Episode 295 - Session 3 Age Appropriate Conversations - OCEAN Homeschool Conference, Albany, OR - June 2022

Episode 295's video link: https://youtu.be/-1gIvvaeUmY  

https://www.oceanetwork.org/ 

Welcome to healing Lives with Cory Gilbert, a podcast sponsored by the healing Lives center, discover how to love and lead your family well and biblically God created sex marriage and the family for our stewardship growth and benefit my heart and passion is to teach, train educate and disciple christians that want straw long marriages and families. The healing Life center has been serving christians since the year 2000. Its mission is to be a center for sex, trauma and marriage education and transformation where we offer counseling, coaching courses and speaking services to you, your church or ministry. Check us out at Healing lives dot com moms and dads, this is for you. This is a recording of a session I did at the home school conference in june 2022 in Albany Oregon, the ocean homeschool conference and this is session three age appropriate conversations. Alright welcome, welcome. So this session a little different than what we've done before today um the agent conversation we're gonna really literally focus on birth to 56 to 10, what do we talk about how and some of those kind of things so hopefully a very practical application QR code years to access the handouts that'll be later, they're not on there right now and then the record the video recording as well and some other stuff as I continue to do that. So welcome, welcome now, let me start with the story, these are my two boys of years ago Alex and blaze. Um most of us when we, when we go somewhere we tend to have an expectation about what's going to happen at a location. So I love to go skiing, this is who do one of our favorite places to go. It's the last day of the season. Um People were doing some crazy stuff, There's a few up top jumping off with hang gliders and doing some crazy stuff. People wearing um interesting clothes and outfits. Well there was a number of girls wearing um sports bras and my son was like, they're supposed to be wearing those, it's like wear whatever they want business, little kid. Um And so then he went up to one of the guys and said why is she wearing that? Because he's got no filter and he said because she's hot, he's like, so which one is it hot temperature or Anyway, so we went on the day or continued today and then all of a sudden down comes the girls topless, I'm like, oh great, this is gonna be fun, luckily Blaze was nowhere to be found. He did not see this because he would have had a heyday with that one. Instead it was Alex. So I chased after Alex and I get to the bottom of the slope and there's Alex just wide eyed because this was not a small young, small young lady, old lady was not a young lady um she was quite large and she had flown right past him so that I passed her back to him and it's like, so the first time he's like, yes, like how did you like it? I'm not gonna say that cancer. That just totally embarrassed just a horrible moment. He's just shocked. It's not what you expect if you think of what we do as parents, everything we're trying to do is trying to protect them from certain things. Did not expect to go skiing, that they have to have these conversations and what we're gonna see today is actually most everything that's gonna happen is gonna be almost happen outside of our purview or our ability to control, which is why we must be earlier rather than late. A lot of times what I'm seeing is most often we're airing on the side of too late. Even to this point to the point of that our Children will believe almost whatever they hear first. It's just scary to think about. So a number of years ago actually, it was two years ago, California mandated that all kindergartens have to teach all 15 genders. I'm not sure where they got 15 from because Facebook has 75-90 something and they're in California. So they haven't talked. I don't know if they haven't caught up yet, but parents are freaking out because if you live there, you kind of have to have six jobs to live. So you can't have a stay at home mom very easily or dad. So what do you do and then here's what I hear from parents? Well my child is too young for me to teach them but I'm gonna send them to school and they are so not too young for them, them whoever them is but they are too young to know. We need to reverse that. We need to be the ones if they're walking into that school or in that any situation we have prepared them um for what's what's next, Our experience influences our parenting, all of our experiences, do everything that we've been through for some of us, the reason why we actually homeschool, homeschool because of something that happened to us, things that actually harmed us and if we don't deal with those things we actually tend to pass that on in other ways of either over protection or other um setups that actually hurt that child as well. So we're literally today gonna talk through, what does God say about you and what does God say about others in the boundaries. Kind of looking at you and others in terms of these age appropriate conversations. Now I know some of you may not like movies may not like um you enjoy, I love movies, I love going to the movies, I love tv shows and you can't watch one nowadays, something it's really frustrating, so either inappropriate or something just downright wrong and almost everything and you have to make a decision as a family. So what do I do with that? How do I navigate that? I can either avoid it all all completely or there's lots of conversations that after we had the first time that we were watching The Voice. I love that tv show and these two kids get up to sing together and it was a guy and a girl except there were twin girls and one had transitioned and my son's like what we pause and have a conversation. Well, a number of years ago I took my kids to see this movie ready player one great movie. Really interesting movie. Um I have a I think it was like a 10 year old, eight year old and a six year old something around that age range two boys and a girl, like kids were watching this movie set in the future and basically people escape the crazy world they live in through VR so not too far away now where there another lovely Oculus, but there's this one scene that came in came on there that it's just like uncomfortable wasn't bad, but I'm uncomfortable as a dad sitting next to my two sons and my daughter. So after this was over, we get home, I asked them so separately, tell me about what you liked about this movie. And so this was the scene here is when she was there in the VR Personas and she's dressed in this really tight form dress really pretty well. My oldest son, he was just uncomfortable kind of like me. He was very aware that um and this is not, I'm not sure what to do