Most parents I meet are terrified of this conversation. They put it off, hoping for a “right moment” that never quite arrives—and then one day their kid already knows, and the information came from somewhere else.
I’m a marriage coach, and I’m also a dad. My wife and I have six kids, ages 9 to 21—three boys, three girls. Honestly, being their father has taught me more about this topic than any book I’ve read. So let me give you the practical version.
The short version: Aim for many small conversations instead of one big “talk.” Start earlier than feels comfortable, keep it age-appropriate, and answer questions calmly and directly without shaming your child for asking. Skip the fear-based object lessons—no chewed gum, no licked cupcakes—and aim instead at sexual wholeness: the physical, emotional, and spiritual goodness of God’s design. And remember, the loudest lesson your kids receive is the one they observe in your marriage.
This is your job—not the school’s, not the church’s
Let’s settle this first, because everything else depends on it.
Parents are the best source for children learning about sex, and research bears this out: parent–child communication about sexuality is a key factor in adolescent self-efficacy and sexual health (Flores & Barroso, 2017). You don’t have to be your child’s only source—but you must be their primary one.
Here’s the hard truth underneath that. If you delegate this to schools, peers, or media, your children will absorb someone else’s values. Not maybe. Almost certainly. Values transmit through relationship, and silence is itself a lesson—it teaches that this subject is shameful and that you are not a safe person to ask.
And a word to my fellow Christians: it isn’t the Church’s job either. I hear a lot of couples, wrestling with their own sexual struggles, blame the church for a bad or incomplete sexual education. I understand the impulse. But the church’s role is to support parents and supply the moral framework—not to run the sex education. That responsibility sits in your house.
Both of you should be in the room
Tammy Hill, a licensed marriage and family therapist I’ve worked with, puts it about as well as it can be put: you were both there when the child was conceived, so you should both be there when you explain to that child how conception happens.
In practice, this lands lopsidedly. Mothers do the overwhelming majority of this teaching—and they’re more likely to talk with daughters than with sons. So dads, hear me: your absence from this conversation is itself a message. Your kids need the male perspective, and your sons especially need to hear you say out loud that this is good, normal, and not shameful.
It’s completely fine if one of you is more comfortable and takes the lead. Just don’t let the other one hide.
One more thing while we’re here: don’t reduce sex to reproduction. Many parents instinctively teach the plumbing and skip the pleasure, afraid that mentioning pleasure will send their kids running out to find some. There’s no evidence for that fear. When you teach both the reproductive and the relational, pleasurable dimensions of sex, you turn it into a real education instead of a biology lecture—and you become the kind of parent your child will actually come back to with questions.
Why parents freeze up
If this feels hard, you’re not defective. Researchers have identified four competing tensions parents wrestle with: sex education versus overexposure; family values and breaking generational cycles; accurate information versus competing influences; and parental control versus a child’s growing autonomy (Holman et al., 2023).
Those are real tensions and they don’t fully resolve. My counsel is simple: do your best, and don’t let fear of doing it imperfectly stop you from doing it at all. An awkward, loving, imperfect conversation beats a polished silence every single time.
Rehearse before they can understand you
Here’s a trick I love, and it costs you nothing.
Your sex education starts the day your child is born—not because a newborn understands anything, but because you need the practice. Hold your baby and say the words out loud. Tell your daughter she’ll menstruate someday and explain what that means. Tell your son he’ll ejaculate and explain what that means. He has no idea what you’re saying. That’s exactly the point.
You’re training your own mouth and your own face to say these words without flinching, in the one season where the stakes are zero. By the time it matters, the words won’t catch in your throat.
Then, with young children, make it routine. At bath time, name body parts—all of them. Elbows, knees, toes, vulva, testicles, in the same matter-of-fact tone. Nicknames feel safer, but they quietly transmit two messages: I’m uncomfortable with this, and these parts are dirty. Neither is true, and a child who believes them won’t bring you the hard questions later—or report it clearly if someone harms them.
What young adults wish their parents had done
We actually have data on this. Kuborn and colleagues asked college-age women what they wished their parents had done differently, and the answers cluster around a few things: they wanted a comfortable, open environment; they wanted parents who seemed competent rather than panicked; they wanted frequent conversations rather than one dreaded event; and—this one surprises people—they wanted their parents to state things bluntly (Kuborn et al., 2023).
They didn’t want vagueness. They wanted the truth, delivered warmly, from someone who wasn’t squirming.
When you don’t know what to say
Your kid will eventually ask something that stops you cold. You don’t have to answer on the spot.
