Teaching Teens: Homeschooling with Christ - The Best Defense Against Pre-marital Sex
By Mimi Rothschild
The National Center for Health Statistics released a report in September 2005 that stated half of all teens have had oral sex. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that in 2003, forty-seven percent of high school students were having, or have had sexual intercourse. They also reported that 14 percent of high school students had 4 or more sex partners in their lifetime. There was no mention in this report whether or not home schooled children were a part of the survey, but it's doubtful.
These are teenagers that have already had 4 or more sex partners before graduating from high school. We're not talking about an engaged couple that couldn't wait. How seriously are these kids going to take marriage when they've already had multiple sex partners long before they marry?
We're not really surprised are we? As shocking as these statistics are, they're not surprising. What are these kids seeing every day? Teachers having sex with students, sex in the mainstream media, and magazines, music, and TV shows that all glamorize sex. Sexual predators are traveling cross-country to meet our children that they found on the internet in order to have sex with them. The kids who don't have the advantage of home school, who go to public school are being told they need to be careful when they have sex with no morality or responsibility infused into such discussions. Thank God the child who has the gift of home school can look forward to hearing the whole truth about sex from his or her parents.
The Deputy press secretary for Homeland Security is the latest "big name" to be brought to the carpet for trying to engage a teenager in a sexual relationship. Thank God the "14-year-old girl" was a decoy and the man was stopped before anything happened. Not all similar cases are prevented though.
We want to blame the media. We want to blame someone. Teenagers that make poor choices are not merely puppets without minds of their own, but too many of the sexual influences they are exposed to, tell them that sex is a casual live-for-the-moment thing to do, and not the sacred relationship between man and wife that God designed it to be.
It all goes back to the basics. We who homeschool our children at least have the freedom to teach our teenagers not just the facts of life, but God's facts of life. We can't shelter them from the world but by communicating with our teenagers about not only the predators who prey on our kids, but even the same age premarital sexual relationships, we can teach abstinence. Yet, we're going to have to dive right in and teach our kids things like oral sex is sex and while oral sex protects against pregnancy, it doesn't protect against STDs and it doesn't protect us from sin. It simply cannot be used as a vehicle to engage in sex without really having sex. In the loving home school environment, with the parent as teacher and parent, you have the control over what to teach your child about sex and when.
The home school environment already accomplishes much but we've all been in school enough to know that for many teens of both sexes, the school day revolves around when they will see one another, how she looks, how he looks, etc. For the teen that is home schooled, the day is started and ended completely different.
Example is the best teacher. If we leave our teenager alone in their room all evening with the internet, they will find someone to talk to. They will find someone to listen to them. That's how it starts. Sadly, that's not how it ends. Involvement in a Christ-centered family is our best weapon against premarital sex.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling mother, writer, children's rights advocate, and Founder and C.E.O. of home education company Learning by Grace, Inc. She and her husband of 28 years reside with their 8 children right outside Philadelphia, PA.
Rothschild launched Learning By Grace, Inc. because she believed that our nation's public school system has failed parents and students. Learning By Grace, Inc. offers online education through a multimedia-rich curriculum to PreK-12 children across the country and throughout the world.
An accomplished author, Rothschild has written books regarding education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Homeschooling News Café Blog consists of the most current and relevant education news.Electronic reproduction of this article is permitted if content is published unchanged, appropriate credit is given, and the article title links to corresponding article webpage.