with this, no place to put this in my head. Um My other son, there's a VR suits that they wear actually do pressure points on the body. So if you get hit somewhere you feel it in your body. So he just loved the scene with the guy kicked in the crotch and he got hurt through the R. And he just looked so funny. Just that was his, that's all he could think about. But my daughter was like, oh, what a beautiful dress. She just thought that was such a pretty dress. And to see all three of our kids are going to face these questions and these things at different ages when we talk as a family about these topics, we actually, we have a tend to have a room full of different age groups. You can't, you could, I guess if you have all sorts of time, segregate out, we're gonna talk to this age group here in the States group, then you have to keep notes by the way, records like a committee to know which kid if you talk to. What about No, we don't do that. What we do is we actually have conversations and the older kids tend to be the focus and the younger ones are kind of, there kind of like, even for today, when they're younger and they don't understand what's going on. They tend to just not understand what's going on. Like I really, we air on the other side, we're on the side of protecting them from versus preparing because when they're ready, they'll finally have a file folder to stick that information and it's like, it just kind of sits there waiting and they're not ready when I deal with kids who've been been sexually abused and I'm talking to the parents usually at this point it's preparing them for when their brain finally catches up to what actually happened to them physically. And when they finally come to an awareness, it's like, oh that's what that was. Oh, and then there's a 22 pathways, one of just going downhill introversion or acting out like crazy. It's like, it'd be nice to find either one of those and find a third alternative to what's gonna potentially happen. And so when we have these kinds of things, you and I all, we're all trying to navigate and decide what's the right thing I should do and what's, what's the wrong thing there, You can talk to our kids, you can talk to kelly and I so many examples where I can tell you, I probably do that different. We could all probably commit straight on the things that we would say, I would do different. But one thing I would say is critical is for you and I to see that a key responsibility is sex ed for our kids. It's way more than just sex ed is the whole idea of who you are, how you were made, how God made you the stuff we talked about earlier today. What does this include? This is what I why I wrote this. I can't say that book is really focusing on this is our responsibility. We need to learn about basic human sexuality, just how do things work. And most of us never learn this stuff I never did. And I got into this as I saw client after client not knowing what to do. And so I just kept studying and studying and studying and learning, saying for trauma, I don't have a history of trauma, became a passion because of so many clients with so much pain. And I'm going, I've got to learn to help and digging in and you each have your different areas of gifting and interest, but how can we come together as well and raise great Children. That actually key as an adult love the Lord in terms of who they are, we need to become a confident parent. But how do we do that is through knowledge is learning, we need to learn. So this, I can't say that book is actually about that. How do I as a parent know what I believe and then how do I then teach that age appropriate level, you know, a theology of Sex brain and sex brain and love theology of marriage, one of my favorite chapters in the book. My wife wanted me to delete. Um she was my editor is the one on the brain on sex and the brain of love. It's all these neuro, the neuroscience stuff, all the neurotransmitters and the hormones and it's like all of nerdy. Um and what does it show? It shows a beautiful design by incredible creator. That's what I love about that, why we do what we do is for a reason and because of the design when we understand it, it's like, oh, that makes sense why we do that example. Um we tend to say men are pigs when it comes to dating our affairs like acting out well yeah, more men in the past long time in the past would have affairs and less women accept who they were, they having it with another whole subject until the Industrial revolution happened as the woman left the farmhouse and she started going out to the workforce. The adultery rates for the wives increased as well. The truth is, we're all a mess. You need to be careful with some of these stereotypes even use um I have clients who have, he's had the affairs of clients where she has like it's an equal opportunity employer here. We need to understand how were made and then a belief system and that's a really important thing now for you and I and the point of this is either I do or someone else does you've got to make that decision. What I am seeing in my practice is the decision has been made. I'm gonna let the school, I'm gonna let the internet, I'm gonna let porn, I'm gonna let friends, I'm gonna let everyone else go there because my kids not a teenager yet, Like actually when your kid turns 11 or 12, we're pretty much done parenting. If you didn't know that In the way that you think of parenting. If you don't pivot at that 11 or 12 age you're now fighting against basically current. Sometimes if you don't change the way you approach them because you're releasing them little by little and they know it all. If you didn't know that they know it all. So you have to prepare them for that stage. And so when you prepare them it's in the single digits, it's gonna be when they're younger. So let's look through these these ages. So what does God say about you and I'm going to put this into two categories you and others. Um here, so birth to five, we're gonna kind of use that as the first category two of our kiddos. We like to cover the blood in the beginning. What do we talk to our kids about? They need to understand basic Anatomy. Basic Anatomy. And here's the piece without basic anatomy correct body part vocabulary. Why is this important? It's more important for later when there's trauma and the vocabulary has been taught, it's much easier to cut as much as understood when there's not the vocabulary, they're so much more gets actually missed as an adult because we don't understand what they're saying. My daughter one time was saying, my bottom hurts, my bottom hurts, my bottom hurts holding her front. She didn't have a word for it. And then my wife goes, why didn't know what to call it? It's a Volvo, you say vagina, but that's the inside. We need to know what to call it. And we get embarrassed by these words and said, no, we