#Back2School Burdens or Blessings: Which Will Define Your Daughter’s Year?

July 27, 2017 by 1 Comment


back to school after summer vacations, two teen real girls in classroom with blackboard painted together close up

Wow! It’s hard to believe that next week, July 31st to be exact, is the first day of school in the two counties where I spend most of my days speaking.

My how times have changed! Never in a million years could I have ever imagined starting school in July.

The teachers like to spend several weeks with the students before I come in to speak, which means I still have a few more weeks to get my voice ready for the four to six hours of speaking each day.

As the new school year begins, I’m looking forward to seeing the light bulb go off on teens faces when they hear a truth for the first time, causing them to connect the dots between their current choices and their future realities.

Most importantly, I’m looking forward to seeing how God will continue to answer all our prayers over the next school year. You know the prayers that I’ve been requesting from you over the years?

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Consider the Cost: How to Teach Your Teen Freedom is Never Free. Especially When It Comes to Sex

July 3, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Happy 4th of July!

Any American like myself, celebrating  “Independence Day,” should know our “independence” has and always will come with a price.

Soldiers sacrifice their lives for us to have our freedom. So, freedom is never truly FREE!

The Lingering Costs of Sexual “Freedom”

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During the 1960’s there was another  “freedom movement” called the Sexual Revolution. At the time there were only two sexually transmitted infections that we knew about, gonorrhea and syphilis. Today, there are 25+ known STIs/STDs.  This generation is paying the price for all of the sexual freedom that was ushered in during the 1960’s.

I share the above in the classroom before I begin to speak with the students about the cost they may have to pay for the sexual decisions they make during their teen years.

A few months ago, I received the following email through my website:

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When Teen Romance Turns Tragic: How Teen Girls Form Unhealthy Emotional Attachments & What You Can Do to Intervene

April 27, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Depressed Teenage Girl Sitting In Bedroom With Pills

I’ve heard teen girls say that they love hard or when they fall in love, they fall hard. They say it as if that’s a badge of honor.

What does that mean anyway? Loving hard!

Does it mean that they’ll blindly give their hearts, souls and bodies to their boyfriends, no questions asked?

I have a big heart and I love fast and hard and guys take advantage of that.

That they fully intend to marry their boyfriends one day, and as a result, believe it their sole responsibility or “wifely duty,” to make sure their “husbands” are happy?

Before you came to speak to us, I always had my mind focused on the fact that making a guy happy is all there is to life.

Or maybe “loving hard” means these girls get so emotionally wrapped up in their relationships, that they are unable to cope when something goes wrong or it eventually ends.

In a few of my past relationships I have had sex, and when they ended I felt devastated and empty.

Loving Hard + Sex = A Powder Keg! 

I’m concerned when I meet girls whose entire world revolves around their relationships.

Is that healthy at their age, considering there’s only a slim chance that teen relationships will last past their teen years? 

Earlier this week I read about the tragic story of an 18-year-old girl in Cincinnati, OH, who committed suicide in her dorm room. 

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Can You Really Teach Selflessness to the Selfie Generation?

September 26, 2016 by Leave a Comment

The answer is yes, you can! Granted, selflessness is not a topic students expect to hear when they take my Sex-Ed class, but I’ve found it to be quite effective once I break it down for them.

Teen Sex is as Selfishness Does

Every school year I introduce a new approach that becomes the focus for my classes. Last year it was selfishness vs selflessness.

As with tackling any new approach, there are a couple steps I take to introduce it:

  1. Define the Approach/Idea. I always like to begin with a definition that students can understand on their level.

“Selfish is when you make a decision that benefits you even though it hurts someone else.”

Sometimes even concepts that adults deem “simple” are anything but for teens, so I never assume they already know what I mean.

  1. Paint the picture. Let’s face it, when it comes to talking about teen sex there’s not a lot of “painting” required. Oh they get it!

But as you’ll see in the clip below, I do paint the picture of the selfishness of teen sex, especially given the very real possibility of a baby being conceived. Despite what some reality shows would have teens to believe, teen parenting is never ideal for the baby or the parents.

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The Gift that Will Benefit the High School Graduate for Life

May 14, 2016 by Leave a Comment

DVD Covers3

Wondering what to get for all of those high school (HS) graduates you’ll be receiving invitations from? Well, what better choice than a gift that is one-part knowledge, two-parts inspiration and motivation? My two DVDs, The Sex Talk Every Teen Girl Needs to Hear and The Sex Talk Every Teen Guy Needs to Hear, would make the perfect gift for your HS grad.

