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I am a big fan of the book, Parenting with Love and Logic, by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. The theory behind the book is that we need to enable our children to think for themselves. Children learn responsibility as they are given the freedom to fail and then later succeed. I also like some of Dr. Phil’s advice about helping children to think for themselves. He suggests having conversations with your children that help them think through the consequences of their choices.
Sex education is one area where I really want my son to think through the consequences of his choices. I want him to play the “what if” game and think through what he would do if he got his girlfriend pregnant. (Of course, because he is only six years old, this conversation will not take place for a few more years.) I want him to think about how it would feel for his girlfriend to have total say in whether to not to give birth to his child. I want him to think about having to parent a child while he is still a child himself, and I want him to think about how it would feel for strangers to adopt and raise his child.
While I believe this conversation is a good idea for all teenagers, especially because teenagers generally have a hard time thinking through the consequences of their actions, I wonder how much this kind of conversation will dredge up about my son’s own adoption. If we talk about abortion, will he think, “I could have been aborted, too?” If we talk about raising a child at sixteen, will he think, “My birthparents saw me as a burden?”
I do not see a way to keep talking about making good choices in decisions regarding sex separate from his adoption issues. Most children are placed for adoption because their birthparents did not make the type of choices about sex that I hope my son will make. When we are talking about the possible consequences of having sex as a teenager, we are going to cover ground that points to a situation that his own birthparents faced. We will be talking about avoiding the same consequences – an unplanned pregnancy – that I hope my son will avoid. I can see how I might need to tread lightly when discussing this issue.
For those of you with older children, have your sex education talks led to discussions about your child’s birthparents? What advice do you have from your own experiences?
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Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
