The sex talk is not one talk, it’s M.A.N.Y. of them

Show Transcripts:

Intro:
Welcome to the Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring author and ministry leader, Kent Evans, and business executive and military veteran, Lawson Brown. This is a show for you, dad. You want to be a Godly and intentional father, unfortunately, you’ve turned to these two knuckleheads for help. Let us know how that works out for you. Before we begin, remember this, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose. Please welcome your hosts, Kent and Lawson.

Kent Evans:
Hey, Lawson. Good to see you, brother. Happy New Year.

Lawson Brown:
Hello, Kent. How are you? Happy New Year.

Kent Evans:
I’m doing great, man.

Lawson Brown:
You sound like it. I’m glad.

Kent Evans:
I’m off to a good start, 2022.

Lawson Brown:
It was weird not talking to you every week, or a couple of times a week. What did we have, a 10-day break? It’s kind of nice.

Kent Evans:
Wait. What do you mean, kind of nice? What in the world is that supposed to mean.

Lawson Brown:
I’m teasing, man. I missed you. I’m glad to be back. Hello, everybody out there. Who knows when you’re listening to this, but anyway, Happy New Year. Now that it’s whatever, March? April?

Kent Evans:
Yeah, depending, right? So Lawson, just last week, I was on a phone conversation with a friend of mine who’s the father of a 10-year-old son. The topic he and I were addressing was the same topic that I have addressed with, has to be at least 75 dads personally, over the last several years, one-on-one and hundreds, or even thousands through various videos and blog posts. It’s a topic that so many dads have questions about, and it is a topic that actually back when we were first starting Manhood Journey in 2010. A pastor at our church got on this subject with me and says that I yelled at him about this topic. Now, having someone accusing me of yelling at them, it’s really not all that uncommon, so that’s not that unusual, but here was the thing. The thing was this guy years ago, 10 years ago, 11 years ago, said, “One of the things you could do at Manhood Journey is help dads with “the talk,” the talk. I finally got to a place where I told this guy, his name was Rick, I was like, “Rick, if you say “the talk” again, I swear, man, I’m going to shove you off that little chair while you’re drinking your little latte, I’m going to knock you on the floor.” We started laughing and we were kidding around, obviously, but there was seriousness in the kidding in that. He was asking about how to broach this subject about sex and sex topics with his kids and how dads often struggle with this idea. Part of the reason that they struggle is because they call it “the talk.” They’re embedding the problem into the question, and what I mean by that is as an intentional dad, if you have sons or daughters, some point you’re going to want to talk to them about matters related, I hope you are going to want to talk to them about matters of sex and purity and dating and all the things that come along with sexual integrity and trying to live a life that honors God in the area of our sexuality. One of the things that drives me bonkers is when dads want to talk about it as if it is all covered in one tightly packaged 60- minute, 90-minute seminar.

Lawson Brown:
Oh, that’s what you meant by saying, calling it “the talk” as if it is a single thing. Yeah.

Kent Evans:
Yeah, because I think a lot of dads put it in that category, “Hey man, we had the talk about sex and now we’re done.”

Lawson Brown:
Right. Like check, it’s over. I’m curious. Go back. So you said you’ve talked to what, hundreds? So in the ministry, I guess that means that you get asked a lot about it and that people answer questions saying this is something they struggle with, or how does it come to you?

Kent Evans:
Usually, well, a good example was even just last week, a friend of mine texted me and said, “Hey, man, looking for advice on … ” and I think he actually even said something like, “having the sex talk with my son.” It’s fine if you call me and ask it that way, I’m not going to yell at you. Don’t be afraid. However, what I did on the phone call, that’s usually how it comes to me, is any advice or does Manhood Journey have a resource, or do y’all have an Ebook or an audio? So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to package some of advice and ideas into today’s podcast. So if you’re a dad who wants to lead his children, boys or girls, in the area of sexual integrity and you want to be in those conversations and you want that to be a part of your fatherhood puzzle, I hope today’s podcast helps you. There is an acronym that Lawson and I are going to walk you through that is, by itself, explanatory to a degree, and also, I think, will actually take a lot of pressure off of most of the dads. That’s not to say you get out of the conversation, or the conversations; it’s to say I don’t think that the magic is in having one comprehensive lecture style, Roman numeral one, body parts, Roman numeral two, sexual deviancy, whatever your outline is for this course you’re going to teach. But instead, the acronym we’re going to use is the acronym, MANY, M-A-N-Y, many talks, M-A-N-Y. So as it relates to our children who we’re raising that we want to raise in a God-honoring way with regard to their sexuality, Lawson and I are going to encourage you to have many talks, M-A-N-Y and we’re going to-

