Tag — Teen Coaching
Living by Your Own Rules: Sexual Integrity
From friends who have re-entered the dating pool at mid-life, to teenage mentorees, to children approaching puberty—sex and sexuality are a regular topic of conversations ’round these parts. One of my girlfriends once said to me that as a teenager she decided “I just wanted to have a sexual history I could look back on without regret.” But how do you defined what that is for yourself in complex and changing world?
It’s always a good idea to ask an expert. So let me introduce to you Becky Knight, Clinical Sexologist. Today Becky is helping us make the connection between our guiding values and our sexual choices. Making that connection will help us feel more confident about our sexual choices, calm the voices in our heads that lead to self doubt, and quite the old tapes we don’t need to listen to any longer. Becky, take it away…
Magpie Girl’s Guide to College
The 19yo is talking about college. Of course, when I overheard him say, “I was reading this college catalog…” I stopped dead in my tracks. After several years of unschooling and some pretty serious slacker practice before that, I wasn’t even pretending that college was in his future—at least not right away. So this news that he’d already assessed and discarded one community college option and was considering another was a surprise to me.
As I listened from a vaguely discreet distance, there was a tone in his voice and a certain lean to his body that I recognized. This particular combo is what he uses when he’s trying to convince someone that he’s doing what they want him to do. But it’s a little tricky because it’s also the tone and posture he uses when he’s trying something on for size—sort of sussing out if he really believes what he’s saying, seeing if what he’s thinking of is really a good fit for him. I like it when he does this. I think it’s really wise. It makes me proud.
Later he and I were able to talk this college thing out a bit over breakfast. (These things always go better over a breakfast burrito.) It became clear that while he’s aware that most of the parental-types in his life would like to see him in college at some point, he wasn’t just blowing smoke at us when he mentioned the college catalogs. He really is interested in the possibility of taking some course — he’s just not sure how to do college his own unconventional way. He doesn’t want to get trapped on some horrid jump-through-the-hoops, school-debt, hamster wheel from hell. In short, he’s trying to figure out how to make college work for him, instead of the other way around.
See, I told you he was smart.
This got me to thinking about all the courses I slogged through and hated, and all the books I bought and never used. It was a lot of waste. So here, in retrospect are my Magpie Girl’s Tips for College Courses. [Read more →]
Jamie Ridler: On Creativity, Feedback and Our Tender Hearts
Meet Jamie Ridler, life coach to creative souls and friend to this tender, crazy heart. There are dozens of life coaches in my internet world, and many of them are very, very good. But Jamie is among the cream of the crop. Her generosity and playful wisdom has helped me immensely over the past year. I feel deeply grateful to be included in her virtual circle.
Today at Magpie Girl, Jamie speaks with us about the way creative souls recieve feedback, and how to honor our emotions while learning from the curve ball that criticism and critque can sometimes throw at us. Do you have a teen or tween? Pass this on to them as well. It’s a life skill I wish I had acquired at 13 instead of 30! Jamie, take it away….
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Recently I asked people why it’s so important to us that people like our artwork. In my own life, I’m noticing how that’s also true for me about anything that I’ve really put my heart into. When I offer a workshop, I’m hoping with all my heart that people are going to love it, that they’ll feel inspired and hopeful and glad they took part.
There’s something wonderful about this. It inspires me to offer my best work and to learn and grow all the time. It comes from a place of deep commitment to the participants and a sincere desire to make a difference in their lives. It reminds me that creating a workshop or a newsletter or a meal or an event is a creative act, one that you pour your soul into.
And what happens if despite all of that, people don’t like it?
Here’s how I’ve learned to handle negative feedback. I hope it bolsters your tender heart the way it has bolstered mine:
1. Let yourself feel what you feel. If I’m hurt, disappointed, angry, defiant or whatever else, I get to experience that like a storm until it settles. I don’t have to pretend it’s not there, judge it, rise above it. I just get to feel what I feel.
