Whatever your child hears first, is usually what they accept as fact or truth. It is so important for them to hear life principles and important conversations from you first rather than from peers or adults who might not have the same values as you. If you are resourcing education out to someone else and your strategy is to correct at home any wrong teaching they learn, ask yourself why you would use this strategy and the probability of it being successful. Would you use this strategy in a battle? There is a battle for your child’s heart, soul, and mind. YOU as the parent are their first defense. How are you fighting for them?
When your child can trust you to explain the world to them, then they won't feel blindsided learning from those outside the home first. They might think "if mom and dad aren't being open and honest with me, if they aren't taking the time of day to teach me what everyone else seems to know, then do they really care? I guess I have to look to others to find out about life and what I need to know."
From our experience, having hard conversations with our kids around tough topics or things we really don't want to be talking about, has created this sense of confidence that our children have towards us. They trust that we will not lie to them, not tell them what to think, but present different view points and be honest with what we think or open about mistakes we've made that we learned from. Topics that were uncomfortable to us, were not uncomfortable to our children. And they exhibit this self assurance when they freely and gladly come to us to ask us more questions. They've brought stuff up to us that I would have never brought up to my parents and every time, we have the most pleasant conversation that enforces our trusting and healthy relationship, which I wish I could have had with my parents. They come to us completely trusting and never uncomfortable. We can tell they enjoy talking to us and that they rest in the fact that they have this confidence in us.
It's never too late to apologize to your kids for missing the mark and start having those uncomfortable conversations now. Remember, if you start early enough before someone else has had the conversation with them, then most likely you will be the only one who feels uncomfortable. They don't know what they don't know. You get to present the hard topics in a better way, a way that hopefully breaks the uncomfortableness once and for all.
You might think hard topics aren't appropriate for young children. You definitely want to use your intuition in determining what, when, and how to talk to your kids, but the key is to teach them the topic before someone else does, and that usually means at a young age these days because of the early exposure they get from the world. Young children are smarter than you think and you can give them the basic building blocks of a hard topic, and expound as they grow. But don't lie, you will lose their trust if you do and relationships are built on trust so if you don't have that, then you probably don't have the relationship you want with them.
We started by using the correct names for body parts, by teaching basic safety with not allowing others to touch our bodies without permission. Then we emphasized how we treat others with that same respect and we don't touch or look at their private parts. In starting the porn conversation, it was as easy as saying we don't look at people's privates or at dishonoring pictures of people. If they were to see something like that on the internet then they were to come to us right away to tell us so we could figure out how to not let that happen again. To start the sex conversation, we emphasized the oneness of a man and woman being joined as one in marriage and then told them how their bodies get to join as one in a very intimate and pleasurable way as a physical manifestation of the spiritual joining. And it is through this act of intimacy and oneness that a baby is made. We used the correct anatomical terms and explained how the penis excretes semen to fertilize the egg in the wife's body up her vagina. The only ones uncomfortable were us. Our kids were amazed.
Be truthful and honest, and most importantly share your story and other's stories that you know. It's through stories that we learn the most. Our kids love to hear our story and experiences as well. The more stories you can give them, the more they can analyze the different experiences people have had and learn from them.
*Not created with AI
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