As I’m getting ready to go to college, I think this information is even more important. Reading tweets, articles, and hearing personal accounts of many college students makes it seem like you have to have sex in college if you want to be in a relationship. Since I never had a boyfriend in high school, I was looking forward to one in college. Thank you for reminding me that sex isn’t necessary. –High School Senior

Just because they are graduating, doesn’t mean they have to stop learning. As a matter of fact, there are some things they especially need to learn before they embark upon this next phase of their lives—called college.

It’s all in the preparation

They need to know how to navigate in an environment where they’ll have newfound freedom, a party scene complete with exposure to drugs and alcohol, and let’s be real—plenty of opportunities to have sex.  So often as their loved ones, we focus our attention and hard-earned dollars on our high school grad’s physical preparation for college (i.e. comforters and microwaves for their dorm, shopping for clothes). And while those are all great and needed, we often overlook their social preparation, which is equally important to their success in college. How confident are you that your incoming freshman is going to make healthy choices when it comes to his/her college relationship(s)?

Why is it so important for them to be armed with the information and tools to make good choices when it comes to their relationships?

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Can You Tell Your Teen to Abstain If You Didn’t?

May 19, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Hypocrite and Teacher-4

Daughters of teen moms are three times more likely to become teenage mothers themselves.1

Have you noticed this phenomenon and ever wondered why it happened? Well I certainly have! As a matter of fact, this statistic has always baffled me.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why a teen girl would repeat the behavior that has often times caused her to grow up struggling unnecessarily.  Yet, I’ve met teen mom after teen mom who has said the same thing,

I can’t believe I'm getting ready to do to my child, the same thing my mother did to me.”

Be a Teacher, NOT a Hypocrite!

After conducting parent workshops and talking to mothers who had themselves been teen moms, I finally understood how and why the above statistic could've come to be.

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Our Children are being Robbed!

May 9, 2014 by 2 Comments

ThiefNo matter how many times I meet a teen mom, I am still saddened when I think about the fact that she has been robbed of her childhood, especially when she is a young teen mom.

In the past year, I have met two such young ladies who both became pregnant in the 7th grade and delivered their babies in the 8th grade. Instantly their “childhoods” became obsolete the moment they gave birth to children of their own. Thirteen and fourteen year olds should be enjoying carefree lives and not dealing with the responsibilities of parenthood.

Recently a friend wrote a “Letter to the Editor” which does a great job of detailing the casualties of teenage pregnancy. It was published in her local paper in support of Teen Pregnancy Prevention Month. I found the article to be so powerful that I am sharing an abbreviated/edited version in today’s post.  

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3 Things Teens Say Can Prevent Them from Having Sex!

May 1, 2014 by 1 Comment

iStock_000014225228SmallAdults have a tendency to come up with solutions on their own for the issue of teenagers’ bad decision-making. So I decided to survey teens to see what they believe the solutions are. Below are some of the most common responses I received when I specifically asked students what they thought it would take to decrease the number of teenagers having sex:

1. Higher expectations from parents and adults!

I believe that if teens knew that their parents believed in them, parents would not be disappointed. ~High School Student

I have reconnected with many former students who told me the reason they had not had sex was because they didn’t want to disappoint me (not their parents, but me). For many of them, their parents expect them to be sexually active as a teen. I am saddened when I hear them say I have higher expectations of them than their own parents have.

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Why I’m NOT out to Prevent Teen Pregnancies!

October 28, 2013 by 2 Comments

iStock_000014737631XSmallDuring the 12 years I have been speaking to students, there have been a number of times when I have left schools feeling so burdened by the state of our culture that my chest literally felt heavy when I walked out the door of the school. Let me tell you about one of those days.

When speaking to a group of 8th grade students, there was a statement made by one of the students that really saddened me.  I was talking about the issue of teen pregnancy and telling them how selfish and unfair it was for teens to make decisions to have sex because that decision could result in an innocent child having to pay the price for their choice if a pregnancy occurs.

A young lady interrupted me to say just because a girl got pregnant as a teenager didn’t mean she couldn’t still make something of her life and give her child a good life.  She used her cousin as an example and said the following:

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The Greatest Story Never Told!

August 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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Are teens more sexually active today than they were 20 years ago? Are there more teen pregnancies today than there were 20 years ago? Most of you would probably answer, “Yes” to both those questions. After all, every generation gets worse and worse, right?

The Stories Students Tell!

When I hear adults question whether it’s realistic to expect teens to abstain from sex, I want to bring them with me to the schools or let them read some of the more than 10,000 letters that I have received from high school students over the past 11 years.

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