2. Look for learning. Once the storm starts to quiet, I see if there’s anything I’d like to respond to. I’m not adjusting the work for one particular person. If I move away from the core of my vision to accommodate someone else, it starts to feel wobbly and I start to feel insecure. That lets me know that I’m moving in the wrong direction. But if I use the information to see if I can bring my creation closer to what I dream of for it, then I can use it to improve the work. There’s joy and confidence in there. The difference is palpable.
3. Let go of what’s not useful. If someone just didn’t like what I’ve created or offered or shared, but it’s something that I believe in or love or is true to me, I remind myself that not everyone is going to love what I do, and that’s fine. What I’ve learned from the information is that my gift is not for this person. I can let the rest go.
4. Trust. I remind myself that my people are out there, people who will appreciate my unique gifts and offerings. One of the truly important things about blogging is it allows us to extend our reach in finding our people, so that when we share what is uniquely and authentically our gift, we have more of an around-the-world opportunity for someone to read it and get it.
Molly Gordon talks about how in business we have a niche and we have an offer. I think this is true in life generally. Our offer is what we sincerely, authentically bring to this world. It’s who we are and what we share. And our niche is that place, that ecosystem according to Molly, in which that offer is easily and recognizably of value. There’s nothing to be taken personally about being a rainforest plant who doesn’t fit into the desert. Just keep looking for home and reaching out to your people.
Jamie Ridler MA CPCC is a creative self-development coach and director of Jamie Ridler Studios. She helps creative, independent spirits align their lives with their hearts and pursue their dreams with joy, courage and authenticity. She leads Circe’s Circle, a coaching telecircle for Creative Bloggers designed to help you start building your creative dreams. A new session stars September 15th. For updates and inspiration, you’ll find her on Twitter.
favorite things: child of my heart
He comes to me in my dreams, this child of my heart, separated now seas and ages.
Sometimes the dreams are all absurdity. Last night in my somnolence he came to me with a new love. I asked after her: what captivated? what called? His serious reply: “She taught me the word “Huntington’s.” Ah, what meaning in that then? Pizza for dinner, perhaps.
Othertimes they are wrought with meaning — Jungian symbols all in a row. He is lost in the woods. And what are these clamps there on his shoulders, at his gut? What is written on this new scroll? Are we falling or flying?
When he feels far from me, this child of choice, I wear this ’round my neck. A charm passed to me from my soulsister, long ago when I was the age he is now. Touch it with one finger there at the hollow of my throat. For safety. For comfort. For joy. Hoping to only connect.
A talisman then, swinging there over my heart.
In this photo post: Favorite things, culled from a vagabond’s backpack while on furlough from Denmark in the States, and posed on a swing which has held three generations.
Would you like to Unravel? Sign up for Susannah Conway’sphotography and journaling ecourse.
April Dreamboard: Only Connect
Tuesday night the 19yo haunted my dreams, flitting in and out of whatever story was going on. We call this my “Spidey-sense” and when it happens, no matter how long he’s been incommunicado, I have to track him down and find out what’s what.
Wednesday night the full moon glowed yellow and welcoming in my Copenhagen sky. I’m not usually very connected to the moon, but last night its glow, it felt important…powerful. So I sat down and made a quick-and-dirty dreamboard with the few supplies I had on hand, uttering once again what my dear friend Dwight practically has tattooed on his forehead:
ONLY CONNECT.
By Friday we were back in touch and the emails went back and forth with tidbits and updates.
Oh, that Sister Moon, I love her so……
P.s. If Souren actually read my blog, I’m sure he’d be THRILLED with this photo. Sorry bruddah, if you sent me more pics, you’d get better airtime. :-)
For more about Dreamboard visit Jamie at Starshyne Productions, or read my interview with her sister Suzie of Chez Suzie here. What will you dream of this month?
