Topic : 03/03 Teens and Sex with Bishop T.D. Jakes

I loved the mother that was involved with her child enough that she knew her boyfriend!

I think that many parents, the vocal and the listening, are severly naive. It's not you knowing your children as much as your children knowing you, that makes the difference between a child making appropriate sexual decisions, or fumbling blindly and uninformed into reproductive tragedy.

 I don't know one of my friends that felt free and supported enough, or myself, to approach our parents about our sexuality, any of it. We went to them when it was too late, and we were in over our heads and pregnant, or sick.  Abortion wasn't an option for anyone under 18 with out an adult, and as a teenager what do you know about how that's gonna turn out?

 I guess my point really is that I am going to be proactive, unlike any of my past generations of mothers. My children are going to be sure that their body is theirs, they are going to be taught to take care of them. As one who has grown up myself and have that experience, I am going to impart to them the information that they require to develop healthy coping skills for the whole picture, including how things make them feel, where the feelings come from, and the ability to respond appropriately to them. We are sexual beings, they will not be ashamed of that. We are emotional beings, they will not be ashamed of that. They are social beings, I am aware of that. I will arm them with the understanding and information they need to become whole people like me, and in doing that I promise that I will not instill them with my fears, I will instill in them the courage to make hard decisions, and desire to do better than I did.

Yes, there are such things on Christian campuses, but, comparably, it is less likely, and, not all students that go there are true Christians. Most people ignorantly presume that everyone who attends Church meetings or are card-carrying members of a denomination are Christian. Jesus said there are within the true Church wolves in sheeps clothing. And that towards the end times there will be numerous imposters claiming to be followers of Christ. He warned us not to be deceived by them.  I know that on some Christian college campuses near where I live there are people attending for degrees other than Christian ministries. These colleges offer business degrees, nursing degrees, etc., and they do not require you to be a Christian nor do they force you to adhere to the teachings of the Bible to attend there. So your argument that such things happen on Christian Campuses fails to refute anything I wrote.

Todays teens, Christian and nonChristian, are both innundated with godless messages, through every type of medium, that premarital sex is natural and preferable to abstinence. It's sad when any child is influenced by it. But no matter what you do all children are hearing and being influenced by the doctrines and dogmas of immorality and debauchery pushers.

Murder is taboo. Rape is taboo. Child molesting is taboo. Spousal and child abuse is taboo. Cannibalism is taboo. Does this enhance their appeal? Should we abolish speed limits in school zones because making speeding in school zones taboo only enhances its appeal? Even if you could prove this is true it still does not justify commiting any of these acts, does it? Which do you thnk is better for society? To make these things taboo or to support them with words and money?  

"Making something taboo enhances its appeal" is a mental copout and does not address the issue that all human beings are able to make the moral choice to opt out of premarital sex. We're not animals following our basic instincts. We are humans who make choices everyday about sex. You must admit that almost every movie, most everything on tv, most songs, most news papers, most radio programs, most school teachers and most political leaders promote the idea that abstinence is unacceptable, ignorant, and repressive, and, sex before marriage, adultery, and promiscuity are acceptable, intelligent, and liberating. These are the messages that our children are being indoctrinated with by people who have embraced Hollywood morality. The free-love hippies have taken over our institutions and are brainwashing our children with their immorality. Immorality is always destructive to a society. Rampant disease and unstable families are the result of it...not to mention that America has added the shedding of innocent blood (abortion) to avoid the consequences and responsibilites of conceiving a child.  The financial cost of dealing with these problems alone will eventually bankrupt us.

Decadence never strengthens and preserves a civilization, it rots it from the inside out. History prove this. Read the Bible and see what happened to people that embraced immorality and debauchery. Or, if the Bible is not your cup of tea, read books like the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and other historical records on the demise of great civilizations. Immorality and debauchery became preferrable to morality and purity of life...and before long...great civilizations were great civilizations no more.

In the 19th century a foreigner (I can't remember his name at the moment) came to America. He came to see what made America great. After observing us he said, "America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." That sums it up for any nation, not just America. Every nation that ceases to be good will cease to be great. History bears this out. America needs to heed this warning.

No Sex!

Don't you use what you learn in school throughout your life? Not just while you're in school.

Gardacil- does rape not happen? Is your husband a virgin TOO! yeah right- like 40 year old virgins Ann Coulter and Laura Ingram.

You can learn about cars in school before you get one; shouldn't  learning about your own body be at least as important?

Were the guests all virgins until they married?

Per Guttmacer Inst. 40% of women will have an abortion- The Common Secret.

A review of  birth dates and marriage dates from the past "golen moral age" shows people were having sex outside of marriage then too!

Why not continue to focus on 20, 30 , 40, 50+ year olds too! Don't morals apply to grandpa and his girlfriend too?

