Awkwardness | Duckabush Blog

There is one topic that most parents fear discussing with their children. Coincidentally, it is also one topic that is dreaded by many children. People have even invented an idiomatic alias so they don’t have to speak about it directly.

Yes, I’m referring to the ‘Birds and the Bees’, or human reproductive sexuality.

Nobody wants to talk about this. It is awkward, daunting, and fraught with potential disaster.

Well, nobody except maybe Dennis and Barbara Rainey…

Happily, there is an excellent resource for beleaguered parents, published by Family Life, entitled Passport 2 Purity.

We’ve used this curriculum with our older three kids, but Kathy and I dragged our feet in applying it to our younger two. Finally, Sarah started pressuring her Mom.

“When are we going away for our special weekend, Mom?”

“Well, Dad needs to go through the Passport 2 Purity with David, first,” Kathy reminded her.

Sarah was unsympathetic. “David’s fourteen. What’s Dad waiting for? Maybe he should take David away for the weekend before he is married and has children. Wouldn’t that be more appropriate?”

I may have paraphrased this a tiny bit.

In any case, David and I went camping, bringing the Passport 2 Purity CDs with us, both a little nervous.

The program is divided into five sessions, each containing a lecture and several illustrations, along with a project that the parent and child do together. The sessions take about 90 minutes each, and are designed to be completed in sequence, starting on a Friday night and extending through the day on Saturday.

I planned the weekend, and David and I set off in our little red ‘chariot’, heading for the Pacific shore to camp and to be awkward together.