Try this: “That’s a really good question. When I tuck you in tonight, let’s talk about it—I want to pray about it first.” That buys you time, and it models something valuable: that these questions are worth taking seriously.
Then—and I’m serious about this—practice your answer in the mirror. Watch your own face. Kids read your expression long before they process your words, and a flicker of disgust or panic will teach them more than the sentence you’ve carefully prepared. Get your face relaxed, then go have the conversation.
And when you’re done talking, ask what they think. Let them disagree. Let them sit with it. A child who feels heard comes back; a child who feels lectured goes to their phone instead.
Please skip the object lessons
You know the ones. The chewed piece of gum. The licked cupcake. The crumpled dollar bill. “Who would want this now?”
Researchers make the case plainly that these metaphors should go (Padilla-Walker et al., 2018). Here’s why they fail: fear-based teaching is reasonably effective at marking out-of-bounds behavior, but it’s terrible at conveying the theological reasons underneath the boundary. Worse, the object lessons quietly teach that a person who has made a sexual mistake is now damaged, dirty, and less valuable.
That is not the gospel. It isn’t even true. And I meet the adults who absorbed it—now married, now “allowed” to have sex, and completely unable to shake the feeling that they’re doing something dirty. That’s the long tail of a cupcake object lesson, twenty years later, showing up in my coaching practice.
The better target is sexual wholeness—which moves past mere abstinence and models what Scripture actually teaches (Padilla-Walker et al., 2018). It has three dimensions worth naming for your kids:
- Physical: pleasure, satisfaction, health, and safety.
- Emotional: love, attachment, and unity.
- Spiritual: meaning, purpose, sanctification, and growth.
Teach them what sex is for, and the boundaries start to make sense on their own. (I lay out that positive vision in what the Bible actually says about sex.)
The age-by-age guide
Here’s the framework I use. Adapt it—some kids are shy and anxious, others are curious and blunt. You know yours.
Ages 0–5: Body basics and God’s good design
Core message: bodies are good, and yours belongs to you.
Use correct anatomical terms—including for genitals. Teach which areas are private and not to be touched by others without permission. Teach that their body belongs to them and is theirs to care for. Ground it in the Psalmist’s conviction that we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139).
This is also the age to plant the relational seed: sex was never designed to be something you do alone or with just anyone. God made it to be shared with a spouse, inside a marriage. Simple, matter-of-fact, no lecture required.
Ages 6–10: Preparing for puberty and relationships
Core message: your body will grow in stages, and that’s by design.
Introduce puberty before it arrives—do not let it be a surprise. Talk about the differences between male and female bodies. Frame relationships around love, respect, kindness, and dignity. Make it explicit that questions about their body are normal and welcome, and that you are the person to bring them to. Paul’s teaching that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6) lands well at this age.
Ages 11–14: Desire, boundaries, and identity
Core message: attraction is normal, boundaries are good, and your worth isn’t up for a vote.
Normalize feelings of attraction—God made us relational, physical beings. Explain that boundaries honor and protect both you and other people. Name pornography directly: it is a counterfeit that distorts God’s design for real intimacy. And say clearly that their worth is not tied to their body, their image, or anyone’s approval—their value in God’s sight doesn’t move. Proverbs’ counsel to guard your heart (Proverbs 4) fits here.
Ages 15–18: Covenant, intimacy, and marriage
Core message: sex is a gift designed for the covenant of marriage—and it’s a skill, not a switch.
Waiting isn’t merely about avoiding sin; it’s about valuing yourself and reserving the fullness of sexual expression for the context where it actually works. Tell them the truth their peers won’t: good sex isn’t automatic. Like every other worthwhile skill, it’s learned, practiced, and refined across a lifetime. Talk honestly about sexual desire and about the differences in desire that show up in every relationship.
Get specific about arousal, too—this is where a lot of parents go vague, and it costs their kids. Explain what arousal actually feels like: that blood flows to the genitals, that a boy will experience an erection, that a girl may notice wetness or her nipples hardening. Kids who can name what’s happening in their body are far better equipped to recognize it early and make a deliberate choice about what comes next. Kids who’ve never been told anything just get swept along, confused and ashamed.
And here’s a fact worth telling them: kids who receive direct, open, comprehensive sexual education from their parents are more likely to make wise decisions and to delay sexual activity. Openness protects. Silence doesn’t.
Engaged: the conversation before the wedding night
Core message: you’re about to start, and I want you prepared—not surprised.
This is the stage almost everyone skips, and it may be the most important one. Your child is weeks away from their first sexual experience, and this is your last window as their primary teacher.
