Sex Ed: Model Dialogue 3 Year Old in Bath

The Story of Me, the first book in the God’s Design for Sex book series, is a resource for parents in starting the conversation about sexuality between the ages of three to five. If you have a track record of dealing comfortably with sexuality, conversations on this topic may be commonplace. But your children may not be comfortable yet in talking with you, and so reading The Story of Me with your child may well get this conversation going. This can then lead to wonderful, casual conversations like the following:

While soaping himself during his bath, four-year-old Matias gets an erection.

CHILD: Daddy, why does my penis get hard like this sometimes?

PARENT: Well, God made us men so that our penises are very sensitive. It feels good to touch them sometimes. When your penis starts to feel good, a little extra blood from other parts of your body goes into your penis, and that makes it get a bit bigger and harder.

CHILD: Is it a bad thing?

PARENT: No, not at all. God made you that way. It’s just part of being a man.

Some content taken from HOW AND WHEN TO TELL YOUR KIDS ABOUT SEX, by Stan and Brenna Jones. Copyright © 1993, 2007, 2019. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. To purchase books in the GOD’S DESIGN FOR SEX book series, go to www.navpress.com.

Our sexual organs are made for pleasure by God’s design. The clitoris of the woman is exquisitely sensitive and pleasurable, and it serves no known purpose other than to give the woman pleasure from her sexual relationship. By all indications, the pleasure afforded by our sexuality is a gift, pure and simple, from God! And this is how we should describe it to our children. But we should go further; we should describe it as a gift for which the gift-Giver has a purpose in mind.

Cindy and Bill placed little three-year-old Steve in the tub with the warm water running vigorously out of the tap. They were chatting quietly, focusing on each other, when they began to hear squeals and saw Steve holding his penis under the running water and squealing with delight. Oblivious to his parents, Steve stepped back from the water, looked down at his penis with wonder, and then stepped back to the tap so that the water ran over his penis again, resulting in more squeals. Bill drew a deep breath, and then turned off the water and used this “teachable moment.”

PARENT: You were running the water over your penis.

CHILD: (Steve nods, unsure of how his dad is going to react.)

PARENT: I heard you laughing. Were you laughing because it felt so good?

CHILD: Yeah, it felt funny!

PARENT: It really does feel funny and good. Did you know that God made your penis that way, so that it could make you feel really good?

CHILD: He did?

PARENT: Yes, it’s true. And do you know why God did that? Because when you grow up and marry, God wants you to be able to share some wonderful fun with your wife and only your wife. God wanted to give you a way to love her and her a way to love you that is so special it will help to hold the two of you together like you are glued together! So every time you think about your penis feeling good, you can think of how God made it that way as a special gift to you to make you happy.