Let me make this perfectly clear. I am all for abstenence.I am a Christian and I believe that we should teach our girls to wait until marriage to become sexually active. I also believe that we are kidding ourselves in today’s society if we think that will work for all of our girls.

I was in sixth grade when I started to be aware of sexuality in a specific way. Before then, I knew what sex was but only in a rudimentary fashion. I knew what went where and that’s pretty much where it began and ended. I remember Doug Van Clean and Donny Tucco asking me if it was true that girls ‘tits’ got hard when they were ‘horny’. Ok, to start with, I wasn’t really all that sure what horny was. I did know what tits were, as I had two of them myself. Did they get hard? Were they serious? I pictured my entire breast getting hard. In my head, not always a safe place, I stood in front of a mirror with torpedo like boobs sticking out of my chest. In my imaginative state, I knocked on them and a resounding bass echo shattered the quiet. I was a percussionist in our band and I imagined the sound of a bass drum being hammered on loudly. Was that going to hurt? How long did it last. This was gross. Boys are dumb. I answered, quite vehemently, that NO, this did not happen. Geez.

My second brush with sexual schooling, if you will, was from Rob Freestone. He and another boy, I think it was a Runyan boy, were talking about what I later learned was fellatio. What I heard was the phrase ‘giving head’. I went home and asked my mother what that was. She asked me if I knew what a head was, I said yes and she said “Put your mouth on it.” OH MY GOD!!! That was NEVER going to happen. What is WRONG with people?? I didn’t want to hear anymore. I never wanted anything to do with sex. Ever.

That sentiment was short-lived.

My daughter’s knowledge of sexuality far surpasses mine. Although I still keep a short leash on her, I do worry about what she will do when the time comes and she has to make these decisions. She comes home and tells me things that go on at her school and what boys say and do now. Every boy asks for ‘nudes’ or naked pictures. You would be surprised at the amount of girls who will do this. My daughter is in 8th grade! She has no questions for me. In fact, if I needed any pointers, I could probably just ask her. There is no shock value for any of this to her. She tells me that a classmate, who is 14, is pregnant. She knows a girl who is pregnant by a 24-year-old. Kids are getting hand jobs in class and having sex in the bathrooms. She states all of this in such a matter of fact way. Oh, sure, the drama factor is there, but no surprise. How did this happen? How do we slow this down? Can we slow this down?

Sexuality is rampant in our culture. TV, movies, literature, music, social media, we are drowning in it. My daughter is drowning in it. So how do I make her understand that this is something sacred, something that she should only share with her husband? I have thought and thought about this. I have talked to my daughters and their friends. I have talked about STD’s and teen pregnancy. They learn about it in school.  They learn the basics and they learn about condoms, even being taught how to put a condom on. They use a banana. Can you imagine doing this in class at school. I would have laughed hysterically and I would have failed the class.

I think I know what we are missing. I think that I know what we ought to be teaching. Parents, schools, youth groups, we should all be teaching the same thing.

How it makes you feel.

No one ever tells you that when you are promiscuous, you have a hollow, empty feeling inside. So you sleep with another guy, because this one will be different. No one tells you that when you are older, you will regret this. Not the gross warts on your hooha, but the sick at your stomach feeling when you realize how used you were during what should have been the innocent part of your life. No one tells you about the embarrassment  you will feel when you run into a man and his wife in the grocery store and you imagine he’s thinking about the last time he saw you. Not at the Homecoming game 20 years ago, but after, in the parking lot, with most of your clothes off and your hair a mess, smelling like beer and cigarettes. No one tells you of the humiliation of his buddies showing up, exchanging knowing glances and the raucous laughter that follows you to your front door.

No one tells you of the hurt and the shame you will feel. Everyone leaves out the disappointment you will experience when the man you finally fall in love with asks you if you are a virgin and you have to say no.

I never had an STD, I wasn’t a teenage mother, I didn’t sneak to the clinic to be put on birth control for my ‘period cramps’. People didn’t know that I wasn’t careful or caring about who I slept with. No one knew of the hole I was trying to fill with sex and was in reality, just digging a much deeper hole.

As a mother, when my daughters encounter a situation, I always think of what place I was in when I was their age. What would have kept me from the mistakes that I made? I think some really plain talk about why they acting out in this way and addressing the ramifications of it. No one ever told me that.

I want my daughters to be proud. Proud of their bodies, proud of their virtue. I want them to feel whole. Talk to your daughters. Talk to your youth group leaders. See if you can open a dialogue in a safe atmosphere and be real. While diseases and pregnancy are important points that need to be taught to our daughters, we need to teach them self-worth. I honestly think that if young girls knew what they were doing to themselves emotionally, what they were doing to their souls, they might take a minute and decide to say no. Young girls need to know that sex will never get or keep a guy. We are teaching the wrong things. Maybe if we talked about these things, everything might change. Maybe not. But really, what can it hurt? We are in the middle of the biggest blizzard we have ever had, and our snowball is a runaway mess that we aren’t able to stop. I don’t want my daughters to experience the regret that I feel. Intimacy, not sex, should be what our daughters learn about. How else are we ever going to change things?

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