Fill in whatever gaps remain. Talk frankly about how arousal works for both bodies, since each of them will need to understand the other. Encourage a daughter to see a doctor beforehand if she has questions or concerns about her body. And gently correct the fairy tale that the wedding night is automatically magical—it usually isn’t, and a young couple who expects perfection is set up for a painful start.
Most of all, hand the baton off well: from here forward, the primary conversation is with their spouse. Tell them plainly that they should be talking openly with their fiancé about the sex life they want to build together—and that your door stays open if they get stuck.
Don’t dodge the hard 21st-century conversations
Your kids are growing up in a culture of hyper-individualism, and they need you willing to go there with them—pornography and its effects, same-sex attraction, gender identity, masturbation, modesty, humor that degrades people. These are live questions in their world, and if you flinch, they’ll learn to take those questions elsewhere.
You don’t need perfect answers. You need to be askable. I go deeper on what they’re absorbing in what today’s culture is teaching your kids about sex.
One conversation I remember well with my oldest daughter had nothing to do with mechanics. It was about not compromising her integrity to get attention, or to make someone like her. That’s the real curriculum.
The lesson you’re teaching without saying a word
Here’s the part I most want you to sit with.
What your children observe in your marriage speaks far louder than anything you tell them. They are watching how you treat your spouse. Whether affection exists in your home. Whether your marriage looks like something worth wanting.
Which means the best sex education you can give your kids is to invest in your own marriage.
I know not every family is in an ideal situation. Death, divorce, infidelity, addiction—we live in a fallen world, and no parent is perfect. None of that disqualifies you from teaching your children your ideals. But parents who face their own sexual struggles honestly, and who work to build healthy attitudes themselves, are far better equipped to hand something good to the next generation.
Getting help
If you want a deeper, practical walkthrough of all of this, I taught a full How to Talk to Your Kids About Sex workshop that covers the conversations, the scripts, and the hard questions in detail. You can also listen to my podcast conversation with Tammy Hill, LMFT, where we walk through many of these ideas together.
And if reading this surfaced something about your own relationship with sex—shame you’re still carrying, or a marriage that isn’t what you want your kids to see—that’s worth addressing, for their sake as much as yours. You can join our Next Level program or work privately with a coach.
Here are the questions parents ask me most.
Frequently Asked Questions
Earlier than most parents think — and it’s not one conversation. From ages 0–5 you’re already laying groundwork: correct names for body parts, bodies are good and made by God, and which parts are private. Then you keep building, in small age-appropriate conversations, all the way through the teen years and right up to the wedding.
Aim for many small conversations instead of one big ‘talk,’ and watch your face as much as your words — kids read your discomfort instantly. If a question catches you off guard, it’s fine to say you’ll answer at bedtime, then practice your answer in the mirror first. Answer directly and matter-of-factly, without shaming them for asking.
No — skip the chewed gum, the licked cupcake, and the crumpled dollar bill. Those metaphors teach kids that sexual mistakes make a person damaged or worthless, which isn’t the gospel and isn’t true. Aim instead at sexual wholeness: the physical, emotional, and spiritual goodness of God’s design, and why it belongs in marriage.
Yes. As Tammy Hill puts it, you were both there when the child was conceived, so you should both be there when you explain how conception happens. In practice mothers do most of this teaching, so fathers especially need to show up — kids need both perspectives, and a dad’s silence sends its own message.
Parents. Others can support you, but if you outsource it, your children will absorb someone else’s values by default. The church’s role is to back up parents and supply the moral framework — not to run the sex education. Research shows parent–child communication is a key factor in adolescent sexual health.
References
Flores, D., & Barroso, J. (2017). 21st century parent–child sex communication in the United States: A process review. The Journal of Sex Research, 54(4–5), 532–548. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2016.1267693
Holman, A., Holloway, M., Meinecke, K., Deatherage, S., Kort, R., Erie, E., & Piskel, S. (2023). “Did I say too much? Did I say enough?”: Balancing the competing struggles parents experience in talking to their children about sex-related topics. Journal of Family Communication, 23(3–4), 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/15267431.2023.2239230
Kuborn, S., Markham, M., & Astle, S. (2023). “I wish they would have a class for parents about talking to their kids about sex”: College women’s parent–child sexual communication reflections and desires. Sexuality Research & Social Policy, 20(1), 230–241. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-022-00723-w
Padilla-Walker, L., Busby, D. M., Leavitt, C. E., & Carroll, J. S. (2018). A better way to teach kids about sex: No more metaphors and object lessons, just open communication. Deseret Book.
