Kindergarteners and Underwear Ads

So I about had a heart attack a couple nights ago and I’d like to share my experience and save you your own personal heart attack later. (note- I’m talking about boys here, but I know girls can have their own issues.  You have my permission to change the gender and context in your mind to suit your situation.)

My Kindergartener son came to me with a confession.  He said he and a couple boys were supposed to be cutting pictures out of magazines as part of an art project in school.  They found an underwear ad in the magazine they were using.  And they laughed about it and passed it around.

Bless my son’s heart for being sensitive enough about such a thing that he felt compelled to tell me.  Best I can tell, I’m not even sure anyone was IN the underwear in the ad, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to laugh or look at somebody else’s private parts, or what goes on those private parts.  He felt genuinely guilty about how he’d behaved.

I felt this anxiety about being sure I handled this situation with grace and tact so he would know he could come to me in the future about this kind of stuff.  So here are some tips for handling that situation when it happens to you.  Because if you’re doing your job right, Mama, it will happen.

Wait?  If I’m doing my job RIGHT won’t this never happen?  Won’t my child never come across such a thing?  Can’t we toss out the TV, homeschool the kids, move to a homestead in North Dakota and never have to worry about my boy seeing a lady he’s not married to in her underwear?  Good luck with that.

I am telling you, this WILL happen.  A pastor friend of mine said recently (this is my paraphrase) that in his youth you had to LOOK for naked ladies if you wanted to see them.  Now the naked ladies come looking for you and you have to be actively training your mind to turn away.  If it isn’t the Hanes ad in Better Homes and Gardens, it will probably be the bra ad that came in your Sunday paper, or even the well-meaning girl in the row in front of you at church that leaned down to get her Bible and a whole new world opened up to your little boy behind her.  Temptation is EVERYWHERE and in some ways it always has been.  So unless we intend to raise our kids in a community of burqas (and even then, isn’t the potential glimpse of a wrist going to become the new temptation?), we are going to run across this situation.  What’s going to tell you if you’re doing a good job developing a relationship with your child is if they choose to tell you about it.

So once “it” happens and they tell you, what next?  Picture yourself driving on one of those narrow mountain roads with deep ditches on each side- we want to STAY ON THE ROAD.  So here are the two ditches we need to balance ourselves between:

1) Nonchalance- “Oh Sweetie, it’s just an underwear ad.  The human body is nothing to be ashamed of.  We don’t need to make such a big deal about this.”  AAAAAHHHH!!!!!  If your child’s conscience is pricked enough that he’s confessing to you, validate validate validate.  However innocuous the temptation, he’s telling you he went somewhere he knew he shouldn’t have gone with it.  Let him know you appreciate him telling you.  Take him seriously.  If we help him rationalize it now, he’ll have no problem rationalizing it later. . . when it’s something not nearly so innocent.

2) Shame- Please please please please please do NOT shame your child about this issue.  It is so natural for him to experience temptation in this situation.  Do you think if you tell him he’s being dirty or this is gross he will now no longer feel that temptation?  Of course he’ll still be tempted, but now he’ll feel so shameful about it that he won’t tell you and will go to greater lengths to hide it.  That is a dangerous scenario.

So how do we handle it when our boys come to us?

1) Validate his temptation- curiosity is normal and women are beautiful.  Feeling tempted does not make you gross.

2) Help him distinguish between temptation and sin- this will be a life-long temptation for him, but he doesn’t need to sin because of it.

2) Tell him you’re proud of him for being honest with you.

3) Offer forgiveness- this may not be necessary depending on the situation, but some kids really NEED to know they’re forgiven or else they will continue to struggle with guilt.

4) Pray with your child- be sure they know they can talk to God about this situation.  He isn’t surprised.

5) Strategize- help them come up with ideas for what they will do next time (and there will be a next time) this happens.

6) Take action on their behalf if needed- talk to the adult who was supervising to make sure you have the full story and to be sure they are aware of what happened.

After talking this all through with our son, I let his teacher know what we had heard.  I was incredibly thankful she talked to him about it at school the following day.  She apologized to him and had him show her the picture so she could throw it away right there in front of him.  She told him if such a thing ever happened again to let her know.

I can’t even say how glad we were for how she handled this experience.  She wasn’t nonchalant and she didn’t shame him at all.  What a blessing that was for him and for us as his parents that she backed us up and didn’t feel defensive about the situation.

We are raising children during a time when sexual exposure is easier to come across than it ever has been before.  As much as we’d like to bury our heads in the sand about it, we just don’t have an option.  We parents have to be the FIRST ones to address this with our kids so we can set the tone.  I’m telling you- their spouses will thank us for it later.