Lawson Brown:
Not a talk, not the talk, it’s many talks. We’re still having them and my girls are in their 20s.

Kent Evans:
That’s a great way to illustrate what we’re talking about. When do you think, Lawson, and we’ll get to the acronym here in just a second, for those of you taking notes on the steering wheel of your car as you’re driving down the road, you can just write down M-A-N-Y for now. We’ll fill in the blanks in a minute. When do you think, how old were your daughters when you broached the subject of sexual topics?

Lawson Brown:
We were still in Louisville. So Abigail must have been 8, 9, 10, somewhere in there. It wasn’t a hardcore in-depth at that age. You’ve got to age appropriatize these things. But I do remember back then someone said something to the effect of, “If you’re not talking to your kids about it, somebody is, one of their friends,” something like that. I think we’ll get to that later, but back then, it was mostly Audrey.

Kent Evans:
Yeah, because you have daughters, so your wife was more engaged in the process with your daughters.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. For sure. She did great with it. She asked them questions, try to understand what they know, what they think, what they’ve heard. Then, as they grew older, got into teens and then adolescent, start becoming a young women, the talks changed and adjusted and they were around different people. They were around different friends. They began to be interested. They began to have guys interested in them, so that changed the conversation. It changed the approach. But I will say a key thing was I don’t know that it fits in necessarily right here, but it is many talks, but it’s about listening to your kids and asking them and getting them to talk. It’s not a one-way dialogue. You said something before like the pressure is off. You don’t have to solve it all in one conversation and get that single conversation 100% percent right.

Kent Evans:
Well, I look at it like if you were to tell me, “Hey, my New Year’s resolution,” we’re recording this in January, if you were to tell me, “My new year’s resolution is to eat healthy this year,” and I said, “Awesome,” and you said, “So here’s what I’m going to do. For the entire month of January, I’m going to eat healthy. Then, from February to December, I’m not. But look, since I ate healthy in January, I’m covered. I’m fine. The rest of the year, it’ll be like Taco Bell and Fritos and donuts after February 1st.” Nobody would do that in their right mind and expect to be healthier in eight or nine or 10 months. The same is true about topics related to sexual integrity, sexual purity with our kids. If you think you can conquer it all, even if you could conquer all in one conversation, it won’t stick. It won’t have the lasting effect. It has to be layered.

Lawson Brown:
Would you take one of your sons out in the backyard with a baseball and baseball bat and say, “Okay, we’re going to have this whole lesson on how to play baseball.”

Kent Evans:
Right. Exactly. Exactly. So let me tell the guys, dad, if you’re listening to this well, number one, we got an email last week. It was really encouraging. Lawson, you read it, and one of the guys that we have received an email from mentions that occasionally, he’ll listen to our podcast episodes with his kids. If your child is really young and they don’t have any context for the sex talk, probably now would be a great time, actually about nine minutes ago, it would be a great time to have turned off this particular podcast because spoiler alert, that’s what we’re going to talk about the entire episode will be this thing, because a lot of dads do ask and we want to provide an anchor resource in this regard. So many, M-A-N-Y. Number one, the M stands for the word many. It’s easy to remember, right? It’s not a talk. It’s not the talk. It’s many talks over maybe a 6, 8, 10, 12-year period, and you start as young as you feel led to start. We’ll talk about that in a minute, but I basically have in my head a trigger of about age 10 for my boys. Part of that is because if your kids are in an environment, say like a public school environment, where there may be other people speaking into this topic, you may want to start art sooner, it just depends on a lot of factors, but here’s the guiding principle. The guiding principle is over the course of some period of time, you have many talks, not one talk. That’s the guiding principle number one. Number two, the A stands for the word any, A-N-Y, any door. Here’s what I mean by that, where you start isn’t as important as that you start. The metaphor that I’ve found helpful for me has been it’s like a sex talk and the sexual purity discussion, sexuality discussion, is this round room, and in the middle, there’s this topic about sexual purity and integrity and God’s designs for sex and all that. You can get into the room through lots of doors. You can come in the door of maybe it’s like exposure to pornography, or you come in the door called, “Hey body, parts,” or, “Where are babies made,” or, “What does sexy mean?” There’s lots of ways to get in the door. I don’t think there’s a sequence have to follow. Now, if you’re talking deviancy and bizzare-o weird things on this area and that’s where you begin, well, that’s probably a wrong place to begin, but many talks-

