All politics aside . . . I can’t help but respond to this week’s media and political firestorm concerning the comments of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. I would much rather parents provided sex education for their children instead of the public school. While I could debate how sex education is funded and who provides it, I would not debate that sex education begins before kindergarten. In fact, there is a whole list of things a kindergarten age child should know as a foundation for healthy Christian sex education.

Sex education is not just providing information about the physical act and reproduction, sex education includes teaching about spiritual values, emotional intimacy, loving relationships, family roles, respecting others, and setting appropriate boundaries.

A kindergarten-age child should all ready know the following information:

• Correct terms for sexual body parts
• The concepts of “maleness” and “femaleness”
• Their bodies belong to them and they have a right to say “no” to unwanted touch
• How to talk about body parts without feeling like they are naughty
• Trusted adults can answer questions about their bodies
• Talking about their bodies and private parts should be done during private times at home
• God made their bodies and wants them to take care of their bodies

Sex education begins long before a child enters kindergarten. While I certainly don’t believe we should teach young children graphic information about STDs, pregnancy, childbirth, or sexual techniques or acts, we should help them develop a foundation for healthy adult sexual relationships by modeling healthy adult relationships, teaching them how to stop inappropriate touching, and how to talk about their body parts without feeling embarrassed or ashamed.

Many media sources provide our children with unwanted and inappropriate information about sexuality. If our children are going to develop a healthy Christian perspective about sexuality, we cannot stay silent and wait until they have learned their values from the media and the public school. We have to overcome our feelings of embarrassment or awkwardness and provide age-appropriate information about their bodies and sexuality.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.