need to teach them at one and two. This is how you're made. This is a beautiful part of how you're made. And then there are boundaries around that. This is an interesting one. Be sure not to stereotype what is boy or girl but emphasized they are a boy or girl. A lot of our young people are growing up going, there's something broken with me because I'm not doing what other boys do or other girls do or because I like this, there's something wrong with me and because our culture is so good. It's saying then therefore you must be something you're not because there's no one, no man is trans, transition to a woman and no woman has transitioned to man that's impossible. Um, we don't, we aren't, we are a male or female by birth that can have very different ways to express who we are and how we live that out and that they were loved by God and their family. These are the key kind of foundations about them that we actually start with, Not when they're 6, 7, 8. This is the beginning now in that birth to five, what are some other key parts of this about others, recognizing that others and their bodies are different. You're gonna start helping them notice that you're gonna use shows and movies use friends, you're gonna use each other, but how, how to recognize that there's a difference there and then begin teaching of appropriate touch towards and from others. This is when the seeds are planted on this before age five. Why at 87 by age seven, they're full identity is in place, the full personality is replaced, which is crazy to think about by age seven. This is mark. This season is marked by curiosity and exploration, curiosity, exploration. This is what this is about. They're not broken when they're curious and exploring yet. I feel like what we do is we tend to think that interactions trying to correct them when it's like, no, they're being to there being four, there being five, so understanding what's even normal and appropriate. So this is just the beginning. This is the one I feel like you miss a lot, but the next one is where I feel like you missed the most. So this is that window where you're building a foundation as a mom and dad, as a leader as a parent for what needs to happen in 6-10. This is probably the most important category or space or time frame and in your child's development. So what happens here? More descriptive anatomy? You're upping the game about what kind of the way we talk about bodies understand the body. Um, we had a conversation recently where we're talking about, um, was it, um, circumcision, circumcision, circumcision. And so it was actually fun, pull out the anatomy book and here's what it is. You know, we didn't disrobe. We didn't do anything inappropriate. We used resources we have and talk through what is it why? And then talk about, hey, there's a debate about it and on and on and on. Your planting seeds. Some of you can probably give more data than others about what you've researched to learn about some of these things, depending on your field of expertise or passions or interests. This is a season where we're actually really gonna be talking about sexual identity and was noticed we aren't even an adolescent yet. We are not an adolescent ship. We're talking here about a foundation. We hear from young people at a time. I've always felt different since I was single digits. That's a very normal part of see people's story. Okay, so we need to go back there and talk about. So what is it that came out there And what we're really seeing is a lot of our struggle and sexual identity and Jordan Peterson recently really said it? Well, he said it's personality. We need to stop calling it, what they're calling it or what the culture is calling it, Its personality. I am a love, I crochet, cross stitch. I love music. I have a bachelor's of music, I'm very much that artsy kind of world and in the end I'm still the guy, I'm still the guy just like a woman who loves to hunt and loves to fish and loves to mud and love all that kind of stuff isn't because she likes that. Maybe she's in the wrong body. We need to be really careful because our culture is pushing something that is downright harmful. So how do we engage in that? We have to catch this earlier? We need to go into this other really, really hard conversation at this age. The N word, We need to talk about masturbation and how we actually talk about it really is important. If it's this is bad, this is simple. You're going to hell, I promise you, your kid will suffer, suffer in silence and they will not talk to you versus it. Being a conversation. I actually asked my sons about what their masturbation practices every few weeks or so. Do they answer me no, they did when they were younger, but what do they tell, what do I do by asking the question, It actually moves it out of their unconscious to the conscious and they have to decide, do I take my thoughts captive? Do I steward this or I just do something passively as a habit, it gives them a chance to steward something that really just tends to fly under the radar by asking these questions. You need a theology of this as part of what I have in my book, is both of them, Is this how do I talk through this? Really? How? It's a controversially tense topic. When I started teaching in Georgia, I had um the counselor was on stage doing Q and A the students, I'm like second year teacher and the question of masturbation came up and the counselor actually said this from stage in front of 1000 students, Oh ask dr Gilbert about that, he's an expert at that. So I had a lot of students going backward, which you're an expert in. Thanks. That's really embarrassing way. I think I was 30 actually 30 31. So it's like, wow, this is really not good. We need to know how to talk through this. And one of the kind of a simple summary of the way I talk through this is we need to stop, just say, hey, this is sin, stock your hand, move on, we need to help you Stuart what's happening in your head heart and the fantasy and when I engage in this practice and I actually growing closer to who I'm fantasizing about getting further away and when I start consciously thinking about this, I'm getting further away and now I have a choice. Do I want to get closer to this person or further away? And now I actually have the choice and I tend to hear from most of the guys and girls I talked to actually don't want to do it as much anymore. Like I actually, in stewarding now have choice now where it felt like it was some beast within that couldn't couldn't control. That's because it was in the unconscious and I just had it. And a lot of what's happening for us is just having the same for even pornography. This is a stage of talking about dignity and modesty. You each of your families are gonna outline what does that mean for your son or your daughter, how you dress and how you present yourself? My daughter gotta