Lawson Brown:
Or if your kid comes in contact with something that is [crosstalk 00:11:52].

Kent Evans:
Sure.

Lawson Brown:
… that you need to address-

Kent Evans:
Yeah.

Lawson Brown:
… or something like that.

Kent Evans:
Then you got to start there. If there’s an abuse or, even if there’s something not totally negative, there may be a sermon series at your church on this topic, and your teenager is like, “What was he talking about?” Okay, awesome. Now’s the time to begin so many talks, any door let’s get the thing started. I’ve often started with my boys by asking them, “Hey, do you know what the word sexy means?” Not because that’s a great place to start, but because it’s an easy place to start. They don’t know what it means usually, but they’ve seen that word or they’ve heard it. Much as we do a lot of sheltering in my house, we may get a bunch of emails people thinking, I take my kids out really bizarre places when they’re 11. I don’t, but they may have heard that word. That word is just like-

Lawson Brown:
But their answer will give you a good reference point for their understanding and perspective.

Kent Evans:
Great point. Great point. If they go, “Oh yeah, I know exactly what sexy means.” It’s whatever they say next, then you go, “Aha. I know where I need to begin. I know how far back I have to go.” The N stands for part of what you were talking about a minute ago, Lawson, and that is the word normal, or the word normalize. What I want to do in my home is normalize conversations about sexual topics. I don’t want them to feel weird or icky or strange, so even when I’m describing to my boys how babies are made, I think it’s really important to use anatomically correct and biological words.

Lawson Brown:
Right, I think it confuses things if you-

Kent Evans:
Yeah. If you start going down the wee-wee route and all that’s, it’s just like-

Lawson Brown:
Right. Yeah, birds and bees, it just-

Kent Evans:
Yeah. You’re saying to them, “This is a really weird topic and I can’t even use words that are real,” and it sends a vibe. It sends a vibe. Normalize the discussion, and you were talking a minute ago about listening to our kids. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let me get to the Y, just in case there’s a guy out there who’s melancholy and he wants to write the letters down. Many talks, any door, normalized discussion and then, the Y, younger is better. Younger is better. I bet some guys who were just listening to you describe a minute ago when you started talking with your daughters or you or Audrey, and you said, “Maybe eight or nine.” There’s probably some guy in the audience who’s going, “What? My kid’s 11 or 12 and I haven’t even thought of, eight or nine?” Yeah, because like as much as I know, we all want to shelter our kids from certain evils or we want to shelter our kids from certain levels of exposure. Even watching an NFL game, you’re probably going to see some things during the commercials and you’re going to be flipping through channels and you’re going to be trying to get off that TV ad promo. There’s probably going to be things where your kids are exposed to topics of a sexual nature way earlier than even they fully understand it; even they fully understand it. So I was super encouraged when my friend, Chuck, called me last week and he was like, “Hey man, what advice do you have for me in talking with my son about sex topics?” I just said, “Hey, remind me how old your son is, and he said, “10.” I was like, “Way to go, man.” Number one, I’m going to tell you way to go. You’re starting young, and I think that’s really smart, and especially if your child is in an environment, whether that’s with relatives or cousins or middle school or lots of places where they could have exposure to topics or imagery in our day and time that you would rather them not be exposed to, as hard as you try to guard them, they’re probably going to get exposed younger than you would like.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. We didn’t pre-determine that age, and it’s been quite a while, so my memory’s not 100%. But I remember there being a need to begin then, and I think it had something to do with someone in one of her classes. I’m talking about my daughter, she had mentioned something to Audrey and it was like, “Where’d you hear that from?” we were just in tune with, “Where’d you pick that up?” Again, we didn’t go into great detail. It was a beginning and I could have the age a little bit off, but what we were concerned about was, and I think you’re right, I think they hear things. I’m not talking about from a teacher or from some public school administration, I’m talking about from other kids. Even if they’re joking around and poking each other, confusion leads to other questions. They talk among themselves. Who knows where they may be coming up with whatever answers? So that’s just clouding an already potential issue that can become taboo if you don’t, like you said, normalize it,