*8 Things Not to Miss in Your Twenties
Here at our house, we tend to live in a pretty communal manner. So for the teens and twenty-somethings who come through our wide open door I have three basic rules:
- No one makes me go to the ER on national holidays. (If you blow your finger off with illegal fireworks on the 4th of July you are on. your. own.)
- No one throws up on my carpet. (There’s plenty of beer in the fridge–but either don’t get that drunk, or make it to the bathroom.)
- No one comes home pregnant. (I’m pretty firm on that one. Safe(r) Sex is a non-negotiable.)
I think those cover the basics, at least in my narcissistic corner of the world where it is largely about ME. But in that twenty something world where it is all about–well, YOU-perhaps a few more tips are in order. So, carrying on with our goal to turn our regrets into powerful insights for the next generation(s), here is my list of *8 Things Not to Miss in Your Twenties.
- One Word: Travel. Go on European quarter; take a gap year in India, road trip across the continent. Your body will still let you sleep in cheap beds, the noise at the hostels won’t bother you, and you can live out of a backpack. Now is the time. Nothing will shape your future self like travel.
- Avoid Consumer Debt. A modest school loan is one thing, but credit card debt–and I would even say car payments–are something I would try to avoid. I you must buy a car, do it used and make sure the payments are low. Now is not the time to be flashy. Save it for your midlife crisis.
- Experiment. In the words of the wise Homer Simpson, “There is a time and a place for everything, and that place is called college.” I would like to second that. If you want to try risky things, now aint’ a bad time to do so. If it doesn’t work out you’ll recover more quickly and have more time to make it right.
- Get High With a Little Help from Your Friends. Okay, I am SO of two minds about this, but I’m trying to acknowledge that most people are going to try things out at some point. This age seems better to me than high school. Why? Because you are a little older and a little wiser and are far less likely to do some dumb-ass thing while high. (Guess who works with teenagers?) One of my coach-the-teenagers partners has this rule, “It has to come from the ground.” After seeing the effects of a wide range of drugs on young peeps, I think this is good advice.
- Don’t Rush Marriage and Children. Now is a good time to read, ask, and think about what it is like to commit to marriage and to child rearing. I don’t know about the men folk, but a lot of women default to marriage in the first post-college years, in part to create a path for themselves at a time when their lives feel unfocused. This is not a good reason. Fall in love, fall into bed…but don’t fall into a life you haven’t really considered.
- Learn About Feminism. I know the “women can do anything message” has been sung for awhile now, and most young people have gotten the message. But I’m amazed at how many young women think gender equity has been reached. That is just bullshit. When women still get paid less then men, still take most of the second-shift burden, and regularly give up their power, things are not as they should be. Educate your self. Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti of Feministing is a good place to start. And guys, this goes for you too.
- Get an Internship. Nothing will beef up your resume and prepare you for the ‘real’ working world like a good internship. Don’t settle for a work-study job in the cafeteria. Find something in a field you are interested in and explore!
- Live at (or close) to Poverty Level. This may not be for everyone, but if you are at all inclined towards living in a commune or in some other form of intentional community, this is a good decade to try it. I spent part of a summer in an inner-city commune in Chicago, lived a year earning just a few hundred dollars a month with AmeriCorps, and quit my full-time job to work part-time while running a teen shelter for free. The people I met during those times taught me more about dignity, resilience and justice than anything else I’ve done.
Got some good advice? I totally know you do! Add to the giant pool of wisdom by listing your *8 Things in the comments, playing along on your blog, or meme-ing out on Facebook. Cheers!
*8 Things I Highly Recommend You Do In Your Teens
I think that I’ve been having a mid life crisis. Not a wish washy one either. I mean, no one is having an affair or buying a sports care or anything-but it’s defiantly at least a Class 3 existential meltdown.
One of the things I’ve been doing on my crisis is regretting much of my youth. I’ve been naming a lot of things as “wasted” and wishing I had a fistful of do-overs.
Until today.
