Josh McDowell - Straight Talk With Your Kids About Sex

HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON

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Cover by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota

Cover photos Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota

STRAIGHT TALK WITH YOUR KIDS ABOUT SEX

Copyright 2012 by Josh McDowell Ministry. All rights reserved.

Published by Harvest House Publishers

Eugene, Oregon 97402

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McDowell, Josh.

Straight talk with your kids about sex / Josh and Dottie McDowell.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-7369-4992-7 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-7369-4993-4 (eBook)

1. Sex instruction. 2. Christian ethics. I. McDowell, Dottie. II. Title.

HQ56.M16 2012

649.65Sex education.dc23

2012016887

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

To parents who, with courage and conviction, lovingly share with their children Gods purpose for sexoften and openlythroughout the child-rearing process.

For further research, documentation, and critical insights on each chapter, go to www.josh.org/straighttalk.

Sex. To some people its a dirty word, to others a beautiful one. And to still others its a provocative wordsomething theyre not comfortable talking about. Whatever your attitude, sex is a sensitive yet immensely important issue. For those who believe its a marvelous but powerful force that should not be misused, such as parents or leaders working with youth, the idea of sexsexual activityamong young people is loaded with plenty of concern.

So how concerned would you be if a stranger was slipping into your childs bedroom every day? What if this intruder was systematically teaching your child a distorted and perverted concept of sex? And what if this sex education your child was receiving led them down a path to immoral sex? You would no doubt be frightened and infuriated that the mind and heart of your child was being violated by this menacing intruder.

But before we go on to explain this danger, let us say this. We (Josh and Dottie), as parents who have raised four children of our own, are not here just to alarm you, although you have reason to be alarmed. We also want to equip you with a clear strategy to counter what your kids are facing. Even more at the heart of what we want to do, we hope to supply you with effective tools to raise your kids with a healthy (godly) understanding of sex.

After all, sex is great. Its marvelous. Its so wonderful that it cant be put into wordsbecause God has made it that way. You no doubt want your children to grow up understanding and embracing his design for their sexuality so they can delight in sex as he meant it to be delighted in. And if an immoral intruder were to cause your kids to misuse Gods wonderful gift, you would be angry and heartbroken.

Studies have shown that the number-one fear among Christian parents and Christian leaders is that a secular worldview and sexual immorality will somehow capture the hearts and minds of their kids. We certainly had that fear for our own children. To address that fear, many parents have helped open and develop more Christian schools. They have formed more networks to homeschool their children than ever before. Many have sent their kids off to Christian summer camps. Families have started attending megachurches with top-rated youth programs in unprecedented numbers. The hope of these parents has been to counteract the negative influences of a destructive culture in the lives of their children.

However, these positive steps may have actually caused many parents and educators to drop their guard. Its natural to assume that kids are largely insulated from the influences of a corrupt culture if they live in a Christian home, are involved in a good church, are getting a solid Christian education, and are participating in monitored activities.

Actually, though, our kids are far more exposed to destructive cultural influences today than kids were even ten years ago. The reason for this is because right now we are in the midst of a social-media revolution that is allowing a corrupt and twisted morality to have direct access to our children at much earlier ages than ever before, even in the privacy of our own homes and in their bedrooms. This is the intruder we have been talking about.

The culture influenced the previous generation through various media such as radio, TV, videos, magazines, and so on. If a parent monitored what his or her child listened to, watched, and read, there was somewhat of an assurance that a child could be insulated from the negative effects of a destructive culture. However, todays social-media revolution has changed everything. Our culture intrudes upon your children through channels that barely existed a decade ago. For example, compare media growth (based on the general U.S. population) over the last decade.

In 2000

2.7 hours per week spent online by the average person

100 million daily Google searches

12 billion e-mails sent daily

12,000 active blogs

0 iTunes downloads

0 tweets on Twitter

0 YouTube videos seen daily

0 hours of YouTube videos uploaded every minute

0 people on Facebook

0 articles on Wikipedia

In 20102011

18 hours per week spent online by the average person

2 billion daily Google searches

247 billion e-mails sent daily

141 million active blogs

10 billion iTunes downloads

25 billion tweets on Twitter

4 billion YouTube videos seen daily

60 hours of YouTube videos uploaded every minute

845 million active users on Facebook

20 million articles on Wikipedia

If Facebook were a country, it would have the worlds third-largest population.

Approximately 20 million minors are on Facebook. Of those, 7.5 million are younger than 13 years old, and 5 million are younger than 10 years old.

In regard to video content, eMarketer estimates that of the 50 million U.S. children under 12, nearly 12 millionabout 25 percentwere online video viewers in 2011. The estimate skyrockets to 70 percent by 2015.

The Internet has surpassed TV as kids media of choice. Today kindergarteners are learning on iPads, not chalkboards.

The social-media revolution is connecting us in positive ways never before imagined 10 or 20 years ago. Yet all this ability to connect and have people connect to your children may cause you to feel uncomfortable. And it should. There is an alarming downside to the instant accessibility this culture has to your children.