A few weeks ago, when I wrote a multi-part article on “Sexuality – should we talk about it with our children“, I was well aware that this was a challenging topic for many families.

Despite the media surge of explicit material, many of us find it difficult to deal with this issue. Many know this discomfort, indeed this shame and awkwardness when it comes to talking to our children about it and creating a family culture in which such issues can be addressed.

Based on these articles, Jeannine and Stefan have now taken up this topic and addressed it with their children. I find the way they talked about sexuality with their children, and the results they achieved very creative and inspiring. So I asked them to share their experience with us in an article.

Here is her contribution:

We have introduced the idea of celebrating a “worship service” as a family at home every now and then. Each of us has his part to contribute, which makes everything very much lively, and we can specifically look at everyday topics.
Practically these services can look like this: One chooses 2 songs (and also find out matching movements), the other has a handicraft idea, Mom prepares the Lord’s Supper and Dad does the input.

Something they particularly like to do is role-playing, e.g. with the appropriate Bible story.

Inspired by Jeanne’s blog “Sexuality – should we talk about it with our children“, we took the opportunity to look at this topic.

As a mother of two boys (7+8 years old) and a daughter (10 years old) I was always worried about how to protect my children from sexual assault. It shocked me that this topic does not stop anywhere – not even in the best “Christian churches”. This often unsettled me and triggered a kind of “mother hen instinct”, which has meant enormous mental stress for me.

The procedure recommended in the blog to enlighten the kids made sense for us.

We used a cake baking tin in the shape of a heart and two Lego Friends figures – man and woman (Adam and Eve).

Beautifully protected in this cake form (marriage covenant) Adam’s eyes became bigger and bigger as God showed him the beautiful, handmade and artfully formed Eve.

As if by an invisible magnetic force, the two of them collided. (waiting for the right partner is worth it) And then it happened! – The children added their own expressions – “make sexy” – “it will be hard” – “make a baby” – and so we were already full in the topic, and could show the children on the basis of the Bible that sexuality is an invention of God and something beautiful and not only for making a baby.

That was actually something our daughter almost couldn’t believe:

“what… you still do that? When? 🙂

With this cake tin we were also able to illustrate how God invented a frame for sexuality. So we showed them clearly that everything that takes place outside this form, e.g. change of partner – sex before marriage – homosexuality – assaults, etc – was not God’s idea and thus sin.

From the Bible passage in Genesis 2:25

“And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and they were not ashamed.”

we could also talk about who has the right to see us naked. So we could also talk more specifically about the sexual assaults and strengthen them to draw boundaries and say no, which was very important to us, because our children are rather shy. …

But we were also happy when we came to the part of having communion.

It was challenging but very good that we could thematize this.

We also noticed that even our smallest (7 years old) is not too small for it, on the contrary, it seemed to us just the easiest with him, because everything could be discussed so normally and without shame.

Of course, this topic has become the hot topic of conversation at our family table for a long time.