Today I decided that instead of regret, I would mine my past for wisdom. I would stir these longings around and use them to create some advice for the lovelies coming up behind me.
I’ll be giving this unsolicited advice decade by decade over the next two Thursdays. Here’s my first installment on thing sthat will prep peeps for life ahead, and let them seize their teenage day.
*8 Things I Highly Recommend You Do in Your Teens.
1. Do It. If you are over 15, and you are seriously in love with a boy/girl–for more than a few weeks, please–and you want to sleep with them, feel free. (More on this theory here.)
2. Wear a bikini. I know you may feel fat, but you look goddamn fantastic. Celebrate the body you have now while everything is UP where it started.
3. Learn how to write a research paper. I cannot tell you what decent writing and research skills will do for you.
4. Forget the ‘dictorians. Get good-to-great, not great -to-fantastic grades. The Ivy League is overrated. For most people, 4.0’s will not be required. You might as well enjoy your youth.
5. Learn to drive a stick shift. (Have someone other than your parents teach you.)
6. Take a foreign language — not one year, every year of high school. If you live in California, Texas, Arizona, or New Mexico this language should be Spanish. (Respect!)
7. Do what you are afraid of: sports, drama, circus training, spending the summer away from home. This is the era of carpe diem.
8. Carry these things with you: a tampon, a condom, enough money to cab home, and a few reliable phone numbers WRITTEN ON PAPER. (In a crisis I can virtually guarantee your cell battery WILL run out and you WILL discover you don’t have anyone’s phone numbers memorized.)
What *8Things Do You Highly Recommend People Should Do in Their Teens? Grab a button and play along. Don’t blog? Drop your list in the comments below or help me start a rage on Facebook.
The Blessings
i promised to stop adopting teenagers, but they keep slipping into my heart…
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I love these young ones so much it’s ridiculous. Each one has crawled into my soul in a different way, and while at times this process splits me open, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
There’s a scene in the Princess Bride where a funny old crone makes a pill for new life, and she paints something on it croaking: “The coating makes it go down easier.” I want to wrap my arms around each of these precious ones and let my heart for them coat them like chocolate –one long-lasting dose of mama-love to help the new life of adulthood go down a little more smoothly.
I want wrap them up with affection. With warmth. With stability. With all the elements of unconditional love you can think to put on a menu. And then, when they are all warm and cozy, I want to drop integrity into the center of their chests, like a silver quarter slipping into a coin slot.
If they have integrity then all thier live-long days they will be the stellar creatures they are already becoming. Not integrity to the rules, but the kind of integrity that allows you to acknowledge who you truly are, and stand in that truth. The kind of integrity that is not beholden to outside rules, or your peer’s opinons, or because of ‘the way it’s done’– but because of a solid internal compass that will not steer you wrong if you listen. The kind of integrity that lets you live a life on the outside that is true to the life you hold in your heart. If they have that, well, they will have everything they need.
So that is what I bless them with, in my dreaming, in my words, in my living. And the old Christian mystic who married that witchy little crone in my soul says, “Amen, may it be so.”
“Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid”
-Basil King
God Sticks and Shame Caves
God Sticks and Shame Caves
More thoughts on what we teach our kids about sexuality.
As I wrote in my previous post, I’m not teaching my kids that abstinence until marriage is the best, only, or even necessarily the most preferable sexual option in the universe. Abstinence Only was taught to me as a child, and while it did keep me from joining the statistics on teenage pregnancy, the side effects of this puberty-long fast were pretty damaging.
Since beginning this conversation, I’ve experienced a virtual mind-flood of memories and ideas which have been floating around trying to organize themselves into a cohesive whole. Slowly they are settling into a couple of themed collections. Today’s Memory Collection: Messages of Shame.
