When Should You Talk to Your Kids About Sex? (Earlier Than You Think) with John Fort
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
Release Date: 10/08/2026
Make Your Home a Sanctuary, Not a Screen Zone | Mark Naito of Navigating Tech Family
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
Note: Around 27:36, Mark shares a brief story from his years in end-of-life care that mentions a father’s abuse of his children. No details are described, but please listen with care if this topic is hard for you. Screens aren’t going away, and Mark Naito isn’t asking you to throw them out. He’s asking a harder question: when you walk through your front door, what gets your attention first, your family or your phone? Mark and his wife founded Navigating Tech Family after their own struggle with screens. He’s a husband, a homeschool dad of two in Boise, Idaho, and a former memory care...
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When Your Child Comes Out: Grace, Conviction, and What to Say First | Rob Jackson
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
What do you say in the first ten minutes after your child tells you they identify as LGBT? And what do you do when your first thought is “What will people at church think?” In this episode of Sparking Everyday Discipleship, Terrie talks with Rob Jackson, a licensed professional counselor with Focus on the Family and author of When Grace Meets Conviction: Loving God and Your LGBT Child. Rob draws on years of calls from Christian parents to show how to keep your convictions and your relationship with your child at the same time. He explains why accepting your child is not the same as...
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Silly Books, Sweet Homes, and Discipline That Restores, with Macy Bassler
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
Foster and homeschool mom Macy Bassler talks about discipling kids through silly stories, a warm family culture, and discipline that restores fellowship. Show notes Terrie talks with Macy Bassler, a pediatric physical therapist, homeschool mom, and the voice behind The Fruitful Family. Macy and her husband said yes to foster care and were matched with a six-year-old girl who needed a forever home. Within two years they had three children. Macy shares what God taught her through advocating for a daughter with special needs, walking through three miscarriages, and choosing to step away from her...
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Parenting for God's Approval or Everyone Else's
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
We hear sermons about money, careers, and even family becoming idols. But what about the quieter idols: perfectionism, control, and the approval of other people? In this episode of Sparking Everyday Discipleship, Terrie shares how God revealed idolatry in her own heart. It began with a season of fear early in her marriage and a counselor’s question she never forgot: “Are you trying to be God?” Years later, a doctoral class took her deeper, and she saw that people-pleasing was at the root. She shows how this idol creeps into our parenting. We start focusing on how our kids’ behavior...
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Fine and Gross Motor Skills: A Quick Correction
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
In Episode 350 about using copywork and how to help our children write without fatigue I misspoke about fine and gross motor skills. I wanted to set the record straight. Here's the link to the episode: https://booksthatspark.libsyn.com/using-copy-work-for-language-arts-and-discipleship
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What to Do When Your Child Doubts God (and You Don’t Know the Answer) with Elizabeth Urbanowicz
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
Questions Aren’t the Opposite of Faith: Preparing Kids for the Questions They’ll Face Our kids are hearing hard questions about God, the Bible, and faith from friends, influencers, and the internet. Elizabeth Urbanowicz, founder of Foundation Worldview, returns to talk about how to make home the safest place to ask them. She and Terrie discuss what to do when your child doubts, when you don’t know the answer, and when someone has twisted Scripture to hurt them. In this episode: Welcome questions: The opposite of faith is unbelief, not questions. Affirm the question before you answer it....
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When Should You Talk to Your Kids About Sex? (Earlier Than You Think) with John Fort
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
Don’t Stress Talking Sex: Starting Honest, Healthy Conversations with Your Kids Most of us dread “the talk.” John Fort didn’t want to have it either. But after his own childhood exposure to pornography, with parents who never addressed it, he knew his kids wouldn’t stand a chance if he stayed silent. Decades of ministry later, Focus on the Family asked him to write the book. In this episode, John and Terrie talk about why these conversations are part of discipling our kids, how early to start, and what to do when your child has already been exposed. He also covers how your own messy...
