Teaching the talk

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, March 5th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: parents’ rights in education.

Two weeks ago, a U.S. District judge in Maryland approved a $1.5 million settlement.

It grows out of a major Supreme Court case last year about a public school board’s refusal to notify parents when teachers present gender ideology to students. The parents who sued, and even some who didn’t, wanted to opt their kids out. The settlement lays out how that must now be done.

BROWN: Even so, many parents find it awkward to talk to their kids about human sexuality, and are tempted to leave it to the schools. WORLD’s Jenny Rough spoke with a former teacher with a masters in Christian apologetics who helps parents navigate the talk.

JENNY ROUGH: The Supreme Court case protected the rights of parents to help ensure their children’s education aligns with their faith. But the case begs an important question:

ELIZABETH URBANOWICZ: Whose job is that to teach children about sexuality?

Elizabeth Urbanowicz is the founder of Foundation Worldview.

URBANOWICZ: Is it the job of the school system or the public library or even the church to teach children about the gift of sexuality?

She equips Christian adults with resources to help kids evaluate ideas and get to the truth.

URBANOWICZ: I think when we’re looking at it from a biblical basis, that God has oriented society around the family. And the family is the primary vehicle through which children should learn about sexuality.

Urbanowicz says elementary school teachers should not have the first word here.

URBANOWICZ: I would say, from a biblical perspective, that the public school system or even the Christian school system, or even the church should never be the ones introducing sexuality to children. That is always the responsibility of the family.

When thinking about what age to introduce the topic, Urbanowicz recommends starting young.

URBANOWICZ: Well, the age that I’m going to recommend will probably shock some people. But at Foundation Worldview, we recommend that parents have the first of many sex and sexuality talks with their children around the age of 4.

She says there’s two reasons to start the conversation before the world does. Whoever gets the first word often becomes the expert in the child’s mind.

URBANOWICZ: So if we want our children to come to us with their questions rather than a teacher or Google or a YouTube influencer, we have to be the ones that talk with them about it first.

And? That initial conversation sets the tone for how kids view sexuality.

URBANOWICZ: Which when we look at sexuality from a biblical lens, we know that it is inherently good. That God designed us in his image as distinctly male or distinctly female. And he made the sign and seal of the marriage covenant the act of sexual intercourse.

Parents can make sure to start with the positive. But—

URBANOWICZ: If we wait until our children are exposed to some book at school—

or the secular culture in other ways, chances are:

URBANOWICZ: Their first exposure to the concept of sexuality is going to be negative. It’s going to be how sin has corrupted this good gift that God has given us.

That requires being intentional.

URBANIWICZ: Like, do we need to fight against the darkness? Yes, we’ve been called to do that as Christians. But we need to make sure that we’re first grounding our children in the truth because we don’t want their vision of gender and sexuality and marriage and family to be what’s wrong and all the ways that we as humans in our sin have corrupted it. We want them to know what is inherently good.

Urbanowicz recommends parents have three basic talks with their children between the ages of 4 and 7.

URBANOWICZ: The first one is about genitalia. Just the correct name for body parts. …

She says this is the time to emphasize that no one else should see those parts except for mom, dad, or a doctor during a health exam.

URBANOWICZ: So that’s the first conversation. Just the basic difference between male and female anatomy.

Urbanowicz says the second conversation is the most uncomfortable — at least, for parents!

URBANOWICZ: That’s just the basics of sex. And the way we recommend that parents talk about that is to talk about if their kids have ever made a promise to someone. And then we make the connection to the act of sex.

Explaining that marriage is a promise, and that God gave a special symbol for the marriage promise to show it’s serious.

On a different day, the third conversation: reproduction.

URBANOWICZ: For this one, we recommend that parents take a walk with their kids and look at flowers and gardens. And then when you come back to the house, say do you know how that flower got started? They started out with a tiny seed and when that seed was planted into the ground and got water and sunshine, it eventually grew into a full-grown plant. And then we talk about God has given men and women something in their bodies that are kind of like seeds, and then you introduce the basic terms.

Urbanowicz says if kids ask questions that are shocking or embarrassing, parents can buy more time to think about how they want to answer.

URBANOWICZ: Affirm the question with a smile on your face and say, we’re going to talk more about this tomorrow.

Once parents have the foundational conversations with their kids, Urbanowicz says it’s easier from there to have more—and harder—conversations. Like about transgender or same-sex topics and the way feelings can sometimes trick people into believing things that aren’t true.

Or the difficult topic of divorce. A broken promise that sometimes has a biblical justification.

URBANOWICZ: And as kids grow, just anchor all of these things in scripture. Again, we’re not talking about, you know, going into graphic detail about all the rampant sexual sin that resides in our culture and even, at times, within our own hearts. But we’re laying the building blocks to help them understand that everything in our body points to the fact that we have been designed and therefore we have to understand who designed us and what is the purpose of our design.

She remembers from her own teaching experience how easily young students can idolize teachers, convinced they’re always right. She says that, too, is why it’s important for parents to know what’s going on in a child’s classroom.

URBANOWICZ: We don’t want to go in with pitchforks, because we want to assume that those who are educating our children have their best interests in mind even if they don’t understand what that best interest is. So we want to be kind and loving. But our ultimate goal is we want to disciple our children well. So we have to know what they are being taught.

About that ultimate goal, Urbanowicz adds:

URBANOWICZ: You know, it’s not that our children would have perfect marriages, or perfect sex lives, or perfect families. The ultimate goal in all of this is that as our children see God’s good design that they would turn from their sin, that they would trust him, and that they would seek him and serve him all the days of their lives.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.