Liz Hurly and the Ta-Ta’s of Death
In the first memory that’s been nagging at me to be told, I’m sitting around a conference table at a region-wide gathering of pastors for the denomination in which I am a minister. It’s a moderately conservative denomination and the particular congregation I have been hired to work at is urban, hip, and more willing to flex than most of the others in the area. I am the only woman in the room and several of my colleagues, most of whom are middle aged white men, are uncertain-to-down-right-sure as to whether or not I should be there. The leader of the meeting is on the fence at best, but to be fair, he is making tentative attempts at including the new girl in this fraternity of long-time buddies.
We have come to the portion of the meeting where the pastors share any new resources they’ve discovered. One man in particular is highly energized by a new sex-ed video he has been showing to his Jr. High youth group. He is relaying his favorite part of the video, in which the young, male, youth leader holds up a poster of Elizabeth Hurley and says something like this:
“Do you see this woman? This is a sexy, smokin’ hot woman. She has great legs. She shows a lot of cleavage. Her clothes are skin tight. Do you know who she was dating? Hugh Grant. And do you know what Hugh Grant did while he was dating her? He had sex with a prostitute. What does that tell you? I know what it tells me. It tells me that being with a woman who is smokin’ hot in the eyes of our fallen society only drives us to want more. Being with someone provocative like Elizabeth Hurly, just drives us deeper into sexual sin.”
Yes ladies and gentlemen—Hugh Grant engaged in prostitution not because he has issues; not because he was sexually addicted; not because he failed to respect his girlfriend or the woman he paid to have sex with, but because Elizabeth Hurly’s cleavage is dangerous.
I was having a hard time believing my ears. Here was a couple whose common law relationship had lasted longer than most of my college friend’s post-graduation “Christian” marriages. In spite of Grant’s truly bad betrayal, he and Hurly repaired their relationship and later their friendship to such an extent that even after their break up Hurly asked Grant to be the godfather of her child. Their relationship—at least the portion of it related to us in popular magazines—turned out to be a pretty stunning example of forgiveness, reconciliation, and compassion. But forget all of that, the real thing to remember here is that this woman’s ta-ta’s drove a man so wild with desire he had to pick up a prostitute.
If only she had worn more turtlenecks.
I held my tongue as the meeting went on, trying to formulate my thoughts in a way that would let me express them without being tagged as an “angry feminist” (a neat semantic trick which effectively prevents a woman’s story from being heard.) I waited to see if an appropriate opportunity would come up to shed some light on the topic.
Eventually the meeting moved into a discussion period where the staff could advise each other on things that were providing sticky in their individual congregations. One of the men raised a problem he was having at his church – the women wanted to introduce liturgical dance into the morning service. He wasn’t sure about this. Liturgical dance certainly didn’t speak to him, and he wasn’t sure there was a point to it. In an attempt to engage me in the conversation, this man turned to me and said, “As a woman, what do you think Rachelle?” My reply was something like this:
I understand that you don’t connect with liturgical dance. It’s not something that speaks to everyone. It’s not something that particularly speaks to me. But I think you should invite the women to introduce it to your congregation and I’ll tell you why. It will allow women to use their bodies as an expressive instrument in the midst of their community, and it will indirectly convey a message that women’s bodies are not inherently sinful. Women get the message in church quite a bit—that there is something wrong with their physical selves, that their bodies are dangerous and sinful. Can I give you and example?
I went on to explain how sex-ed video that had been mentioned might be consumed by the teenage girls. I pointed out how it took the burden of error off the shoulders of Hugh Grant, and planted it firmly on the um…shoulders…of Liz Hurley. I mentioned how this message – that women’s bodies were a temptation to men and should therefore be restrained, covered up, and hidden from view as much as possible, was a common message in the church. I explained that the only time women were mentioned as physical beings was in some story about how tempting they were, or perhaps to instruct them on a less revealing dress code while singing in the worship band. I explained how healing it is for some women to engage their bodies in dance, and how holistic it would be to introduce that option into their worship services. I tried to help them capture the idea that the dance of a few women might bring healing to many in their community.