Kent Evans:
Hey dads, sometimes you need weekly encouragement on your father journey. That’s why we built a community of men that are basically the Navy Seals of Godly fatherhood. They are all located at fatheronpurpose.org; that’s fatheronpurpose.org. Now, that is a monthly subscription of just 11 measly U.S. dollars. When you join that community, you will get action items that are brief and biblical and you can put into play right away. Every week we release a dad mission video that is a short Divo based on the Bible with an action item mission at the end, super practical. Plus, as a bonus, when you dive in, you get digital courses, Ebooks, all kinds of other resources, not to mention you’re connected with dozens of other Godly dads who are walking through the same issues you’re walking through, and that community is very rich and vibrant. Come check it out today at fatheronpurpose.org; that’s fatheronpurpose.org. Well, I want to get as close to being the first voice on this subject my kids ever hear.

Kent Evans:
I want to own the dialogue. I remember one time in sales training, we talked about if you have an objection that every prospect makes, you want to be the first one to bring it up, in a perfect world. You want to go, “Hey, listen,” you’re the Mercedes sales guy, and you want to start out by saying, “Now, listen, our cars are going to be more expensive than any other car you’re going to look at and let me tell you why,” because there was a psychological positive thing that happened if you were the one who owned the objection, and so we learned that in sales training, “Hey, my price is going to be really high, but let me tell you why,” because it’s going to come up. You want to be the one to own that coming up. Well, in some ways, man, I want to do the same thing with my boys. I want to be the first, the loudest, that doesn’t mean I’m screaming, but I want to be the most dominant voice in their head on the topic of sex and sexual purity from the time they’re eight until they leave my house, and that’s a battle. That’s a battle, because-

Lawson Brown:
So much is coming at them.

Kent Evans:
Wow. I’m not a huge generational guy where everybody argues about, “Well, Gen Z does this and Gen Y does that, the Boomers are this,” because I think over time generally a 17-year-old’s always been lazier and less responsible than a 37-year-old. That was true 6,000 years ago. That’s going to be true to 1,000 years from now if Jesus doesn’t come back. However, technology and access to imagery has definitely changed the game, in the last 20, 30 years. When I was a kid to get access to pornography, you had to go pay money and do the walk of shame in the gas station and do actual money. It was much harder to go find, where today, goodness, it’s just ubiquitous. So-

Lawson Brown:
It’s very much more graphic and it’s easy to share, very easy to share nowadays.

