Teaching Children About the "S - word"

Sex.  There, I said it.  Now that that's out of the way, I'm faced with the prospect of teaching my son about it.  He will turn 12 years old in just a little over a week from this posting.  If memory serves, my eyes started noticing girls at just about that time (the middle school years).

My wife and I have both spoken with Cameron about sex and "private parts" at various times during his life.  Those talks were appropriately bland, only divulging the what we deamed necessary.  Mostly, those talks focused on safety.  "If Uncle So-and-So touches you in your private parts, you have to tell me or Mommy."  Not that my son has a "scary" uncle who is a closet pedophile.  I was just using that as an example.  But I know that, most likely, he is hearing or is about to hear his school chums tell him all of the dirty little secrets about sex which they learned from either a big brother or some T&A movie which they shouldn't have been watching to begin with.  So, it's time to break out the big guns!

I've found this book, recommended to me from a friend with an older son, called Every Young Man's Battle by Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker.  This book is broken down into six parts.  And let me tell you, nothing is left unspoken!!

For each of the six parts of this book, my son will read one part on his own and by himself.  Then he passes the book to me, and I read the same part.  After we both have read the same part, then we go do something fun together and talk about what we've read.  What we do is irrelevant as my boy thinks it's fun.  Generally speaking, as long as we are doing something together, he thinks it's fun!

For me, the neat part will be hearing what he thinks and feels about what we've read.  Hopefully, Cameron will have questions about me and how I dealt with the issues in this book as an adolescent.

We've just started this process, but you know I'll blog about how each "adventure" goes!