Raising Teens With Sexual Self-Control: A Parent's Survival Guide

By Karen Kropf

I've spoken to hundreds of parents who were completely unprepared for the anarchy of adolescence. They usually sought me out when things were on fire. Navigating an unexpected pregnancy, reeling from an abortion decision, dealing with sexual infections, or obsessive behavior.

In every single case, those parents had put off the training THEY needed to guide their child through the minefield of adolescence. "Hoping for the best" is not a strategy. These weren't bad parents. They just kept thinking they had more time.

If what you were looking for was a book that would guide you through "The Talk" - the one where you sweat bullets for months, finally arrange that special weekend, Mom takes the girls, Dad takes the boys, you lay it all out, pray they don't ask any tough questions and then hope to God you never have to discuss it again - this is NOT that book.

If you were looking for a book that explains how to convince a teen to use protection consistently and correctly, this is NOT that book. That book does not exist. Teens use condoms the way they clean their rooms. Always have and always will. You are fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

I wrote Raising Teens With Sexual Self-Control: A Parent's Survival Guide because I didn't want to watch another generation of teens fall for the same misconceptions and outright lies their parents had. It's written so that each chapter can stand alone - in case you're not the kind of person to read a book cover-to-cover, although I hope you will. I invite you to dive in somewhere and let me earn the right to coach you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karen Kropf
• Release date: Mar 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476162928

Karen Kropf

Karen Kropf began talking to teens about sex, love and relationship myths in 1998. It ultimately led to the founding of Positively Waiting, a non-profit organization, offering free public school presentations. Thousands of young people every year respond enthusiastically to her challenge to benefit from sexual self-control. Her first book was a wake up call to singles not to make relational decisions based on sexual chemistry, called, "Sex Makes People Stupid: How to Avoid Ending Up With a Loser." Raising Teens With Sexual Self-Control: A Parent's Survival Guide is Karen Kropf's second book. It's a humorous guide for parents who are afraid their kids will ask, "Were you a virgin when you got married?" Her third book is "This is Your Brain On Porn." Its a fast-reading practical guide to understanding the impact of pornography on the brain and what can be done to rewire it. She and her husband still offer public school presentations, plus a variety of workshops for parents, couples and singles. They live in Southern California.

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Raising Teens With Sexual Self-Control

By Karen Kropf

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 Karen Kropf

All Rights Reserved

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Print version of Raising Teens With Sexual Self-Control available here and at most online retailers

Another ebook by Karen Kropf -

Sex Makes People Stupid: How to Avoid Ending Up With a Weenie

www.PositivelyWaiting.com

~~~

Dedicated to all the parents who have let me influence their children. Thank you for honoring me with your trust, and for the privilege of loving your kids.

~~~

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: Sex Makes Babies

Chapter 2: The Sleeping Beauty Method

Chapter 3: Lowering the Bar

Chapter 4: Data Dumping

Chapter 5: What’s Going On in Their Heads?

Chapter 6: The Sex Education Debate

Chapter 7: Oh, To Be Fourteen Again – NOT!

Chapter 8: Tools That Work: Affirm Them

Chapter 9: Tools That Work: Be The Hero

Chapter 10: Tools That Work: Accentuate The Positive

Chapter 11: Tools That Work: Challenge Them

Chapter 12: The Biggest Obstacle

Chapter 13: Emailing Emily*

Chapter 14: Everyone Lies About Latex

Chapter 15: Boys to Men

Chapter 16: God Help Us! We Have Girls!

Chapter 17: Making The Connection

Chapter 18: What To Agree On Before You Talk To Your Kids

Chapter 19: Never Give Up

Endnotes

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PREFACE

There is an abundance of evidence which proves the strategies of well-meaning people trying PREVENT teens from being sexually active has produced exactly the opposite result. That’s why this book was originally titled Did You MEAN to Raise a Sexually Active Teen?

But very few people seem to be aware of the proof, or that the methods educators and parents have been using since the 1960s DON’T WORK.

I’ve spoken to hundreds of parents who were completely unprepared for the anarchy of adolescence. They usually sought me out when things were on fire. Navigating an unexpected pregnancy, reeling from an abortion decision, dealing with sexual infections, or obsessive behavior.

In every single case, those parents had put off the training THEY needed to guide their child through the minefield of adolescence. Hoping for the best is not a strategy. These weren’t bad parents. They just kept thinking they had more time.

