When the teenager asks questions about sex and complains about lacks and omissions in his sex education, he is not only talking about what is happening in the present, he is also, either with or without knowing it, referring back to many things in the past.
If we are to handle well what we do with him now, we need to consider the past as well as the present. Our teen-ager is not just starting out in life. He has already lived a part of it. What we do now rests on what has already happened to him. The better we gauge its strength and weaknesses, the better can we carry his sex education forward. It's like building onto a house that has been partially constructed. We make a solid structure best, the more concretely we take into account the part that already stands.
Probably no one has ever attempted a house who hasn't said, "If I'd known in the beginning as much as I know now, I'd have planned this another way, or done that differently." Just so with our teen-ager's sex education: there are bound to be things we would have done differently. Weaknesses and mistakes are bound to have crept in. We make up for these best and strengthen most securely what remains to be built, the more clearly we take stock of what has gone before.
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