A talk ‘about this’ constitutes rather a serious challenge for parents.
Because besides confusion it also evokes uncertainty: how do we explain it in the right way, how do we avoid telling too much and bringing harm. Father Dmytro Romanko has told about the details of such delicate topic in the broadcast ‘Evening Dialogues with a Pastor’ on Live Radio “Voskresinnia’
Читай українською: Чи варто говорити з дітьми про секс?
— We live in the period when any information can be found at one click of a mouse. And our children here this word even earlier than we think. That is why it is worth talking it over as soon as possible, without waiting for teenage years.
The situation among Greek-Catholic youth of pre-marital life age is that 93-94% of those getting ready for marriage have already had sexual relations. Even more of them tolerate contraception. Over 60% are positive about pre-marriage cohabitation.
That is the result of the situation when most young people get information about marital life, sexual relations, child birth for the first time not from their parents, not from the Church, but from the Internet, articles, popular movies, which, to put it mildly, do not care too much about the issues — and what happens if young people start practicing those recommendations.
School can be one of the sources of such information. But it is well-known that the information in school textbooks is far from being correspondent to Christian principles. Therefore, one should not lay great hopes on school.
When a child becomes sexually mature, (s)he gets a lot of questions. If (s)he does not have due attention paid by their parents to the topic, using a delicate approach, (s)he often becomes hurt by this and forced to look for answers elsewhere.
Why don’t parents meet the children’s need for getting information about intimate relations? There are two reasons for that. Primarily, many of us are convinced that they are not experts in those issues and someone who is a better connoisseur should tell them about it. The second reason is that we are ashamed of talking on this.
But bringing your talk down to talking about sex only will not meet the child’s need for knowledge about family relations. It is important what the child sees among parents, how father remembers about the dates and whether he perceives every view of his wife as a real treasure. These are all elements of upbringing in preparation for marital life. Therefore, only sex as the element of unity does not reflect what a spouse is like.
Sex is just several minutes of physical intimacy. While marital unity is all the life, each word, each sign of attention, each dedicated minute. So let us not narrow out talk with children down to physiology only.
Children learn from us how we need to take care about the beloved person. If that is a family where parents don’t always agree on things, where there is more hatred or where there is lack of attention, (s)he learns that family life is something unclear, since there are many insults, quarrels, humiliation. So it is not as important what we say as what children will see in relations between parents on a daily basis.
The main reason why young people dare have pre-marriage sexual relations is lack of parents’ attention. Physical absence of parents, when they earn money abroad or stay long hours at work, or think that they have more important business than children; or their psychological absence when they spend enough time but don’t care what their child feels. Maybe, because children are hurt by their parents, when parents even don’t realize that the child needs understanding, attention, and care. Quite often such children, without getting this, are left alone, faced with difficulties, therefore they easily get into that illusion of relations.
If we use any contraception in marital life, that means we ourselves don’t know what these relations are for. So, no surprise that we are ashamed of this. Since for us child birth is undesirable, and marital unity is full of fear and uncertainty. We have to primarily appreciate those relations.
To bring the talk down to only saying that this may cause various diseases, undesirable pregnancy and encourage contraception is the worst thing we can do as parents. Many studies have proven that it is talks about safe sex, use of contraception that most often results in experiments. A young persons convinced that thanks to those means there will be no infection or child conception, makes experiments. And it is well-known that in fact those means do not provide a 100% protection, therefore there appear undesirable teenager pregnancies and abortions, as the result. And that is a trauma for the whole life which is difficult to overcome.
Thus, if we bring talks down to sex or use of contraception only, be sure that your child will have serious problems with realization of the value of family life, intimate relations, right because (s)he cannot combine the notions of family, sex, and love. For him/her they will not make into one puzzle. And that will be a tragedy for the child. Therefore, close people should lay down a very strong faith in the value of relations, realization of the main principles of a strong family construction and the ability to care for the intimacy to be blessed by God.
Listen in detail at Live Radio ‘Voskresinnia’
Prepared by Nataliya PAVLYSHYN
Designer: Yuliya MELNYCHENKO