Kent Evans:
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, dad, I hope what Lawson and I are doing is encouraging you, encouraging you, and I hope what we’re doing is giving you some tools and some ideas for how to walk into this series of conversations. Even though, I’ll sometimes colloquially refer to it as “the talk,” I don’t mean it like that, and I hope that you have many talks. I hope that you are comfortable walking through any door, just get the conversation started. I hope you normalize discussions, and I hope you know that younger is better. I think a lot of dads want real specific guidance in this area, but man, it’s hard. It depends on their environment. It depends on their family structure. It depends on where they are in the birth order, as an example. It’s way harder to teach your five-year-old that Santa Claus is real when he’s got an 11-year-old older brother. That’s just harder because the 11-year-old will occasionally have a slip of the tongue or whatever. I’m just kidding. But even where they follow in the birth order can affect all this. That’s why I hope, dad, you are not trying to follow just even what we say on this podcast. Man, go pray about it. Go read scripture about it. I will tell you one metaphor that I used in this area that seemed to really help me. I don’t know if you used this one, Lawson, or you had a different one you used, but I heard somebody once upon a time, I didn’t invent this metaphor, but I think it’s really brilliant. In the hearts and minds of my boys, I tried to compare the topic of sex and sexual attraction and what you do with your wife to fire. I heard a guy one time compare it and he used to say, “Fire when it is in a fireplace, it is really warm and cozy. Gee, or even like a campfire, a campfire, oh you sit around, you talk to fire, in a certain context, is really cool. Very helpful. You can cook a pot of coffee over it. You can roast your game over it. Fire is very useful when it’s inside of a boundary when it’s inside of a boundary. When fire gets outside of the boundary, it’s destructive and uncontrollable. It takes on a life of its own and you see someone with the campfire and then they accidentally don’t put it out all the way, next thing you know, you got 100,000 acres of forest burning down and people fleeing from their homes. Why? Because someone let a fire get outside of its context where it is safe and useful.” I remember a guy comparing that to just sex in general. He was like, “Look, man. Sex inside of marriage is great. It’s warm, it’s inviting. It is enlivening. It’s a gift God gave us. It’s not bad. It’s not negative. It’s not evil. But man, when you get it outside of those boundaries, when it’s just with whoever you want for your entire teenage years, you got multiple partners, everything gets destroyed. Relationships are destroyed. People’s health is destroyed.” So I remember telling my boys early on this fire metaphor was super, super handy for me, and I would go back to it over and over because it’s, it’s really, really handy. Just to give the guys a little more context, we’ve all been burned. Almost everybody on earth has experienced heat in a negative way. Either you touched hot stove or boiling water splashed on your hand or you drank coffee that was too hot. You had an oatmeal that was too hot and you burned the roof of your mouth, or you reached into the fire or an ember kicked out. Almost every human being by a certain age has had the experience of being burned by heat at some level, maybe not tragically, maybe not third-degree burns in a car wreck, but we’ve all experienced it, and so it’s universal. It translates cultures, it translates ages.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. You’re on a roll, man. I love it.

Kent Evans:
Super handy, and it’s also really, really powerful, like fire itself, very powerful. How else can we create a brand new human being, a whole life? There’s almost nothing more powerful spiritually speaking than bringing a soul into existence. It’s like, “Wow!” So as you think about this topic, you think, “Man, that fire metaphor just telling really, really helped me throughout the years.” I have sons who are 22, 19 17, 10, and six, and I’m just on the edge of getting ready to have some conversations with my 10-year-old son on this topic because I’ve already walked this path with my older boys. I want to share a quick story, and I know my wife is one of our favorite podcast listeners. Her favorite part of the show is when Lawson tells me how dumb I am. Thank you, honey. Appreciate that. Super encouraging as always. I want to share a story, which she will probably remember the way our bedroom is set up in our house is you can sit on the bed, maybe be reading a book or something and you can see into the bathroom and you can also see down the hallway where our kid’s bedroom is. So one time my son came in, but he didn’t come all the way into the bedroom. He stopped at the edge of the hallway and he said, “Hey, dad have a question about sex,” and he was maybe 14, 13, 14 at the time. April was in the bathroom and I could see April and I could see my son, Alex, but he couldn’t see her. So he didn’t know she could hear what he was asking and he goes, “I have a question about sex.” I saw her and I was like, “Oh sure, man lay it on me. What do you got?” She’s starting to raise her eyebrows like, “Oh my, maybe I shouldn’t overhear this.” He goes, “So how often do you and mom have sex anyway?” I looked in the bathroom and I was like, “Maybe that’s a topic you should bring up with your mother,” and we just laughed and laughed. The point was it was like, “Who won the game last night?” Or, “Do you want pizza for dinner?” It wasn’t some big, “Hey now, what are you asking that for? And blah, blah, blah.” It’s just like, I didn’t do it perfectly. Okay. I don’t want anybody to get this wrong. I’m not a perfect dad. I didn’t do this area of my fatherhood perfectly either. However, however, I at least was aiming toward a spot that I think is a good spot for us to aim, and that is to make conversations about this topic as normal as we possibly can.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. I was going to say I think that was indicative of not only have you normalized maybe some of the language that you use, some of the words, not making them icky words or scary or taboo or whatever, but also that it’s just normal to talk about just like you would the game or what they did at school that day. It’s not outside the realm of what you wouldn’t normally talk about. One more thing I wanted to say about first of all, I think this acrostic MANY is really good, really useful. We can all remember it, many talks. It’s good news. You don’t have to get it all right in one fell swoop, but also it’s bad news. You don’t get off the hook easy. You don’t get to just have it once, and then like the baseball analogy, all of a sudden, he knows how to play baseball for rest of his life. Any door, it’s not so important as to exactly what you start with, but that you start. So don’t wait. If you’re leaning in your heart toward, “I wonder, I think it’s about time … ” I would say listen to that. You’re probably ready. He or she is also probably ready. Pray about it. Normalize the discussion. Make it just as normal as you would be talking about most, anything else, and then younger is better. That goes along with what I said about just getting started. If you’re wondering what they’re hearing and what they’re thinking, ask them. You’ll know. You’ll know if they’re ready. Ask them, listen, and then pray about it. Talk about this with your wife. You’re not going to mess it up if you keep this as a running dialogue and learn from it and grow together with it. So that’s encouraging to think about this. Thanks a lot for that acrostic MANY. I think that’s really cool, and you guys get out there and get started. I think we might have a second conversation about this ourselves too. I think there’s something with that fire that we could dig into.

