Raising Wise Kids

Three Fridays ago had all the ingredients of a perfect day. First, it was Friday and there would be no school. Second, we had been invited by beloved friends to the ballet (“Narnia,” or, as we said in my youth, “The Roar of Love”). Third, we were going out for pizza after.

The perfection unfolded largely as expected. I nostalgically re-entered that odd, Augusta-born ballet which has since sneaked in some Star Wars instrumentals. The grandma with whom I was sitting is from California, and she remarked that the ballet’s audience of school children would be prohibited in her old state. That I do not doubt, for the ballet opens with a goodly heap of older dancers bowing to the cross to the song “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing.”

The creators’ distrust in our interpretative abilities aside(!), ponies pranced, fauns frolicked, Spring came. As one who lives with perpetual longing for Eternal Spring, for life to rise from darkness, it was intensely satisfying to watch this resurrection ballet as spring indeed had arrived outside, with bulbs bursting, grass and clover swaying in the breeze, bees buzzing busily around all the early flowers.

Life was surely good.

We crashed into Pizza Joint, a happy mob, at lunch time. 4 adults corralling 7 kids 10 and under: taking orders, interrupting nonsense, adults stealing snatches of conversation about books and the dramas of home ownership. Our friends crossed themselves over a trio of pizza pies.

Ick entered stage left. The TV closest to us was tuned to a soap opera, and I looked over in horror, mid-chew, to see one of these tender children staring fixedly at a sex scene: brightly lit with active disrobing. I panicked, uncertain of what to do at this large, mixed table. On one hand, I didn’t want to draw the attention of those who had not noticed it, but I also couldn’t ignore the child right next to me who was eyeing it fixedly. Whatever came out of me was probably a mix of overreaction and anger. Annoyance at the establishment (not that young families are the expected clientele at a pizza bar at lunchtime on a school day). Anger at our sex-commodifying culture. Weariness for the ten rounds of conversation I would inevitably have with the most impacted child.

This happening joins a constellation of similar matters that have of late been on the minds of me and moms around me. Talking about AI-generated image concerns with a mom on a playdate at a park. Talking about having coming-of-age conversations with our kids in another’s living room. And talking about when your kids see something you didn’t vote for on some other kid’s screen with a third mom while sitting in my car.

It’s coming for us and them – the good (growing up, stewarding a life) and the bad (deepfakes, p0rn in general, screens everywhere). Might as well be as ready as possible. There’s a book for that from authors I’ve discussed before.

In December 2023, I featured Laurie and Matt Krieg’s book “An Impossible Marriage: What Our Mixed Orientation Marriage Has Taught Us About Love and the Gospel.” The Kriegs also host the “Hole in My Heart Podcast”: “How the gospel is good news for everyone every day”. Recently Laurie and Matt released a new book: “Raising Wise Kids in a Sexually Broken World: A Gospel-Centered Approach”. I just finished it. It deals with just about everything coming up in my fellow Christian mom conversations. How to talk helpfully with our kids about their changing bodies. How to talk about sex in developmentally appropriate stages. How to equip our kids with body knowledge that will make them less easy pickings for a predator. On that note, how to scope out the best childcare and class situations from an equipped perspective. And as my restaurant story reminds me, even if we are vigilant about what our kids consume, inevitably there’s some crappy exposure that pops up. Laurie and Matt give lots of practicals for prepping our kids for when those moments happen and for compassionately walking them through it afterwards. Throughout all these matters, the writers stand in the theological shadow of Christ and the Bride and what marriage images in Christ.

One big helpful frame from how I see the world (and the book says similar things) is that God made lots of good things. Satan can’t make things, he can only tarnish, break, and spoil good things. Let’s run the soap opera ick from earlier through this lens.

What’s the good thing at the foundation of a soap opera sex scene?

Intimacy. I believe God created sexual intimacy to bond men and women in marriage and to produce children, if they have them. So, connection, pleasure, bonding, new life.

When that concept gets de-coupled from that private bond, it gets weird. Most adults, including myself, are desensitized, but kids recognize it immediately. “Why is this person doing private things on TV? This is so uncomfortable.” I explained the actors were telling the story this way for money and attention and that it was a sad thing. We talked about the good thing they made a poor picture of. That seemed to help the most of everything I said. It’s also a lens that can be carried to many other things our kids go through. A world full of good things that can get tarnished by sin.

Reading “Raising Wise Kids…” inevitably brought up a host of awkward memories in me. But because tragedy + time = comedy, I’ll leave you with a joke of sorts. I was lucky. My parents showed up. They talked about sex, they helped me navigate coming-of-age, they put firewalls on the Internet browsers so I wasn’t absolutely gobbled by the dreck of the Internet, and they showed affection to each other. There were things missing from their ramshackle “curriculum,” but what was there was good. They would have talked about weird things people told me, but often I didn’t have the language or the wherewithal to go report anomalies to them.

So unfortunately, the first two people to tell me about 0ral sex were a 5-year-old (when I was 5) and a 13-year-old (when I was 12ish). That is the tragedy.

The comedy was 40-year-old me thinking indignantly yesterday, “Those were not subject matter experts at ALL!”

LOL, no lies told. Happy reading. And parenting. I’m cheering for you.