationships, and less likely to get into sticky situations.
3. Boys (and girls!) who understand that porn is designed to get you aroused, but just because you found something exciting doesn’t mean you’re a pervert or a sex addict find it much easier to not get sucked into becoming a chronic porn user

4. Boys who understand that girls don’t enjoy what porn depicts are more likely to have healthy marriages and sex lives later

Information empowers; it doesn’t give permission

Do you remember a few years ago when Cedarville University hit the news with their awful sex ed/consent posters in the bathrooms? To qualify for some federal funding they had to address consent. And they did it in the worst way possible, putting up signs in the women’s bathrooms asking, “Have I ever encouraged my boyfriend to go beyond the boundaries we’ve set for ourselves?”

In the dust up as this hit national news, one of the big topics of discussion was that Christian high schools and universities didn’t even like talking about consent, because they believed that kids shouldn’t be having sex in the first place. Talking about it normalizes it.

But here’s what I can tell you: NOT talking about it normalizes assault, secrecy, and abusive relationships later.

Or even if there’s not abusive dynamics, it normalizes not understanding your body’s arousal cycle, and having much more difficulty with sexual pleasure, and a much higher rate of sexual pain disorders, when you do marry.

No one wants that for their kids.

But what do you do if you were raised with terrible sex ed? How on earth do you talk about porn to an 11-year-old boy? How do you talk about female orgasm to a 12-year-old girl? How do you talk about erections and wet dreams to a young boy–or a young girl? How do you talk about making good decisions without shaming them?

How on earth do you start these conversations, and how do you encourage them to keep going?

We’ve created The Whole Story puberty and sex course to help you do just that.

When my daughters were 20 and 22, we had a conversation where they laughed at all the things that I had missed when I gave them sex ed. And I said to them, “well, why don’t you do it better then?”

So they did. They created our first Whole Story video course, an online course that moms can share with their daughters, with short videos from my daughters going over sex, puberty, friendships, body changes, caring for your body, and more, and then discussion questions and activity date nights to solidify the lessons.

We start the conversation, so you can finish it.

A year later we added a boy’s version.

And then last year, we totally revamped the course to include our research from She Deserves Better.

We hadn’t realized how important it was that everyone understands early that girls can orgasm too–until we saw the data.

We hadn’t realized how important it was that everyone understands the sexual arousal cycle, and that understanding this actually empowers you to stop in a makeout situation when you want to–until we saw the data.

And so we wanted to include even more!

In The Whole Story, my daughters Rebecca and Katie teach the girls, and my son-in-law Connor, along with medical student Daniel Barros, teach the boys. And for the older course, we have plenty of modules with both men and women teaching.

They’re all like fun big sisters/big brothers, or your fun young aunts and uncles, who can start these awkward conversations, so they don’t have to be so awkward.

We have four courses:

• Girls 10-12 and Girls 13-15
• Boys 10-12 and Boys 13-15

(They can be started earlier or later depending on where your child is at!)

You can buy them as individual courses, or you can buy lifetime packages with access to all the girls’ material, all the boys’ material, or both altogether!

This week, The Whole Story packages are on sale!

We try to keep everything really affordable, so right now, the complete girls’ package or complete boys’ package is $39, or you can get them both for $59. And that’s lifetime access, plus access to anything we ever revamp! So anyone who bought the original course package way back in 2017 still has access to the brand new course!

But the sale ends next Monday, so get them now!

Each individual course is $39, so right now, when you buy the bundle, you get a bunch of courses for free.

Let us start the conversations, so you can finish them.

Because you can be that awesome parent! And we want to help.