pack a whole bunch of hand me down clothes at one point and my wife pulls out this sports bra and she's like, so is this gonna be what what's the rule or a home and underclothes only or she can wear this around the house, which is fine when they're little. We're also planting seeds as they grow up. And so my comment was that under clothes and it becomes we set the tone. So do you, I feel like we don't tend to do it thoughtfully. We just kind of let it happen, but this is that stage prior to the fight later on about whether something is inappropriate or not. You're, you're planning seeds as to what our home expects if you will. And then it's a dialogue as they get older, especially past this age. Um, this is a time of negotiating back and forth as they have their own personality and opinion and you're wanting to relate to them. You have the veto card as a parent. But how do I draw them to their own? Um, not to believe what you believe exactly, but to think through what they're doing pornography, The average age that a kid sees porn is in the single digits. We don't wait til they're 10, 11, 12 to start talking about this. Now, many of our families, maybe that's not the case because of the way we've set up media at home or access to stuff. Great. It's gonna happen at some someplace. And actually most of the time it's somewhere outside the, the tight rained web of control that you've created as a parent, It's sitting in the hallway at youth group at church or at the pastor's house or somewhere. You never would have guessed that somebody pulls out a device and start looking at something and you need to have helped them think through that when that happens, their immediate response is, hey, we don't do that. It's not curiosity. It's not intensity, curiosity apparently discussed in the first time for many boys and girls, but then curiosity tends to trumpet help them see that no, we don't treat people that way. We have a boundary. Why you've already prepped them Talking through. This is something that is a misuse of people. Now, one of the places we're going in our culture with this is, I don't know if you've heard of ethically sourced pornography. So welcome to, I guess it's like free range chickens. I don't know. So it's not people who have been trafficked or abused or, but this is scary trying to normalize what even secular culture is saying. You know what, this is a health hazard. This is a bad thing for our world. Even secular researchers are saying this is a bad idea as they just keep getting pushed more and more and more and more. It's just normalized even and among our kids in the circle of friends that they have in ours, all of our kids, some of those kids because of where they have or haven't had these conversations. It's very much either normal if not pushed. So that's something we have to be preparing them for to think through to steward, even though we would really wish to say they're not old enough, they're not, you're not, we shouldn't have to deal with this, but it's the world we live in. So we need to prep them. Another one is periods and what dreams prep. It blows our mind. The amount of women I've talked to who they thought they were dying. No young lady should come to that age and think they're dying. They should have had conversations to know what's coming next, how my wife's in the bathroom on her period and my daughter is going, what is she doing? And my son is standing right there and it's, well, she's having her period and that's explaining what it's what happens and why and God's design and they go, they go through, they have the reactions, but it becomes something that's just a normal part, not an assault on myself. Whereas I've heard from so many. I literally found myself somewhere thinking I'm dying. That's not okay. Wet dreams. The young young men need to know what this is and have been explained and talked through it and helping normalize that. So they're prepared for what's going to happen. And they're also not messed up with that gender. You are a boy or a girl doesn't matter how many of you under your onesie doesn't mean your onesie. It doesn't matter if you want to dress a certain way. It doesn't matter what you wanna do. I love putting on my grandmother's house, the high heels and all that stuff with my million female cousins that whatever they did to dress me up as a little kid. That doesn't mean you're not a boy or a girl means you're playing a game. So be careful. But yet what I see is these families who have changed the decor of their home and their kids bedroom bought new clothes, bought toys and it's like that kid didn't have a job, mom and dad did that and they cater to something that's a lie. And now we got even a bigger problem we had before to be really careful to guide and lead them even though it sounds and feels unloving. We need to talk to each of our sons and daughters and how you are fearfully wonderfully made and how you live that out. It's gonna be different than maybe someone else because we're constantly comparison comparing. We begin this stage talking about sexual reproduction as well, how late out there, there's actually a box set and I'll have a link on my blog and my blog got messed up. So to redo it, but there's a box set of what we have, the books we had on our shelf, age appropriate kind of little picture book. It's a great set where the kids who just pulled off the shelf, start talking about it. Really, really good. And sometimes we would go find the book and pull up, pull off the shelf and talk to our kids. Remember the first time Alex came up asked a question, we pulled the book out actually, kelly said Corey Help and we pulled the book out, read it and he's like, okay, off the plane, like, but then the next time he asked the same question and he's like, oh like it's like it finally landed, you're, you're wanting to be ahead of that curve, not behind that curve where he said maybe asking questions where you shouldn't or google or Alexa or somewhere else. Um and the important thing about this stage is personality of sevens don't have age seven who they are and here's the even creepier thing. What is going to change that personality after the age of seven? Drama, trauma careful what you pray for and actually sometimes that is what we need to pray for. We need to pray for our son or daughter. Be broken to get it. I'd rather than break here to come to christ than to live a life apart from you. So it's like we should be careful what you pray for but be intentional by, by seven years old. Some parents are still trying to find sleep like it's an elusive thing and they're trying to, it's just survival, which is why we need one another. We need our churches, we need family relationships. We're not supposed to do this alone now the same stage. What about others? We need to be planting the seeds at this stage. What this whole