Kent Evans:
Fantastic. Inspirational.

Lawson Brown:
Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Well, I was going down a different road. I was-

Kent Evans:
Fantastic, Inspirational, Ridiculous, and Exciting. That’s just off the cuff man. That was just off the cuff. Okay. That’s a version one.

Lawson Brown:
My gosh, you see what I’m talking about, April?

Kent Evans:
A version one. I could probably do better. I could probably do better. Hey, man. As Lawson said, we hope you just dive in. The only way you can mess this up is just avoid it, and never talk about it and leave it up to somebody else. “Hey, let the internet teach them. Let the internet teach them.” That’s the only way we get this wrong. Dive in and it’s even okay, I think, to mention, you might even just tell your kids, “Hey man, I didn’t do this right as a kid, I didn’t have this information you have”, or, “I’m uncomfortable even talking about this sometimes, because I don’t have all the answers.” Man, be honest. Let’s see if we can do that together. I know a lot of dads who are out there doing it. I want to encourage you because, man, I just talked to another dad recently and he wanted to do this right and wanted to get started early. I really was excited to talk with him about it. I’m delighted we have so many dads in the audience who want to get this right. So I hope this podcast has been helpful to you. I hope that it’s taken a little pressure off and at the same time, put a little pressure on in the right way. God bless you guys on your Manhood Journey. Let’s lead our kids in this area of sexual integrity and sexual purity. Because as we all know, culture is trying to pull us quite in the opposite direction. The winds of culture will blow your kids off course in this area as fast as you can imagine, so let’s help steer them in the right direction. We hope today’s been helpful and we’ll see you next week. Hey dad, thank you for listening to today’s show.

Kent Evans:
If you found this episode helpful, remember you can get all the content and show notes at manhoodjourney.org/podcast. If you really liked it, please consider doing three things: number one, share this podcast with someone. You can hit the share button in your app, wherever you listen to podcasts, or just call a person up and tell them to listen in. Number two, subscribe to this podcast so you get episodes automatically. That helps us as well to help dads find the show. You can do that through your favorite listening app, whatever that is. Finally, review this podcast, leave us a review, good or bad wherever you listen. Those reviews also help other dads find the show. You can always learn more about what we’re up to at manhoodjourney.org, or fatheronpurpose.org. We will see you next week.

Outro:
You’ve been dozing off to the Father on Purpose Podcast, featuring Kent Evans and Lawson Brown. Now, wake up. Head over to fatheronpurpose.org for more tools that can help you be a Godly, intentional, and not completely horrible dad. Remember, you are not a father on accident, so go be a father on purpose.