It’s sad that Christians – speaking as one myself – shun the idea of discussing sex as more than something we shouldn’t do. It’s setting ourselves up to fail.

Luckily for my father I’m a nerd. What does a nerd do when s/he wants to learn something? We read. I read Cosmo, my mother’s romance novels, the occasional Playboy that we could find, and so I thought I knew all about sex and so my response to my father was:
Me: No. No questions.
I grew up in a Christian family and, for two years, went to a private Christian school where things like sex were not discussed. As I said, being a nerd, I read about the subject but the things I was reading gave me no true idea of what sex really was like. I got very lucky though. 1) I met a wonderful girl my freshman year in college just as ignorant as me who was very interested in exploring her sexuality. Did we both learn a lot. Luckily we did know enough to use protection. 2) Because of my major in college I took a class that amounted to sex ed. The first day of class we tossed out all the names we could for different parts of the male and female anatomy which served as a way of getting us acclimated to talking about sex. It was a great class. Parents, please please please sit down (no matter how uncomfortable) and talk to your children about sex. Don’t leave their sex education up to other kids on the bus.

Oh wow! I was probably 8 or 9 when I ‘learned’. Kudos for talking to her about it. She’ll appreciate it later in life if she doesn’t now.

If parents are embarrassed about sex, their kids will be too. We need to be healthy and happy for our children.

I knew too much about sex, and I knew it. The book my parents gave me? I read it until I understand because I’m hardwired to want to understand shit. So I got the jokes, but talk about uncomfortable. I remember having to explain certain anatomical areas to other kids my age in high school. Ug! Teaching kids about sex, yeah, it’s awkward, but it’s better than not knowing. You’re a good mom, even if they want to push the puppy into the pool when you aren’t looking 😉

My oldest (he’s 10) knows what sex is, even if he doesn’t understand it yet. My youngest will know it too by next year, because I don’t want them to learn from someone else. I don’t want them to go through their teenage years fake laughing at the sex jokes. It’s just one more thing to feel awkward about and holy hell, teenagers have enough to feel awkward about.