boyfriend girlfriend thing is. What are your rules? What is your parameters for this when our kids were that young? Our conversation was you could start dating when you're a junior or senior in college at that age, they're like whatever. They don't know what that even means. And then our oldest gets 12, 13. He starts liking girls. And it's like okay, passport purity. What did that actually at nine did that with him. And we have these conversations and then he starts being interested in girls. And so how do you handle that? Well he knows it's not a rule but you can't it's careful expecting you have to and then when you do start actually being serious with someone and we're all going to differ on what that age should be. What's next? What are the boundaries? Can you only do? Only spend time at someone's house. You know? Can you go out by yourself when they turn 16 and they can drive what is it? You're planting these seeds? Not at 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 you're doing it and then single digits. So that when you get here you're having less of a battle because we are having for many of us our adolescent years or a battle of the will or because I'm the parent card between careful of. So at this point you need to be planting the seeds of what is our family's expectations of boyfriend girlfriend. That's a note that here the boundaries or this seems to be done. Um I if you have a daughter already ready to have my a r. table and tell the young man. Alright put it back together and see how that goes over. She's 11. So not there yet. Another one that we actually need to talk about the masturbation piece but from the others. What about other people? It's not just a personal thing and we need to externalize this that when you do this yourself, how did this impact? Because I kind of mentioned earlier other people in relationships and so this comes up here on the others because it's a boundary to need to see that my choice actually impacts how I relate to other people. I say I want to get closer to him or her. What I'm doing is actually making me go further and further away my heart. So when I'm aware that I'm more in control if you will trauma and abuse. Another really, really important area we talked about in the beginning an earlier age that we actually prepped in terms of vocabulary. It's for this every time my kids stayed with a babysitter when they left and I would tell my these were students in Georgia, they were students of mine. And so they knew that because I would say this in class that when they left I would ask my sons and daughter about anyone touch you didn't change your diaper? Did anyone at these earlier ages. I wasn't looking for them to tell me the truth. I knew that was far fetched. I was looking for them to change the way they were answering me because then I know something happened one day I came home. We came home and our lovely amazing babysitter was like freaked out. He's like your son, I deleted it already, but your son took my phone and took a picture of his penis. What in the world. So sometimes your kids would just be nuts but intended on that work. Anyway, she deleted the pictures supposedly. Um, that's gonna happen. You wanna prep even like my babysitters, our college students, they knew that I was gonna do that. It wasn't something covert, kind of like the teddy bear cam. It wasn't that they know and we have cameras around our house mainly aimed at screens so I can pull my phone out and check and see what's on the screen in our house. And that's what we've given us freedom to. We're here without our kids, which is kind of nice pornography is another one that also applies. What about others And these stages were preparing for what we also don't want to ever have to happen. I'd love for you never look at pornography. I'd love for you never have trauma. I would love for you to never be abused. But the reality is that many will we want to prepare them to not freeze. Fight flight is great. We don't want freeze. So we want to be able to prepare them by teaching some of these skills, which is really important When it comes to pornography. We Wanna teach about where, where this stuff is coming from and the human trafficking and things like that. Oh, they're too young. No, they're not when at this age they start connecting the little boys and little girls just like me gets Dolan off the I-5 corridor right here from parking lots along this. They start seeing the world a little different. You're not there to scare them and you be careful. Every kid's got a different sensitivity level. But helping them see that this is a world that we need to be smart to be wise to do things in twos to be in groups to be careful with that. How do I be a friend? What does that look like? This is again that stage where they're learning and they're, they're relating who first to mom and dad, who else siblings. And then it goes, it gets the circle gets bigger and bigger. We moved here to Oregon from Georgia. We realized like our kids, their whole world was that one little house in Georgia that we lived in. It's kind of neat and weird to think about their whole world was that house church, but they were so little. There's not much else that they did and to see that they not only drove across country, which we've done tons of times since, but their world was expanding and that's what we want. We want the world to expand. We want more control over it probably than um, than not. But another really important part of this section is they are under authority. This is so critical that these young men and young women actually really call them boys and girls that are rioting and throwing chairs through windows in Portland and Seattle places. They need spankings first of all, but they need parenting. What's missing is no, we don't do that basic stuff that shows where we have failed culturally where we can go, hey, we can really do a really good job of this. Um that they are under authority. All authority, how they treat a police officer, any anyone, their teachers, even a teacher, They disagree with how they treat authority And then it starts at home mom and dad that's a biblical mandate. This um stage is marked by experimentation and pushing of boundaries yet. We haven't even gotten down to lessons yet. So think about that. Those that have raised kids know very much what I'm talking about. Many of us, my mom and dad, we wouldn't even have these talks until after these ages. This is this ain't Kansas no more. It is time to really be intentional and prepare and protect, prepare them for what they're gonna face sometimes right around the corner. I've talked to young women who in their own parents house. Um, around the corner from mom and dad as in feet around the corner they were assaulted by your neighbor friend. This isn't they went to some far off place or was it some scary