Letter from Mary Flo

As a parent, you work hard to prepare your children for the future. You want them to enjoy long, healthy and happy lives. You strive to nurture them in a loving family. You carefully make tough decisions about doctors, schools, activities, entertainment and playmates. You enthusiastically introduce them to sports, art, science and literature.

You also recognize the importance of developing your children's character. Values like honesty, respect, kindness, responsibility, loyalty, perseverance and courage are very important and they warrant intentional efforts for growth.

You are in a unique position of influence to shape your kids’ hearts and minds before the rest of the world gets their chance to try, and it’s clear that the things you instill in them early will have an impact on their thoughts and actions for the rest of their lives.

Despite this exciting opportunity to influence, however, many parents are gripped by fear when it comes to shaping one key part of their children’s lives: their sexual values. I understand that talking to your children about sex can be daunting. The good news that I have for you is this: it does not have to be so frightening… in fact it can be very simple. Hear this: The first conversations you have with your children about sex will be extremely simple. All that you need to get started are the basic facts of biology and your values. The other very exciting news is that if we start these conversations when your children are young, you have the opportunity to make a very powerful first impression.

The goal of this approach is to give parents the tools to make these early first impressions about sex… through simple explanations of human bodies, birth and conception.

Parents who wait until their children near adolescence to attempt to conquer this topic are usually overwhelmed by the complexities before them. Parents who start in the early years with simple facts can then build on those facts as the years go by and can more easily handle the complicated issues when the time comes.

I want to encourage you to consider a different approach – to ponder what might be a radical though: Seize the opportunity while your children are young to start having conversations that will forever shape their sexual character. If you don’t, someone else will. And they can’t possibly care about your children’s health and safety as much as you do.

So come along and discover a smart and strategic way to share “Simple Truths” for a lifetime of rewards and benefits.

-Mary Flo Ridley

Welcome to the big time. There is no turning back. We’ve now reached the heart of the matter; the million dollar question: “How does a baby get in there?” Everyone wants to know how to answer this question. It’s the reason you’re reading this now, so keep reading for the answer.

The Story of Conception

Once you know the answer, the immediate next question is, “When should I start? When my child is three? Four? Seven?”

At the risk of sounding evasive, there’s no simple one size fits all answer to the “When should I start?” question. Here’s why. There are 6-year-olds… and then there are 6-yearolds. Their age is the same, but their situation is not. The first 6-year-old is a first born 6- year-old. He watches 6-year-old TV, tells 6-year-old jokes, and knows 6-year-old songs. And because he is a first-born, he has three healthy meals and a healthy snack each day, he gets regular reading time and actually takes a nap at naptime. Then there is the second 6-year-old, who is every bit as sis, looks just the same, but this 6-year-old is the youngest of four. This 6-year-old has a 16-year-old brother. As a result, this 6-year-old lives in a 16-year-old world. He watches 16-year-old TV, listens to 16-year-old music, knows what is on his 16-year-old brother’s iPod and what’s under his 16-year-old brother’s bed.

They are physically the same age, but they are not the same emotionally or experientially because they have not grown up in the same aged environment. So there really isn’t a specific right age to begin talking about sex with your child. The question becomes less about “When do I talk to my child?”, and more about, “Do I want to be the one to tell them?” If you wait much beyond kindergarten, you probably won’t be the first one to talk about it with them.