I wrote Raising Teens With Sexual Self-Control because I didn’t want to watch another generation of teens fall for the same misconceptions and outright lies their parents had. It’s written so that each chapter can stand alone — in case you’re not the kind of person to read a book cover-to-cover, although I hope you will. I invite you to dive in somewhere and let me earn the right to coach you.

Karen Kropf

January 2012

~~~

FOREWORD

As a father of 3 teenage boys, there are many things that cause you worry. They played tackle football. They attend a very diverse public high school. One of them has an auto-immune disease. Two of them drive. Their friends have a much bigger impact on them than my wife and I.

Are they going to perform well as students? Will they go to college? Will they support themselves? Will they be hard workers? There are a lot of things to worry about as a parent of 3 teenage boys.

I was a teenage boy. I remember the school dances. I remember the temptations I faced with girls. And my parents were like all of my friends’ parents. They never once talked to me about choices. They did not talk about what they expected, in terms of my interaction with girls. They never talked about sex. I don’t think my parents HAD sex (OK, outside of 5 times to have my siblings and me)! My wife’s parents didn’t talk about this forbidden subject either.

Now I have 3 boys! I was convicted to make sex a topic that would be more open in our home. So when I met Karen and Jim Kropf, I was open to what they had to say. But when I saw the kids respond to them, I knew I had to listen to what they said.

Over the past 4 years, I have watched as Jim and Karen have been involved in our kids’ lives. They ask them hard questions. They take them out with their girlfriends, so they can get to know that special someone. Then they ask even harder questions!

And my boys are so much better for it. They have made mistakes, but they know what they want. They want to be pure for their wives, whenever that may happen.

When we are not home, our boys do not invite their girl friends in the house. Not just because that is our rule. But because they do not want to face those temptations. They don’t want to hurt the relationship they have with their girlfriends.

We are so thankful to have watched Jim and Karen model this with our kids. Sometimes we see it, when they talk about how to treat a lady to my boys. But often it is when they talk to the kids on their own. This is something they don’t report back to us. In fact, neither do the kids. But we can tell, based upon the decisions they make, and the way our boys think, that Jim and Karen have had an impact.

Karen asked my opinion on whether she should write a book for parents. She is not a parent. She talks to kids all the time, because she was a kid. She talks to young adults all the time, because she was a young adult. She talks to singles all the time because she was single. But a parenting book when she had not been a parent seemed wrong.

However, I knew Karen had taught many parent seminars on the topic of sex and how to handle it with their kids. She has counseled many parents about challenges they face with their kids. So, with no reservations, I told her, Go for it!

It is harsh to read what she writes at times. But that is because it is quite revolutionary, in a society that puts sex on display all the time, everywhere you go. But she tells the truth. She has great advice.

And what she writes in this book... YOU NEED TO READ! Take the time to hear her opinion. You will be glad you did.

I know my wife and I are glad we did. Sure, we still worry about our kids. But they are so much more informed, so much better equipped to handle the world they face every day.

John Maly,

President, The People Fund

October 2010

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INTRODUCTION

I have always started my parent workshops by saying, "Before we begin, you should know, I am not a parent and I am not a professionally trained educator. On any other topic relating to raising children, you should probably not take my advice. This is the one and only aspect of parenting that I can say I am qualified to discuss, and the ONLY reason you should listen to me now, is because teens do."

I’ve been talking to teenagers about sex, love and relationships since 1998. When I first started as a volunteer talking about abstinence in public schools, I was using someone else’s material. I could see we weren’t getting through to them. We were big-hearted adults, but we had really terrible material. We were trained to present statistics, studies and scare tactics to convince teens they should avoid having sex.

This was long before kids used the phrase talk to the hand, but that would accurately describe the reaction we got. If they didn’t sleep through our talk, they rolled their eyes and sprinted for the door as soon as the bell rang.

Since what we were using wasn’t my material, I had no emotional investment in it. All I cared about was convincing teenagers their decisions about sex could have consequences for the rest of their lives. I was only interested in what would reach them. That’s when we started asking for anonymous feedback.

Just some basic questions like: What was your attitude toward sex before our talk? Is it the same or different after the talk? We had them write down anything they thought they would remember about what they heard. And we gave them plenty of space for other comments – in particular, how our talk had impacted them personally, or how this sex talk was different from other sex talks they had.

Thirty to forty kids at a time, 5 or 6 classes a day and it didn’t take long before we started seeing some patterns. If a statistic or an illustration we were using didn’t show up on the evaluation forms, we dropped it and tried something else. We only kept what THEY said made an impression, and kept replacing everything that didn’t show up. Eventually we ended up with the talks we give now.

It is the comments from thousands of teens saying we changed their lives, which qualifies me as an expert in this ONE area. I do mean this ONE area. Let me reiterate: it would be a mistake to take advice from me about nutrition or homework or curfews. But you can trust my advice when it comes to adolescents and sex.

However, I do have two disclaimers. First, if what you were looking for was a book that would guide you through The Talk — the one where you sweat bullets for months, finally arrange that special weekend, Mom takes the girls, Dad takes the boys, you lay it all out, pray they don’t ask any tough questions and then hope to God you never have to discuss it again — this is NOT that book.

Second, if you were looking for a book that explains how to convince a teen to use protection consistently and correctly, this is NOT that book. That book does not exist. Teens use condoms the way they clean their rooms. Always have and always will. You are fooling yourself if you think otherwise.

The aim of this book is to help you and your kids make decisions about sex both of you can live with.

