Week 3 of December: Fidelity and Chastity
In Connection with Richard and Linda Eyre

Editor’s Note:  This month the Meridian Family Value of the month is Fidelity and Chastity.  Click here to read this month’s overview article). Each week during the month we will post an update in Meridian, illustrating a couple of the Eyres’ favorite methods for teaching Fidelity and Chastity to each age group.  Remember that you can also go to www.valuesparenting.com for still more ideas and teaching methods.  Thanks for your interest and participation.  There are tens of thousands of parents concentrating on this value this month.  Strength in numbers!

Methods for Preschoolers

Answer Children’s Questions to a Certain Point and Help Them Positively Anticipate Other Answers When They Turn Eight

Encourage questions and openness and emotionally prepare your child for the eight-year-old discussion. When small children ask, “Where do babies come from?” tell them that they grow from a tiny cell of seed in the mother’s belly. When they ask, “How does the seed get there?” tell them that it is part of the most wonderful thing in the world, which they will get to hear all about when they turn eight. When they ask why they have to wait until their eight, tell them that it is such a beautiful and important thing that they have to be old enough to understand it.     

With this kind of a “basis” you are ready for any question, because you can answer the general parts and defer the specific parts. For example, if the small child says, “Why are boys and girls so different? Why do boys have a penis and girls don’t?” you can answer that boys and girls are beautiful in two different way so that each will be special and attractive to the other — and that boys have penises not only to go to the bathroom, but to do some other very important things, which will be part of the talk about “the most wonderful thing in the world” that they will get to have when they are eight.

Methods for Elementary School Age

Follow-up Discussions

Reinforce the knowledge you have passed on and your positive and “wonderful” interpretation of it. After the age-eight discussion (especially in the weeks and months following it), make opportunities for follow-up. As you tuck a child in bed, lie or sit down by him and recall the special time you had with him when he turned eight and ask if he has any questions.

As children get older, talk about puberty. Tell them what to expect (physical changes, emotional changes, and moodiness, “wet dreams” in the case of boys). Try to remember experiences from your own puberty — how you felt when certain things happened, and so on.

The “What a Baby Needs to Grow” Game

This can help elementary, prepubescent children begin to think of sex as the important and beautiful way that children and families get started. Prepare the game by getting some blocks or “checkers” or anything that you can “stack up.” Tape small labels to each block or checker that say:

Daddy’s sperm
Mommy’s egg
Food
People to teach him and help him
Clothes
Parents who love him
A warm home where he feels happy
Example in his house of how to be a grown-up

Without letting the children see the labels, ask them what things are required to “make and grow a baby.” Give hints as necessary for children to guess the things on your blocks. Stack them up as they “get them.”

As you play the game and as you finish it, ask questions like, “Do all children have this one? Do a man and a woman have to be married to give this one? Do people have to love a child in order to give this one?” and so on. Use your questions and use the game to point out that  it takes a lot to “grow a child,” that the sexual act that starts a child is only the first step, and that a child who doesn’t have the other steps doesn't have much of a chance. Help children see that sex should not happen between people who do not intend to provide each of the other things it takes to grow a child.

Methods for Adolescents

Discussion: “The Cause, the Dangers, and the Solution”

This can give adolescents a clear understanding of why most early sexual promiscuity occurs and a practical, workable formula for avoiding it. Before an adolescent or teenage reaches the age where you will allow him or her to date, hold a discussion along the following sequence of points (emphasize appropriate boys fro boys or for girls accordingly):

Review the reason of the desirability for sexual abstinence prior to marriage (physical reason — AIDS, etc.; emotional reasons — the hurt and insecurity that can be caused; social reasons — the desirability of a conservative rather than a “loose” reputation; mental reasons — early sexual relationships interfere with one’s ability to focus on academic and other mental pursuits; and religious reasons — if these are important to you.

Explain that studies have been done to show that most boys who become involved in teenage sex most often do so for ego reasons (to prove their manhood, to exploit someone, to show they can do it, to brag to their peers), whereas most girls do so for emotional reasons (desire to be accepted or not to be rejected, for warmth, security, etc.). Ask if either is a good reason.  Talk about any example or “cases” that you are familiar with. 

Point out  that the logic most often  used by boys is trying to persuade a girl to go beyond what she feels is right (and sometimes vice versa, girl persuading  boy) usually takes one of two basic forms: (a) if you love me, you’ll have sex with me; and (b) all the other guys I know have girlfriends who will.

Ask what is wrong with this logic. (Love means to respect what the other person thinks is right, not to try to manipulate them. Everyone else doesn’t do it, and even if they did, the “everyone else” notion is a poor reason to do anything.)

Mention that there is a short, almost corny little saying that nevertheless makes a very true point about a girl (or a boy) that uses her (or his) body to attract the opposite sex. The saying is, “It works fast, but it doesn’t last.” When we use our personality, our humor, and our real selves to attract dates and friends of the opposite sex, it “works more slowly but lasts much longer.”

If (for all the reasons we have discussed) we really want to avoid too-early, or casual, or premarital sex, there is only one reliable way to do so. It is to think through possible situations we may find ourselves in and mentally rehearse exactly what we still do when that situation happens.

Describe to your adolescent, in detailed and real terms, some situations he may find himself in (alone, dark, aroused, attracted, etc., only don’t just suggest adjectives — describe a real scenario). Then ask him what he would say and do. Have him be specific and think through and rehearse his actions mentally. (“I would get up and say, ‘I’m going to go home now’; put my car key in the ignition, start the engine; etc.”)

Explain that this kind of mental rehearsal will make it much easier to do what you have decided when the time comes.

Delay Single Dating Until a Reasonable Age

This gives adolescents time to reach a level or mental and emotional maturity that gives them a chance of handling and controlling physical and ego-centered desires. Preteen and early teen single dating is at best rather senseless and pointless and at worst the beginning of bad choices that affect their happiness and security for the rest of their life. The early adolescent and early teen years should be times of group fun and non-pressured, non-committed activity. Fifteen or even sixteen is not too old an age to begin single dating. Decide on limits for your own family and discuss them thoroughly with your children so they will know that they come not from lack of trust but from love and logic.

*

Sometimes the best advice we give our children (or the times we get through to them most clearly) comes when we just say what we think and catch them off guard.

A friend of Richard’s told him of an incident when his sixteen-year-old daughter had come in late from a date, woke him (her father) up and said, “Daddy, Rob and I want to go steady.”

“You mean only date each other?” Richard’s friend said groggily.

“Yes, Dad.”

Deciding it was way too late to deal with the issue that night, the father rolled over, buried his head back in his pillow, and mumbled, “I don’t know why you’d want to end your relationship. That’s what going steady always does!”

Apparently his daughter thought about that, because the next morning she announced that she had changed her mind.