The room was silent. Not the kind of silence that accompanies disagreement, but the kind that happens when a group of like-thinkers is introduced to a totally new concept. I think the word I’m looking for here is:stunned.
God Sticks and Shame Caves
This story about Liz Hurly came back to me of late while watching this Jon Stewart clip about the success (or lack thereof) of government funded Abstinence Only programs in schools. (Warning: this clip is NSFW and in the words of Ira Glass “does mention the existence of sex.”) In this footage, a female sexual health educator who had traveled with one of the abstinence educators testified that reluctant girls were repeatedly pulled to the front of the class and shown a dirty toothbrush that “looked like it had been used to clean a toilet.” The instructor then continued to say, “If you have sex before marriage, you are like a dirty toothbrush.”
So glad to see my tax dollars at work. (1.3 billion dollars over the past 11 years)
Jon Stewart’s response to this and other parts of the abstinence only assessment reports was to say: “Of course, we all know that! Boys have a God Stick and girls have a shame cave.” Now obviously, this was a joke and Jon was employing exaggeration to make a comic point. But I’ve got to tell you, he’s not far off. This is the message many young women receive when they are taught that the only acceptable course of action is for them not to have sex until marriage. Even if they are in love. Even if they are mature. Even if their body is screaming otherwise. Even if they don’t marry until 25, or 35, or 45.
True, in these abstinence programs, boys are also taught to refrain from sex before marriage. But somehow they are not shamed the way girls are. For instance, it’s not that boys that are not hauled up front of the class and told they are a dirty toothbrush. The language is different for boys than for girls. Boys “sow their wild oats.” Girls are “fallen women.” Boy’s may “lose their virginity,” but the girls “lose” their virginity tothe guy, who then gets to claim that he’s “popped her cherry.” It’s all just so discouraging. And speaking of how we use language, here’s one more story…
Bye Bye Miss American Pie
In college I read a piece about premarital sex in a religious magazine. The article began by telling a story. A group of girls were meeting in a dorm room. They were gathered around one girl’s bed, pouring champagne and toasting her success at having ‘lost’ her virginity the night before. In the article, this story was meant to be disturbing – it was pitched as being a sad way for these young women to behave, another example of “the world” celebrating sin rather than living a life of piety.
At the time I was well entrenched into my conservative religious world. Still, I can remember thinking, “That doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, that seems like a pretty good rite of passage to me.” Twenty years later I still think it’s not a bad idea. But I’d change the language. What is this crap about “losing” one’s virginity? Did it fall out of your purse when you went to pay the check? Did you forget it with your umbrella on the bus?
In the case of consensual sex one doesn’t ‘lose’ one’s virginity. One moves from being a virgin to being someone who has had sex. “Loss” connotes something regretful. It doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to lay that guilt trip on our girls—or on our boys for that matter. We don’t have to start our young people off on their sexual history with a tick in the losses column. We could, perhaps, celebrate his or her budding maturity. We could, perhaps, use language which honors moving into a new stage of sexual, emotional, and relational development. We could, perhaps, create a reality in which it is possible to have sex for the first time (married or otherwise) without a sense of loss, but rather with a sense of pride.
It’s just and idea. I’m just saying.
There’s a scene in the film Real Women Have Curves where the teenage heroine Ana, played by America Ferrara, decides to have sex for the first time with a boy she cares for and admires. They are graduating from high school and will not see each other anymore. She’s not fooling herself about that. She’s looking at the situation very clear-eyed, realizing that there will be no romantic movie ending. They will drift apart. They will find other people. But in the now, in the well considered now, Ana wants to be with him. While they are together in the bedroom, Ana gets up and walks to the mirror. She says something like “This is me. This is what I look like.” The moment is so real, so honest and confident. I remember being quite struck by it.