~~~

CHAPTER 1: SEX MAKES BABIES

I made the decision to be sexually active at 15 years old. I thought I was ready. I thought I had found the Right One. We were together for three years when I became pregnant. When my test came up positive, he said, Your problem, you handle it and he was gone.

At the time, I was a straight A student. I had just been accepted to UCLA. Like every other pregnant girl I knew, I didn’t talk to anyone about my decision: the risks or what it would be like after. I acted on my fears and chose to have an abortion.

I was completely unprepared for how many ways that one decision would affect me — and every relationship I would have -- for the rest of my life.

Of course, after the abortion, I did the responsible thing. I went on the Pill. Sex gave me the illusion of intimacy, so it was part of all my relationships. Like most people, I thought I would be able to tell if my partner had a sexually transmitted disease. Unfortunately, this imaginary ability to detect an infected person failed me several times. The combined damage from multiple infections meant, for me, there would be no more babies.

The heart of what I do, which many parents could not do (and probably should not), is openly admit to young people, When I made the decision to be sexually active at 15, I didn’t know I would one day be telling people, I aborted the only baby I will ever have. I have no live children. That first baby was the only baby.

Most people would call me an abstinence educator, although I never use that word around teenagers. Teens hear the word abstinence a lot. They’re told it means to avoid or refrain from. But Be abstinent! doesn’t help anyone figure out what to do instead.

Let me give you a simple illustration of what I’m saying. If I walked into the room where you are right now, and I said to you, Don’t sit there, how would you know what I want you to do? Do I want you to stand up instead? Or leave the room? How about move to a different seat? Which seat? There would be a lot of room for interpretation. Most likely, you would stay right where you were until you got more information, or you might try to guess what I want you to do and then hope you guessed right.

That’s the dilemma kids face when they hear, Be abstinent! or Abstinence is the only way to avoid STDs and pregnancy. What they hear is Don’t have sex, but in their head they’re asking, What do you mean by ‘sex’? [One study showed fewer than 20% of college students said they considered oral sex sex. (1)]

It might alarm you to know that today’s teens assume you mean abstain from vaginal intercourse, because other types of sexual activity (oral, anal, mutual masturbation and outercourse) have all been classified as abstinent behavior in their sex education class at school.

So I never use the word abstinence, unless I’m around adults. Instead, I use sexual self-control and I talk about managing impulses or redirecting passion.

I’ve spoken to ten thousand teens a year in public and private high schools. I’ve been to juvenile probation camps and youth groups. What they’ve told me about what they think, or what they’ve done, is scary. They have dangerous misconceptions and misinformation about sex. Without knowing it, they’re taking life-threatening risks.

Sadly, most adults are just as poorly informed about the dangers as teenagers are.

The information I’m going to share with you will probably be overwhelming. If your kids are under sixteen, you might have to fight off those mental pictures of them learning to ride a bike. And you will definitely have to put aside your wishful thinking that "Sex is the last thing on their mind."

Although in one way that is true: kids don't think about sex the way adults do. Especially younger kids (11-13). It's not really about raging hormones. A preteen who begins sexual activity is making a decision more closely aligned with their desire to have a later bedtime, or see a PG-13 movie. In youth culture, sexual behavior is a symbol of the next phase of maturity. The pressure to experiment is intense, and being considered immature is social suicide.

For a typical pre-teen and teenager, the main focus in their life is being accepted. They know they’re not lovable. Their bodies feel like a localized war zone. Unexpected growth spurts, braces, glasses, pimples and puberty, mean the average teen is adapting to more challenges physically, socially and emotionally than you would be if you changed jobs, moved to a new city, and went looking for a new congregation or health club.

Your kids absorb a thousand messages a day which imply other people are better looking, smarter and more loved than