How you pursue and model relationships in your own life is a great start to teaching your children about healthy relationships. Ultimately, portraying sex as a positive thing in the correct context is important. Here are two practice tips for teaching your children about sex:
1. Sex is not a bad thing.
The goal of purity is not to get rid of your desire for sex, but to manage your appetite for it. Saying no now means saying yes to better things in the future. Your sexuality is important. According to author and speaker Kris Vallotton, "the value of virginity is in the battle it took to keep it." It gives something valuable; something to sacrifice and fight for, to give away to the one they love on their wedding night.
2. Teach your children to manage their desires from a young age.
This principle begins when they're young! Think about how your kids threw a tantrum in the grocery store because you would not allow them to have the candy bar on the shelf. This is an opportunity to teach your child to manage this desire by telling them they need to wait until after dinner to have candy. This trains them in gratification delay, so that when they're older they've already learned how to wait for good things. We can't always get what we want when we want it, and every child needs to learn this lesson from a young age. It will only help as they manage their sexual appetite when they're older.