dark dark alley. It was right there in front of, around the corner from someone who thought they were, you can't be all eyes all there all the time protecting them. So at a young age we want to prepare them to be to make decisions, to make judgment calls even though in the end we would say, oh they're not ready. I agree yet. It's kind of funny to watch how they actually do step up and they do, which is really cool. Now we get into age 11-17. So now this is when we actually might start maybe thinking of considering having the talk uh and your kid goes so long and what do you want? What do you want to know? They're ready to tell us about sexting. We haven't heard of that before. Or mom, have you seen Tiktok and they're completely addicted to all sorts of crazy stuff and we're clueless if we haven't been monitoring those things and trying to stay on top of what our kids are facing. When I wrote this book to I I put micro conversations through the whole thing. I love that phrase and then I realized later a lot of them are conversations, There are many lectures so careful to not expect a dialogue. A lot of parents I talked to. This is why I kind of came to my mind was they they say well I try to engage and they would engage. Don't let that stop you. You telling them the truth or teaching them something. And they have zero response doesn't mean it didn't land. So plant the seeds, plant the seeds, have those little mini lecture conversations. If they talk, that's a bonus. Most of our kids when something goes wrong, they're probably not going to talk to us if yours is a kid that came to you and expressed someone touched me or someone did this, your anomaly. That's not normal that the kid goes and tells mom or dad. So be thankful for that. We need to prepare them to go talk to someone. Um, they might find they have a better relationship with their youth pastor or their small group leader in the youth group or their coach and you want to be able to curate and know who those people are when our, one of our sons at one point fessed up to having seen pornography. Um, he did it in a small group of church and what does most of his small group leader do, he said, so are you gonna tell them or am I? And it went up to change their, the youth pastor and the youth pastor to us. And he already told us. Um, but it was awesome. We're like, thank you those, thank you, thank you for loving our son enough to not just go, okay, this is private. Now we're gonna keep it, which is what I'm hearing from so many groups. Youth groups Now this age right here 11-17, this is the age you want to hang on for dear life. It shouldn't be. This is a young adult in a sense. But then five minutes later they're crying too. So it's kind of this maybe it's just bipolar, I don't know, were all diagnosed bipolar in this stage. Um, there's a really good book that talks about this stage of being the age of opportunity trip, maybe not such a great concept. This should be the time when you're building a relationship with them and helping them expand their tools and their experiences and their their set of skills and what they can do. This is a time of identity, but it's not just the sexual part. Who am I? How do I dress? How do I present myself? How tough am I? How sweet am I? How strong am I? How you name it? These are different struggles that our our teens are struggling with and trying to figure out that they are fearfully and wonderfully made to understand the bible and what it says and then how that applies to God did not make a mistake and put you in the wrong body at all. So what you gonna do with that very different message than what he's what he or she has been given elsewhere. That as a body, your body is a temple, as a believer. Every sin you commit is outside your body. You know what I just said? You're not a mistake. You're not trapped in their own body, but you have a personality. This is how God made you. What are you gonna do with that? And I feel like especially the last two years, there's so many young people who have no clue. I didn't take the next step because stuff has been stolen from them, ripped from them, taken from them more. I believe the pandemic is starting now. It's mental health, shake some bias there, look at the data, it's terrifying suicide. The amount of a s that never should have shut down because it was a choice between I'm going to die of Covid, I'm gonna die of my addiction and they died of their addiction. Like this is what's happened. We know that. How are we gonna fix that? It starts a lot with our home, but also then prepping our kids to maybe sometimes be the person someone else leans on, especially in this stage of life, which is really difficult. And we're continuing to develop that understanding of sexual reproduction. What does it mean when we talk about sex, it's all fun and games in a lot of the way it's sold and talked about every bit of it. It's all fun. It's like, no, sex is meant to make a baby every time by the way, every time we have intercourse. Now, thank goodness. It doesn't. We have a lot of babies, but the design is so then it blows my mind how many people are scratching their heads. I don't know how he got pregnant. So we need to be able to talk about this the way that the number one thing that comes out of this is a baby design but other benefits is it's supposed to be a fun time, supposed to be a good thing. It's supposed to be a beautiful thing and it has boundaries. It has a context. There's a place for this outside of that. It's actually I brace my heart to think of how many wonder how many kids they have or wonder what is happening. What scares me even more guys and girls, this is not an equal opportunity employer here. What is the most feared STD? Mhm. Hey, this is the first one that comes up is number nine on the list for eight other ones that are worse. Which is like that one cause it's hip and popular. Just kidding babies. Number one is babies. We treat them like they're just some accident. Oops, I have a script, scratch your itch. What's scary is some of those top ones media and things like that have zero symptoms. And when you finally find out when you're trying to have kids when you're married. If you have it more than once and again, this is women, your potential, your potential for being able to have a baby goes into like the 20% and a radical hysterectomy is next. This is not fair. So then I would say, guys, this is on men to step up and be the man and actually never, ever, ever, ever put a woman in that kind of position. Mhm. It's on them. And biblically, that's actually exactly the design of marriage. But the ownership of this is on the men. What actually is the reality? The man pushes and pushes and pushes and who's having to constantly say no and say no and say no. It's horrifying. So how we teach this, what kind of man are you gonna be is