Questions

First, let me just thank you for being one of the few parents who is using parental controls on all of your family’s Internet-enabled devices.  That is obviously a huge step to help protect your son from online pornography.

Now, with regard to oral sex, I would be pretty surprised if your son didn’t already know a good deal about oral sex.  Even though he is not viewing pornography on your home comptuers or via his smartphone, most of the students i work with learn about oral sex from their peers or from movies, TV shows or the music they listen to.  Even good Christian kids tend to hear/absorb a lot of information about sex and oral sex in the culture today.  

It’s probably best to start by asking your son what he knows about oral sex to make sure you are on the same page.  Once you are both on the same page about the basics, then it’s important to use the opportunity to reinforce your family’s views on purity and sexuality.  While oral sex may not cause someone to lose their technical virginity, engaging in oral sex will cause them to lose their technical purity.  Our perspective here, and I am guessing your’s as well, is that oral sex is a form of sexual interaction that should be reserved for a man and a woman in marriage–it’s an incredibly intimate act of service and pleasure for a husband and wife, alone.  

Since your son is a believer, then I would encourage him to really continue to seek to honor God with his body, and to pursue not only “technical” virginity, but purity by God’s standard.  Chances are, your son will understand that it’s God’s best, and for his best and his future wife’s best for him to save all of himself, and his sexual experiences for marriage.  

Finally, I think it’s also important when talking about oral sex to mention that performing or receiving oral sex can still open an individual up to acquiring STDs… it’s not something that teenagers risk by having sexual intercourse alone.

I am so sorry to hear this.  As you may imagine, kids today have easy access to child pornography.  Sometimes, kids are just looking for images and videos of other kids their age, but at times, if they have developed an addiction to online pornography, they can begin accessing not only extremely hardcore material, but also material that of even young children, toddlers and younger, being exploited on the screen.  This is the unfortunate nature of online pornography and the easy access kids have to this and other illegal content online.

It’s my belief that the best step is a step towards prevention and parental education.  One of the groups that I have worked with developed an Internet safety curriculum called Internet Safety 101 (www.internetsafety101.org) that focuses on educating parents to protect kids online from pornography, sexual predators, child pornography and dangers related to the social web.  Much of the content is also appropriate for a teenage audience and can be a helpful launchpad for discussion with kids about being safe and making wise choices online.  I would highly recommend it.

Additionally, when it comes to specific presentations for teens, most local law enforcement groups have trained presenters available that speak to teen audiences all the time.  I would recommend contacting them to find out about any resources and trainings that they could provide that specifically relate to CP.  (Bedford County ICAC, the VA Attorney General’s Office and your local Internet Crimes Against Children task force should be able to point you in the right direction).

We have a number of parent resources on our site (i would recommend that you and your husband review Action Steps, The Talk and our Pornography Critical Issues page) that can help you and your husband in this process.  I would also strongly recommend “The Volunteer’s Guide to Sex” — a great resource both for parents and for individuals that work with kids.  As parents, regardless of how where your son is with Christ, it is important to help him set boundaries and understand where you and your husband are coming from.  Your husband should be honest, patient and ask questions to help him understand where your son is coming from.  If your husband lets his son know that he is concerned and cares for him, and if he tries to help him understand his own perspective about purity and sex, then at least they can start the conversation.

Remember as well that sex addiction and pornography addiction is something that impacts believers and non-believers alike–Christians and non-Christians can struggle with and be impacted by the dark side of sexual sin, so even though your step-son doesn’t know the Lord, he could be struggling with what healthy sex is all about.