I have a daughter who is now 19 and in college.  I was very honest and blunt in talking about love, abstinence, sex, birth control. STDs, reputation, and other pertinent facts.  While I am aware that I cannot "make" her abstinent, she needed all the information so she could make her decision when the time came.  I made it very clear that having sex has medical and emotional consequences that can impact the rest of her life. 

When a friend of hers became pregnant and had a baby, I was sympathetic.  I used that situation to point out that having a baby isn't the end of the world, but it finishes your childhood and makes it much more difficult to finish school and pursue higher education.  It made her life a lot harder.  There are consequences to your choices.

I don't think this is the responsibility of the school or church.  I love and care about my child more than anyone else.  I know more than the school or church about what is best for her.  For a teen, it isn't just enough to tell them that abstinence is best for them, you must go into all the details and consequence of why it is best.  I don't think it is scaring them; it's just giving them the facts so they can make informed decisions. 

I know that talking about this with your child can be difficult, but lots of things are difficult. 

Did you keep your mouth shut when your child was young and got in the street?  Did you ride a bike without a helmet?  Did you let them put their hands on a hot stove or in a fireplace?  Of course you alerted them to dangers they couldn't see!!!   Having sex as a teen or younger can be dangerous for them.  They expose themselves to uncurable STDs, pregnancy and great emotional distress!!.  If they are not informed, they don't see these dangers.   

It is ridiculous for schools to pass out birth control pills or for Planned Parenting to be allowed to perform abortions without the parent's consent. It is the parent's responsibility to teach morality and raise their own children. Parents need to consider their children, long before they give birth. The parents of today have a philosophy of popping pills to fix their mistakes and using MP3 players and TV to babysit their children.

It is ridiculous for a person to say, if they had been given birth control when they were sexually active at 12, they would not have gotten pregnant at 13. Either the parents were negligent or the child was not listening. But, mostly the parents were not listening and too busy with their lives to raise their own child. It takes parents that go to church and obtain guidance from God and are responsible to raise their children in a morally charged God influenced household.

How moronic for any one to suggest that a school give children birth control and take control of their sexual development, when they bankrupt them selves morally when they took God and prayer out of school. This experiment about removing God from school is over. The moral decline of society and schools parallel this decision. When abortion, birth control and the removal of God from schools became the law, teen pregnancy and sexual abuse became the norm.

Now, we don't have the guts to teach our children that the morally bankrupt student or teacher peddling homosexuality to 14 year old's, is part of the moral decay. It is up to the parents to decide what beliefs and religion they wish to follow and not let schools teach their religion of Secular Humanism and its false teachings of the THEORY of evolution. The foundation of sex education must start with the parent and the parent must hold themselves to be the architect of a child's healthy upbringing. If a parent wants to teach the religion of Secular Humanism, it is their choice, and if a parent wants to teach Christianity or Judaism, it is their choice. The school has not right teaching their religion of Secular Humanism, situational values, and stepping into the boundaries of parenting.

I challenge any parent, to make a weekly journal of the time they spend talking with their children. Not scolding them, bossing them, or yelling at them, but talking. If both parents must work, then the parents need to allocate more of their free time to talking with their children. You should know who all their friends are, because you should meet them. This needs to start from an early age. You know be aware of everyone they are chatting with and actually no child should be chatting with some one that they do not know. Ask them about school. Tell them stories about when you were a child. Let them know that you are not an alien. Don't try to be friends. You have to be their guide.

Bad children are the result of bad parenting. Period. Good parenting is not your child texting all the way to their grandparents house, because you don't know how to talk to them. If your child is having sex at 13, you might be guilty of child neglect. As a parent, how could you not know?

Thank you for bringing out a point that has not been brought up until now, ie, that the "golden moral age" wasn't as "moral" as we would like to think it was. And, this was at a time when the average age for a first-time bride was under 20 (sounds like Teens having sex to me). I think it was Dr. Ruth who, some years ago, made this comment about teens & sex (I'm paraphrasing) : Back in the "Fabulous 50s," an awful lot of couples got married right out of high school -- and the wedding bells did not always come before the dead rabbit. Not only that, how many folks of that earlier generation were married (and, I presume, having sex) at the tender ages of 13 & 14?

So why are we treating teen sex like it's some new problem? IMO, the big change in the last few decades is that the socially acceptable age for a first marriage has gone up from, say, 19-20 to about 26-27.

BTW, ITA w/Dr. Phil that KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!! Let's not only give out young accurate information, let's actively DEBUNK the myths and legends (Coca-Cola douches, eg) that generations of teens have promulgated about sex, STDs, BC, and so on. However, I do draw the line at the schools handing out BC -- if the teens are going to be making that adult decision, they need to be adult enough to purchase it for themselves.

Prof