really, really critical? How do you refrain from sexual immorality? Does that look like temptation? Hey, that's normal desire. Yeah, that's, that's there no matter what age you are. How do you manage social media? There's a really easy way to manage social media by the way. It's called not having it. Um I used to get Corbin, I would always create a facebook group with our freshmen coming in. It's been actually really cool. The amount of freshmen coming in don't have facebook mainly to mom and dad around there. But um, it's changing. But what's scary is they're moving to probably worse places with Snapchat and Tiktok basically some of the most popular and what's happening. We're losing our kids. Actually, some of you are lost to your relationship with your phone is a little more intimate than your spouse. So just saying, we need to be careful and we're not always the best example of that. So managing social media what you do or don't do what you do and don't post some of you need to stop commenting on other people's stuff because you're just starting a fire and stop it and go play with the kids or something, go do something different. But we have become the example and we need to talk through this with them because at some point you're gonna have to probably let them have something. When is that? Well, here's what I'm seeing. I'm seeing a lot of homeschool families who is boundary boundary boundary there, 18. Alright, leave the house and now it's everything is available. I don't have mom and dad now so I can get a phone. Never had a phone before. Now I can get social media I never had before. Now I get and they're going crash in the brain because everything is fair game. We need to be careful how we navigate this to help them make decisions within our purview. So then we then take away those, they're actually making wise decisions. So how you manage that's really difficult. Who are their idols and who influences them. Really, really important. A lot of it, whether it's a movie star or whether it's a Tiktok performer or a youtuber. Um These these people are important. What do they represent? What are they teaching dating courting further defined boundaries at this point. What does that look like? The session I did before. We talked through kind of a design about? And again we have pornography. This doesn't change. This is something to steward and to understand the effects. And this stage is marked by experimentation and identity Erickson stages of development from psychobabble stuff. This is the stage of identity formation. What it is neat to see that way back when was still identified as that and we're still kind of in the same space although We create adolescence and that goes to what 17, 18, 19 maybe? Or does it go to 30? Like that's even changed where you think of a few generations ago, how many were married at 14 and running the household? And it was normal, It wasn't like an overburdened thing. So we've changed a lot and need to adapt to those changes. And there's some expectations to you probably can expect more out of your 12-13 year old than you realize chores that kind of stuff starts at home. How are you treating others? This is again how how did they live this out? What does the bible say not mom and dad and social media. So getting them back to the bible. What that what it says, deepening their identity? Are you kind respectable, respectful? What is your work ethic is being played out? How do you love and talk to have relationships with men and women who are L. G. B. T. Q. I. Plus something we never even conceived of when we were kids. How do you love? How do you? And love is not endorsed. Love has not become a ally. Love is not um, put a flag in front of your house, Love is not all these things that have become love is saying, I love you so much, I'm calling you to a higher basically level, but here's what scripture says and your life will be way better here, which is really important to be aware of decisions that cannot be unmade, supposedly our prefrontal cortex isn't developed till What age? 25. How many knuckleheaded stuff have we done in high school and college? It's like, that's scary where you go to school matters the kind of parties you do or don't go to matter the kind of relationships you make matter and there are some decisions you can make that you can't unmake and so being able to really intentional curating your life, being careful that and you're helping them do that maintain integrity of your convictions and what God is saying, we need to know God's word. This is really, really critical now today from this, I spent less time on scripture. I did more of that earlier in the two sessions today because today was more of these topics. What do we say, what we talk about? Um this is what we're seeing more of, this is the norm. My wife and I were at a restaurant not too long ago and we looked over and there was six or eight college students and they had a stack of iphones on the end of the table. It's awesome. There was one girl who was orchestrating this. So it shows you can, you can influence your friends when they went to the bathroom, she passed out all the phones because one of them makes a noise and they all look at them and they check their phones and they won. The last person came back from the bathroom that she's given back piled up on the end. Like we need friends like that, that's a leader of and they're leading in the right direction that too many of us are not present. And they've even shown research that your phone, if it's just sitting out in front of you, you're showing you're not present, it's more important than you are put it away. You know, you could also do what my wife doesn't just lose it all the time. But what do we do with this? So we can kind of give you three words and then kind of some list to kind of finish this here. Um put this together a couple years ago thinking about these the, I guess plan that I would want for you for your kids. The first is a vision. If we don't we don't have where we wanna go, it's kind of hard to make decisions today. We just kind of weakened kind of just going halfway and I want to focus in on a vision for growth and maturity. So what are those things that need to be given to our sons and daughters to help them navigate? They will make their decisions. But I want to plant these, It's a biblical picture of masculinity and femininity. What are their spousal standards, sexual boundaries And you know, this is one narrow path, there's lots of other ones. So I'm not talking about how you're gonna manage money or all that other stuff. This is really critical as the area. I spend most of my time in. What does it look like to be a man to be a woman, to be a husband, to be a wife. What do you expect? What are your absolutes? We would not do. And then where do we get this from? And this is where you and I come in as