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Is "It's Okay" Hurting Our Kids? Rethinking Forgiveness and Repentance
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
What does the Bible really say about forgiveness and repentance, and how do we teach kids forgiveness that goes beyond "it's okay"? We teach children to say "it's okay" when someone hurts them, but that isn't what Scripture means by forgiveness. In this episode, Terrie uses Luke 17:3–4 and a scene from Izzy's Notebook to look at the difference between letting go of bitterness and true forgiveness. Real forgiveness isn't only for our own peace of mind. It seeks the other person's good, which sometimes means confronting an offense in love so reconciliation with us, and with God, can happen. In...
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Active Discipleship
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
Summary In this episode, Terrie Hellard-Brown shares practical strategies for discipling active children, emphasizing the importance of meeting children where they are and using everyday moments for teaching. She discusses how to handle resistance, the value of teachable moments, and ways to incorporate faith into daily life. Key Topics Adjusting discipleship to children's activity levels Using mealtime and travel as teaching moments Seizing teachable and defining moments Encouraging independence and respect in teens Handling resistance and resistance in discipleship Incorporating...
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Using Copy Work for Language Arts and Discipleship
Sparking Everyday Discipleship
Summary Terrie Hellard-Brown shares practical insights on teaching language arts and writing to children, emphasizing modeling, copy work, and motor skills development to enhance learning and Scripture memory. NOTE: I misspoke about fine and gross motor skills in this episode. I recorded a correction. You can listen to that here: https://booksthatspark.libsyn.com/fine-and-gross-motor-skills-a-quick-correction Key Topics The power of modeling in teaching language arts Using copy work to teach grammar and punctuation The TPCASTT method for analyzing poetry The importance of large motor skills in...
info_outlineDon’t Stress Talking Sex: Starting Honest, Healthy Conversations with Your Kids
Most of us dread “the talk.” John Fort didn’t want to have it either. But after his own childhood exposure to pornography, with parents who never addressed it, he knew his kids wouldn’t stand a chance if he stayed silent. Decades of ministry later, Focus on the Family asked him to write the book.
In this episode, John and Terrie talk about why these conversations are part of discipling our kids, how early to start, and what to do when your child has already been exposed. He also covers how your own messy past can become your most powerful teaching tool.
In this episode:
- When to start: “Two years before you think you should.” John walks through Scripture’s example of reading the whole law, including its sexual content, to “all the little ones,” and gives age guidelines. Body parts and respect come at ages 3–6, how sex works at 8–9, and the reproductive system at 10–11.
- Preparing kids for exposure: By age 8, kids need to know they will encounter sexual content, what to do when it happens, and that they won’t be in trouble for telling you.
- Arousal, temptation, and sin: A simple framework that helped John’s son understand that a bodily reaction isn’t sin, and that this understanding makes walking away easier.
- Processing exposure without lecturing: What did you see? How did it happen? How did it make you feel? How can we prevent it? Then pray together.
- When your child has sought out pornography: Start with “I’m so glad you told me,” and share your own story first.
- Parents with a past: The number one reason Christian parents avoid this conversation is fear their kids will learn about their past. John explains why your story is the bridge.
- Neurodivergent kids: Why online content can feel safer than real social interaction, and how to build positive social experiences.
- Kids with intellectual disabilities: Lower impulse control means greater protection is needed.
Timestamps
00:12 Welcome
01:11 Meet John Fort and the backstory behind the book
04:53 When should you start talking about sex?
06:52 Respecting our bodies and moving beyond purity culture
10:36 Preparing kids for exposure
12:17 Arousal vs. temptation vs. sin
14:43 How to help kids process exposure
15:39 When your child has sought out pornography
20:03 What if you messed up when you were young?
22:32 Neurodivergent kids and online compulsions
27:18 Kids with intellectual disabilities
28:24 John’s books
29:35 Closing thought: these conversations draw you closer
30:13 New homeschool teen writing class
Resources mentioned
- Don’t Stress Talking Sex by John W. Fort: [Amazon link]
- John’s other books, including his identity book and the Elias Turner series: [Amazon author page]
- Homeschool teen writing and publishing class: three semesters on Zoom, from first idea to published book, limited to 10 students per class. [Link]
We’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment or question below.
Sparking Everyday Discipleship is sponsored by Hypurpley Publishing, bridging the gap between Sunday school lessons and Monday morning life.