Since seeing that movie, I have logged more than a decade raising children—raising girl children, as a matter of fact. Now, years later, that scene floats up through my memory. I consider it and I decide, if my children have that kind of confidence, that kind of assuredness, that kind of certainty the first time they have sex, I’ll be a happy mom.
What about you? What kind of stories have shaped your sexual identity?….What have those stories given you to carry—a shame cave? A glass of champagne? Something in between? ….What kind of stories do you want to give your children about themselves as sexual beings?….What language will you use to talk about their bodies and their virginity (or the lack thereof?) The comments are open!
Reposting: Why I’m Not Teaching My Kids Abstinence
This is a repost from a series I began back in April about what we communicate to our children about their sexuality. I’m putting it up again now because I’d like to return to the topic and I thought it might help to bring new readers up to speed. At the bottom of this post are links to the follow-up posts that I’ve already written–which rely heavily upon the great input received in the comments. I’ll be posting the next installation sometime in the next 24 hrs. If this is a topic that rings with you, I hope you’ll jump into the discussion. Thanks for reading. – Rachelle
What I Think About Kids & Abstinence
“Don’t you remember at church, when they told us it was better for us to come home in a pine box than to lose our chastity?”
-Sarah Henrickson (18) to her brother Ben (16)
Big Love
I grew up in the church. The conservative evangelical church to be exact. Sundays and Wednesdays were spent at the Lutheran Church, and Monday-Friday at the Assemblies of God private school (chapel three times a week, Bible class every day, choir, and optional 7am prayer meetings.) If you’ve ever seen the fantastic dark-comedy Saved, then you have seen my life. It’s like a hidden camera reality show based on my high school, only with better hair.
Growing up, the message I received was that the absolute worst thing you could do was to have sex outside of marriage. It was worse than getting drunk. Hell, it was worse than DRIVING drunk. Sex, actual intercourse, was totally forbidden. All the other bases were either totally verbotten or pretty damn bad. Oral sex. Very Very Bad. Groping of all kinds. Bad. Making out in your boyfriend’s car. Not great. Kissing. Tolerated –but not on school grounds, of course, or you would be given a two day suspension. Holding hands? Well, okay, but only holding hands; certainly not putting your arms around someone’s shoulder. Anything and everything you might do with someone of the opposite sex was cloaked in shame. Tickling? Shoulder rubs? Boy-girl stunts in cheerleading? It was all highly suspicious. (Do I even have to mention that doing anything with someone of the same sex was completely off the charts? You might as well pick up a ‘go directly to hell’ card.)
We had sex education, once, in fifth grade. It was mostly to make sure everyone was in the know about getting your period. I suppose the boys had a similar filmstrip about unwelcomed erections, but I’m not sure. It was the 80’s and AIDS education was huge, so even in Christian school you got a little mention of condoms. You never actually saw one, no one ever demonstrated how to use one on a banana for instance, and they were definitely NOT distributed in health class. The main idea was, “Abstinence is the Answer”, and everyone from teachers to pastors to parents was 100% on-message. And the teens, well, everyone had to sign on. (Or at least pretend to.)
Over and over again the messages we received were distilled in our hormone-soaked brains down to this one echoing refrain:
“Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.”
I recall one youth group session in which a cartoon was placed on the overhead projector. It showed a pit dug into the ground with a ladder in it. Each rung of the ladder had a physical act on it. The top rung was holding hands, the next one down was kissing, then making out, petting…you get the idea. The last rung, in the bottom of the pit? Yep. Sex. This kind of illustration was pretty common, and usually came along with a sermon about how “your body is a temple” – followed by a round of fast food and artificially sweetened cola. One of my favorite variations of this youth-group sex scenario was told to me a few years ago by a fellow seminarian. He told me, in all seriousness, that he was teaching his youth group that “Sex is like a wild, vicious, hungry lion, and you DO NOT want to go putting your head anywhere near that lion’s mouth.” (How he got away with using “sex” and “head” in the same sentence in a room full of teenage boys without the place exploding into laughter is beyond me.)
