Grace H. M.D. Ketterman - Teaching Your Child about Sex: An Essential Guide for Parents

Teaching
Your Child about
Sex

Revised and Updated Edition

Teaching
Your Child about
sex

an essential guide for parents

Grace H. Ketterman, MD

1981, 2007 by Grace Ketterman

Published by Fleming H. Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com

Previously published in 1981 under the title How to Teach Your Child about Sex

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ketterman, Grace H.

Teaching your child about sex : an essential guide for parents / Grace Ketter-man. Rev. and updated ed.

p. cm.

Rev. ed. of: How to teach your child about sex. 1981.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 10: 0-8007-3195-6 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-8007-3195-3 (pbk.)

1. Sex instruction. 2. Sex instruction for children. 3. Parenting. I. Ketterman, Grace H. How to teach your child about sex. II. Title.

HQ57.K46 2007

649 .65dc22

2007022482

Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Contents

We live in a world with a confusing climate of changing values, pleasure seeking, and permissiveness. While children are indulging in adult sexual activities at early ages, divorces are increasing.

People who still care deeply about each other are getting divorced out of anger and social pressures. The children of divorce are tragically torn by their parents battles. Sexually transmitted diseases are epidemic, and cures for them are becoming difficult to find due to resistance of the germs to medical treatment. AIDS has become a panic-producing, worldwide epidemic. The majority of cases are sexually transmitted. The bitter battle of the sexes grinds on, and the issue of gay rights has become not only a family issue but also a major political one.

With this grim picture of heartache, we may despair and predict disaster. Or we may seek the wisdom and courage to find our way out of the maze. There is a host of books available describing how to make love, enjoy sex, be a man, be a woman, be nonsexist, teach a child about sex, and many other topics. Do we really need one more book?

This book is an attempt to do something none of the others has done. Perhaps by seeing sex education as a circle, everyone can find a starting point and not feel defeated because of past mistakes. Ideally, the development of healthy attitudes should take place in childhood. If it didnt happen that way in your experience, thats unfortunate, but it need not be devastating. You may learn such attitudes now. In learning and changing for the better, you will show your child an example that carries over into every facet of lifenot just in sexual areas.

Information about all sexual matters is important to you for your own happiness and the enrichment of your marriage. It is, of course, absolutely essential that your information is accurate if you are to teach your children about sex. Your ability to relate intimately and lovingly in your marriage will be increased, and you will be able to more effectively teach your children the facts of life. Good information without good attitudes, however, is like teaching algebra without adequate knowledge about addition and subtraction.

Many of you parents are not marriedyoure doing this big job of parenting alone. Some of you have been hurt by partners who have not learned vital lessons about being sexually responsible. Perhaps you, yourself, need to practice more responsibility sexually. If so, this book is for you.

No matter how healthy your attitudes or how complete your information, if you lack a sense of responsibility, you may end up doing nothing about teaching your child about sex. Many parents would rather let the school system provide sex education. How much easier it seems to let someone else take on this vital responsibility. Let me tell you the truth. No one else can do as well as you in this crucial function of parenting! Fulfilling your duties as parents, as well as being responsible in all aspects of life, sets the right example for your children.

The next part of the circle begins with your child at birth. Your attitude toward their tiny body sets the tone for their feelings about themselves as young people. How you handle and train your baby determines, to a large extent, the degree of confidence and even success they will attain. This success will include your childs idea of themselves as a boy or girl and someday as a man or woman.

School-age children are the next arc on the circle, and they have special needs and feelings. They are struggling to give up the carefree time of early childhood. About the time that struggle is over, they have to give up their childhood completely to enter the even more frustrating period of adolescence. They need great understanding, acceptance, and wise discipline in order to build into their young lives an adequate degree of responsibility.

In adolescence, there is a convergence of child with adult in every aspect of life. The young persons life is characterized by confusion and extremes. Parents need to avoid riding this roller coaster with their child. They need to find and maintain some degree of calm in the center of their childs storm. As they do that, the child will gradually ride out the ups and downs and reach a reasonably successful adulthood.

Chapters on special issues that are part of our social and cultural environment complete this circle. And the hope of life lies in those who are willing to try to make their circle the best it can be so the next one can be even better.

Good sex education begins with your attitudes, depends on the accuracy of your information, and is learned only in an atmosphere of responsibility.

I hope this book will make your life as parents a richer one and your job as parents a more successful one. In breaking down life into its components, perhaps you will see more clearly how your job can be done. By understanding the physical aspects, emotional impact, intellectual influences, social interactions, and spiritual essentials, you may find, in a segment at a time, the ability to teach your child all about sex.

Part 1
Parental Attitudes

1
Sexual Attitudes

Every parent teaches their child about sex, sometimes without even realizing it. Like it or not, its a fact of life! A parent may do it in a haphazard or well-planned fashion. Nevertheless, each child learns sexual lessons from their parents.

Many times I counsel people who have encountered serious problems that are related to their sexual experiences. Often I ask, What did your parents teach you about sex as you were growing up? Usually the answer is something like this one from a woman named Kim: My parents never did teach me about sex. They were too embarrassed.

It was her parents attitude that taught Kim that sex was shameful and dirty; they never even had to say a word. As we examine Kims story more closely, we will see how negative attitudes can be passed on from generation to generation.