moms and dads, we develop a code at home. What does that? Family code in our home come look like? We need to have rites of passage, significant tasks, logical consequences into trace deposits are home needs to be a place where we actually helped celebrate the milestones that our kids are going through. We're one of the few countries that doesn't have some really serious you are now no longer a boy, you're a man, you're now no longer a girl, you're a woman. I remember being in seminary walking down the hall of the girls dorm. I was an electrician there and you're supposed to yell what man in the hall. And I was like boy on the whole, I didn't even say the word man because I was like, oh, I don't know. There needs to be logical consequences. Some of you are too soft, toughen up. There needs to be some natural consequences. Call the cops maybe, but maybe preferably you handle some things first now just let things happen. There needs to be things that they do. There needs to be actually Grace. Our pastor mentioned recently how we've done a really good job of moving more towards grace. We've also gotten away from obedience and years and years and years ago when he started, it was all about obedience and not a lot of grace pendulum and be careful with that. I don't know why I put this in here, but I thought it was really cool. Your son hates us. We won't let him play football, but we like his brain. So he decided to karate now and he's gonna say, so play in college. We'll see. And then the 3rd 1, cause what does this look like finding a cause to fight for, how are you going to impact or going or we're going to impact others for the better. It's really cool to look at a young person who knows they want to be a doctor, I wanna be this or want to be that. That's such a cool, it's so also cool to see how many don't become that. Um because God has a different plan. My goal was to be a missionary and go back to south America and work in the music and you have to have talent. So I didn't know that. I tried to go that direction. Um and I had passion and I see how God used that to turn corners and take me to the next step. The next step. You need to help your child find that. And it may not be you who's doing a lot of that navigating maybe actually other people you're curating, you're bringing into the fold if you will and you want to be the one that helps do that. Not kind of just whatever happens or whatever group they end up at. Um this also goes for us, Why are you doing what you're doing? Some of you have jobs, you hate some of you have jobs you hate but you love the job because it provides the money to do this stuff you love and you have a good balance there. Some of you just hate your job and your life and everything else. That's a problem. Like you created it. I see couples, it's like we hate each other. It's like great, you created this marriage blame who you, hey, how are we gonna fix this? We need to change our tactics and learn that. I can choose to love you or I can choose not to. That scares me. It scares me, I have that free will I choose to love you or I choose not to. This passage really hit me years ago and just keep coming back to the what is our call and then we're going to raise our sons hours to do teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect self control. Likewise teach the older women reverend in the way they live and then they can train the young women to love their husbands and Children and to be self controlled and pure, similarly encourage young men to be self controlled, live self controlled, upright and Godly lives in this present age. I think I sense a theme in that and I need to actually be in control of myself, not others do and I just react or I just am own have take responsibility become the young man, young woman that you choose to be and that's again when you get that vision and you have reasons to actually gets a lot easier to make decisions and to become the man or woman that God calls you to do and I just threw that in there because it's a cool picture now I did this session earlier but this is a created this seminar less sex dating and marriage and it goes through these four areas and it's for this purpose, it's about seven hours long, but it's looking at dating and then looking at questions to ask and things we talked about earlier. But then a picture of, so let me paint a picture of what marriage could be like and when I get that locked in, I actually look at my decisions today and realized I'm settling for playing with play doh versus actually having something amazing. I actually wait. I need to have a reason to and a lot of times we do is try to scare kids with pictures of stds in health class or you might get pregnant. But when you know everything and you're immune to any consequences. Adolescence then doesn't land. But when you develop a vision for yourself, it's funny how my decisions today, I own them And I'm actually a little more protective of that. And this last one, the number one area that we can predict the future marriages outcome, which is scary, John Gottman says with a 94% accuracy is how you handle conflict and they're learning it from us first by the way. So we're the first examples of that and so helping teach them how to engage in debate, engage in conflicts and disagree, but also be respectful and B is a critical skill to help them grow up into the mainland and that they, we want them to be. So the statement again that I'll keep saying either I do or someone else does just actually scary to think about or the weights on us are you gonna make mistakes? We all are actually. We get that out of the way. We can realize that I can choose to make the mistakes and give my kids probably the best gift I can give them. Say I'm sorry and ask ask for forgiveness and be teachable. We don't want to be some parent that seems to have it all together and the kid looks at and goes well, I can't be like them to forget everything. Them and their god, they show fallibility were much more real for them to actually listen to and watch because they are watching 12, that's my son blaze. Thank you very much. Thanks for having.

Thank you for tuning in to the HealingLives with Corey Gilbert podcast. It has been an honor to serve if you're struggling have questions or in need. Dr Gilbert offers a free consultation for new clients. Check us out at healing lives dot com to book a call. If this has been helpful to you, please share it, leave a review and help us get the word out so that we can see lives changed marriage is transformed and more people come into our life changing relationship with Jesus christ. The HealingLives Center offers online courses, programs, books intensive and other services to help you live biblically and well discover more resources on Youtube. And then Dr Gilbert's healing marriage facebook group, the Healing Marriage.