Todd Bowman - Angry Birds and Killer Bees: Talking to Your Kids About Sex

Copyright 2013
By Todd Bowman

2013 eISBN 978-0-8341-3112-5

Printed in the
United States of America

Cover Design: Matt Johnson
Inside Design: Sharon Page

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the publisher. If you have received this publication from any source other than an online bookstore, youve received a pirated copy. Please contact us at the Nazarene Publishing House and notify us of the situation.

All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV 2011). Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

CONTENTS

Section 3: The Finer Points:
STARTing the Conversation

HIGH
VOLTAGE!

C aution! Reading this book may change your life.

If you picked up this book, its likely you have a child or two who will be ready to have the talk in the near future, and youre arming yourself with the courage and details necessary to successfully navigate the unknown waters of talking with your kids about sex.

First, thank you for your willingness to take on the parental responsibility of educating your children about their bodies and the purposes for which they are intended; and secondhang on. Stewarding our childrens sexuality is a skill set that has been lost, and a multitude of voices are willing to serve that role for parents if parents remain silent. The educational system attempts to assist parents in this process but operates from a different worldviewor lensthan that of most Christians. Simply knowing enough to identify what the parts do, where they go, and what happens when the parts intersect is not the ideal version of the talk. Parents must talk to their children about the emotional and spiritual dimensions of sexuality rather than just the physical aspects.

Unfortunately, alarming numbers of parents are abdicating this responsibility to the health-class teachers of middle school and high school students across the country.

Another culprit in educating children about sex is the media. Not just the tabloids, Hollywood, and Playboy, but all types of media. YouTube, Facebook, iTunes, Spotify, Vine, and other products offer an endless supply of seemingly innocent material, the vast majority of which is laden with tremendous sexual innuendo and the blatant objectification of other people as things.

Late Stanford psychologist Al Cooper in discussing the rise of Internet pornography coined the phrase triple-A engine to describe why this trend grows at such a rapid pace. The three As in the triple-A engine are accessibility, affordability, and anonymity. Cooper proposed that these three variables accounted for the enormous growth in pornography use with the birth of the Internet in the early 1990s.

These three drivers of the growth in pornography use in Western civilization extend well beyond the computer. Music with lyrics about promiscuity and sexuality are abundant and can be accessed for free without anyone knowing. A great example of this is Rhiannas song titled S&M, which depicts sexual connection as a violent exchange of pain and pleasure, devoid of much connective emotional content. While inaccessible on YouTube, a brief search for this song on Google provides access to a world of sexuality that is certain to taint an adolescent or teenagers understanding of what healthy sexuality entails. And the content that is accessible on YouTube provides a much darker look into the world of commercial sexuality that sweeps away many children and adolescents.

Other cultural influencers, including Mark Laaser of Faithful and True in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a leading Christian sexual addiction specialist, have added a fourth A to Coopers initial theory: accidental. Easy as it may be to envision a six-year-old stumbling across an inappropriate Web site while conducting a search for a favorite cartoon character, what is accidental to a child is not accidental to the industry that is looking to get its product in front of as many consumers as possibleat younger and younger ages. Porn users of yesteryear bought it from adult bookstores or convenience stores. Now, porn seeks out potential users by trolling the Internet, gaming sites, and e-mail. For example, <

The video game industry is another arena in which the pornography industry targets young consumers. Forget Vegas; in the life of a fourteen-year-old boy, what happens online stays online. Unfortunately this is not true. We carry many of those shocking yet simultaneously pleasing images with us across our lifetimes, seeking to explore the curiosities and possibilities we are exposed to. The average age of exposure to pornographic content is eleven years of ageand getting younger.

Another area in which media sends subtle yet powerful messages about sexuality is through childrens movies. Messages regarding sexuality are present in a variety of forms. One variety of influence is the music that is selected for inclusion in films. As in most families, my children have watched a variety of G or PG animated movies without much prescreening. (You are shocked to hear this, I know.) As an aside, the Internet Movie Database () provides a great resource for reviewing movies for language, violence and gore, sexual content/nudity, drug-and-alcohol-related content, and frightening or graphic images before you watch them.

I was made aware of the impact of the music that is included in childrens movies one Sunday night after our small-group meeting. My older son, who was five at the time, was having a great time playing with the daughter of our friends from our small group. They had run laps around the house during the group meeting, had come down for snacks and drinks, and were playing again when it came time for her family to leave. As we were saying our goodbyes for the evening, I heard my son invite his friend upstairs to the playroom. I want to show you something, he said with enthusiasm. The two of them slipped toward the steps, not realizing I had overheard their conversation and had crept silently up the steps behind them. As I observed them, my fears were assuaged by the fact that my son was simply showing her his favorite new toy with his famous isnt-it-awesome voice.

I announced my presence with a simple questionWhat are you all doing up here? Startled, my son, who was still red in the face from all the running and wearing too many layers of clothes, made a somewhat silly face at his friend and sang the lyrics Im sexy and I know it while stripping off his outer layer of clothing, a heavy sweater. For the sake of full disclosure, I have to admit that my initial response was to laugh. It was one of those incredibly cute moments involving your kids that you carry with you forever.

The shock and laughter quickly turned to concern: When did Magic Mike move in with me, and what happened to my innocent five-year-old? I thought. Upon further investigation, it turns out that the music he was singing came from a movie my wife and I had introduced him to, Madagascar 3. I would be remiss if I tried to convince you that this failure as a parent was my only failure; however, we were able to turn the experience into a conversation about modesty and his body, appropriate relationships with the opposite sex, and what sexy even means.