Florida Catholic | The ‘Talk’: Making It Easier For Parents And Kids

THE ‘Talk’: making it easier for parents and kids

Two Catholic therapist will bring their workshop, “Teaching Human Sexuality to Your Kids: A Catholic Perspective” to your parish.

MARCI ELLIOTT | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 05.23.08

TALLAHASSEE | Two Catholic therapists showed a group of parents in Tallahassee May 10 how to make the delicate task of explaining sexuality to children easier by basing it on the church’s teachings.

Mario Sacasa, Tallahassee liaison for the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee Marriage and Family Life Office, and Mary Ballard, a clinical social worker, presented a three-hour parent formation workshop called “Teaching Human Sexuality to Your Kids: A Catholic Perspective” at the Co-Cathedral of St. Thomas More’s O’Brien social hall.

After an opening prayer led by Msgr. Michael Tugwell, rector of the co-cathedral, Sacasa said he wanted the workshop to be “more of a dialogue than a lecture.” He asked the group why sex education was important.

“It’s a different world now,” said Merlinda Borgerson, mother of a 12-year-old girl.

“I didn’t want (my kids) to learn from outside the home,” said Jane Kynoch, mother of three daughters.

“It’s totally out of context with everything else in your life,” said Ken Kniepmann, father of an 11-year-old son and a 7-year-old daughter. “I’d like my kids to have it as a context in everything they do.”

Sacasa and Ballard, who work in private practice at the St. Joseph Counseling Center, used slides and quoted from Scriptures and several other sources – including author C.S. Lewis – to emphasize points of certain issues.

“God really took a chance on giving us sex, knowing this thing could wreak havoc in the world,” Sacasa said. “Tell your kids, ‘Your body is created in God’s likeness.’”

The workshop covered points and issues including how to explain parts of the body and differences between males and females; relationships between husbands and wives, as well as between parents and children; the parental role as sex educators; approaches for parents to take in discussing human sexuality with their kids; fundamentals such as praying together in the sex education process; pornography; homosexuality; and differences when explaining sexuality to different age groups from toddlers to teens.

“The ultimate goal of sexuality is the desire for God,” Sacasa said. “He’s given us this great gift to point us to him.”

Ballard said sex education had a threefold purpose: physical, spiritual and moral. She emphasized the importance of parents having a happy, successful marriage in their role as their children’s sex educators.

“Home is the best place to address these issues,” said Ballard, a former elementary and special-education teacher. “I can’t speak enough about the model of your marriage.”

Sacasa and Ballard invited the group to comment and ask questions throughout the workshop.

Barbara Palmer, mother of three daughters and a son, compared her parents’ raising of their children to the experience she and her husband currently have raising their children.

“Now I can understand my parents better,” Palmer said, adding that the workshop helped her see things more clearly.

“Our world is so hungry for sex. We’re looking and looking for answers because we’re so confused,” Sacasa said. “Two-thirds of the church’s official teaching regarding sex has come from Pope John Paul II.”

The workshop briefly addressed some of today’s misconceptions about sex and the influence they have on children and society in general.

Living together before marriage, which has become increasingly popular and widespread, is a deterrent to marriage, Sacasa said.

“It’s a recipe for disaster. Young people just don’t get it anymore. It’s all about instant gratification,” he said.

Sacasa and Ballard said parents definitely should teach children that sex is reserved for marriage, despite the acceptance of sex among young people today.

“Don’t be afraid if you lose your virginity to reclaim it in the name of Jesus,” Ballard said parents should tell their teens.

Parents should teach their children to stay away from other popular vices of today such as pornography, the therapists said. In addition to being solely self-gratifying and self-centered, it destroys the respect men and women should have for each other, they said.

“Men, we have to teach our sons that pornography is poison,” Sacasa said. “In my counseling, I see the destruction it does.”

Sacasa and Ballard said their workshop is available to parishes for the asking.

The group of parents said it was a positive help to them and prepared them better to approach the subject with their own children.

“I find it to be very useful,” said Claudia Pulido, who has been married to her husband, Jesus Galvan, for four months. Galvan, who attended the workshop with his wife, has a 9-year-old daughter. Pulido said the workshop would help her and her husband discuss sexuality issues with Galvan’s daughter and with children of their own someday.

“It is very timely,” Pulido said, citing what is going on in the community. “It will help us carry the message forward to our children. It all comes down to parenting.”

Kniepmann, a member of Good Shepherd Parish, said he’d like to see the workshop presented there.

“Absolutely, because there are so many families there,” he said.

For information on how to arrange a presentation of the parent formation workshop “Teaching Human Sexuality to Your Kids: A Catholic Perspective” in your parish, phone Mario Sacasa in Tallahassee at 850-222-9630.

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