I know that the intentions of my teachers, youth group leaders, pastors and parents were good. I know they were trying to protect us from getting in too deep, too fast. I know they wanted to save us from harm, hurt, and, I suppose, hell. But the reality is, all they did for me was create a space in which to grow shame, guilt and dysfunction. And oh, how it grew! Here’s a short list of the messages I carried away from my abstinence experience:
-Every physical impulse you have towards a boy is wrong–probably even sinful.
-All the natural, normal parts of growing up and falling in love –physicality of any kind—are wrong and unnatural.
-If my body want this, then my body is bad. (This combined with the typical magazine spreads with size 0 models and pimple-free skin, and you can see what that did for a teenage girl’s body image.)
-If you don’t plan for sex, it’s not as bad of a sin. (Therefore, don’t own birth control or condoms.)
In spite of this, there were boys who got lucky and girls who went all the way. There were girls swept off to the Crisis Pregnancy Centers and expelled from school—or worse yet, allowed to stay but banned from all extracurricular activities–like going to the basketball games or walking down the aisle at graduation. (The boys on the other hand, never seemed to get into much trouble. I don’t recall any of them getting kicked out or shamed out of leaving.) And if anyone ever had an abortion, well, they kept it as a dark secret, and went through the experience without any help or counseling.
Because of my experience in abstinence programs– and because of the way my experience was echoed again and again in the shameful tears full-grown women brought to me during my tenure as a pastor –I am not raising my children under the banner of abstinence. Being physical and having sex are natural normal parts of growing up. We are physically and chemically programmed for it. We are culturally conditioned for it. It is a part of our healthy emotional development. I want my children to grow up in an atmosphere that acknowledges this reality—one that is shame free, where their bodies are seen as being ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,” and where their hearts can be trusted to lead them in the right direction. My intention, my deep hope, is to raise them in such a way that they will carry with them these messages:
-Your body is amazing. You can trust it to tell you what you are physically ready to do.
-Your heart is your guide –you can trust the wisdom of your own intuition in making choices.
-Sex is something you move into one step at a time. Each step is good. Each step is appropriate. You– and only you–get to choose when you are ready for that step.
-As a romantic relationship grows deeper emotionally, it’s natural for it to grow deeper physically.
-Planning for sex and being prepared to protect yourself and your partner is smart, responsible, and essential.
-You have the right to say NO. And conversely, you have the right to say YES.
Rather than telling my kids “Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.” I want the messages I give them to be able to be boiled down to this:
“You are capable of building a relational history you can look back on without regret.”
A friend of mine bequeathed that turn of phrase to me. We were drinking margaritas and talking about sex. (What else do you talk about after you’ve had a couple of margaritas?) She was telling me about her major high school boyfriend, and being in love, and what her parents and his parents thought about them having sex (or not). She said, “I never wanted to have sex in the car. I always wanted to build a sexual history I could look back on without regret, and I didn’t think I could do that if I had sex in the back of his Camero.” That’s pretty self aware, don’t you think? Pretty well-reasoned for a seventeen year old. Build a history you can look back on without regret – or at least, with as little regret as possible. I think, all told, that’s the best we can do. That’s what we humans can hope for: safety, respect, and a collection of memories held without shame.
So when it comes to sex and all its accoutrements here’s my parenting pledge:
-I promise to make talking about sex as natural and open as possible. (We’ve already got quite a track record.)
-I promise to help you access birth control and protection. (Yes, even for the masculine kids in the family.)
-I promise to help you assess what your heart and body is ready for, if you want to talk to me about it.
-I promise to give you accurate information about your body and its needs, to the best of my ability.
-I promise not to shame you for wanting physical contact with someone you care about.
-I promise to do whatever I can to make sex a wonderful, beautiful, joyful thing you give to the one(s) you love.
What will you teach your kids about sex? Any conversational tricks to share? Stories that worked out well? Do tell…
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