Dear Dr. Mast,
My 21 year old daughter struggles with adult acne.  A number of her friends have been put on the Pill by their dermatologists to combat this problem and as a general rule it has been very successful.  My daughter has tried many acne products and doctor recommended prescriptions, but nothing seems to work for her.  She told me she is considering  getting a prescription for the Pill because nothing else seems to work, and she's seen the positive skin results from her friends. I know for certain that she is only considering it for the acne and under no circumstances does she intend to use it as a form of birth control.  She is not sexually active and has fully resolved to remain chaste until marriage.   I understand her frustration and the embarrassment the acne causes, but I am very concerned about her using a contraceptive to eradicate it.  Please arm me with some solid facts as to why this is a bad idea. Also,   is it sinful for her to go this route if she is not using it to prevent a pregnancy?   I so appreciate your knowledge and advice and I look forward to a reply.

Dear Dr. Mast,

I have five kids, ages 7 to 16. My daughters are 12 and 15. Just this morning, before I dropped them off at their Catholic middle and high school (same building), my oldest daughter said, “I have a question for you.” She wanted to know why gay marriage is wrong. After all, there are a lot of things in the Bible that are no longer to be abided by (Old Testament things, for example). I have answered this question for others, explaining it more from a Natural Law perspective. But I groped for an easy way to explain it to my daughters. And there wasn’t time to give a full answer. I’d like to return to the topic later because I know our children are confronting these questions frequently now, through the media. My guess is that she saw something on the Internet about this – that the question was posed out there and the “worldly wisdom” made sense to her. How would you have approached this? I would call into your show, and maybe should, but am usually working when it’s on.

Thanks so much for your help.

R

Dear R: You are in a very delicate position to tell 12 ands 14 year olds about same sex unions, but this is important.

Our culture is now saturated with propaganda that promotes ignorance about sexuality and marriage. A person who knows the truth about sex and marriage is put out to pasture as intolerant or narrow, when the opposite is true.  The popular narrow view of sexuality is that sexual feelings are merely for a person’s selfish pleasure. God has a much broader mind than that. Sexuality is only truly human when placed at the service of life within the love of marriage.  That is the language written in our bodies in the gift of self in marriage. In this way, human sexual expression is not just gratifying, but actually fulfilling! It fulfills a deep human longing to join God in the creation of new life. Any belief about sexuality less than that is ‘intolerant’ of the truth and meaning of human sexuality, and is more on the border of the thinking that we are animals. In reality and truth, we are human beings made in the image and likeness of God.

A twelve year old can understand it this way: God made us male and female. He made male and female the opposite sex, to go together in harmony, not to be exactly the same. When he instituted marriage in the book of Genesis, he said, “Man shall leave his father and mother, cling to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.” And  “Be fertile and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” And “What God has joined together, man cannot separate.”  It is IMPOSSIBLE for a man and a man to be married, or for a woman and a woman to be married, since the whole institution of marriage is for union and perpetuating God’s love through having children. These two purposes cannot be separated since they are written into the body language of marriage. Two people of the same sex will be completely unfulfilled in their inner longings. It is impossible for them to become one flesh, and it is impossible for them to have children, since two people of the same sex do not have fertility or complementary sexual organs. Thus, they set themselves not only for a life of sin, but for a life of unfulfilled frustration with a little bit of gratification.

If the girls already have a general idea of how conception occurs, you can add this:

The way God made men’s and women’s bodies is that they fit together in the marriage embrace. The man (In his sperm cells) has half of the genetic material necessary to create a new human life, and the woman (in her monthly egg cell) has the other half. This is God’s design that each child is born of the love of a man and woman. That was not an idea we made up, it is part of God’s creation of us.

Today, the culture is trying to tell us that marriage is just a relationship of two people who live together to make each other feel good. That is a lie. Married love is about sacrificing your selfishness for the good of the other person and for the sake of the family.  To be a real marriage, it must be of a man and a woman, faithful to each other, free to love, and open to new life.

Same sex unions can never be a marriage. The government is trying to write a new definition of marriage, but they can’t because they didn’t invent marriage. God created marriage. We can’t change the name or meaning of it just to pass a political test.

Read them the story “The Emperors New Clothes” and see if they think the emperor is naked or not, no matter what he was led to believe. A lie is a lie is a lie, even if millions of people believe it. Satan is the author of lies, and he has many friends in the world today. Unfortunately, many politicians and citizens believe it is ‘compassionate’ and accepting to promote the legality same sex unions. But the attempt at same sex unions is not good for the individual or society, so why would we want to promote it? Stealing is not good, killing is not good, and lying is not good for the individual or society, so we shouldn’t promote those either.

On today's show, I mentioned the following book for the mom whose 7 year old was attention seeking and prideful.

Dr. Mast,

Thanks for all you to support virtue in our virtue-less culture.  Could you please post the excerpt you read from your student workbook, about the difference between love and infatuation?

Thanks and blessings!

 I recently read an article on babycenter.com about toddler behviors.http://www.babycenter.com/0_masturbation_11558.bc My daughter is almost 3 yrs old and "masterbates". She started when she was around 12 months, she would rock her butt sometimes when she'd strattle my thigh during a hug. I always thought she was self-soothing and she'd grow out of it. But now its a yr and a half later and its become more obvious what shes doing. Now she rubs against the seat belt buckle between her legs or rock her butt on the edge of a chair. The article said its completely normal for kids to masterbate theyre exploring their body. And that they can actually orgasm too like an adult! This made me so sad and upset to think my baby girl feeling that. I always stop her when I catch her doing that, I tell her "no no honey youre going to get ouchies" and she'll stop. She never physically touches herself with her hands like the article said was common. But I'm still uneasy about the whole sittuation. Is my baby girl already in sin? Will she eventually stop on her own or what can i do to make her stop? Have you experienced anything like this before? Help please...any advice.

When potty training my son, I thought it would be prudent to tell him the name of his private parts, except he asked if he could see mine, and I explained that I have a different part and used the name and no he could not see.
Now at four he has a hyper curiosty of the female part and points it out in children's books, and says "virgina" at daycare.
Clearly I made a mistake at naming the part, but many of the "parenting" books, say this is the best way to protect your child from preditors, by telling them the proper names of the parts.
My son now says he wants to grow up to have a virgina, and be a girl.
I am a single mom, and really wanted to do my best to protect my son when he is is the care of others, but in the process I awakened his curiosity. Where can I go from hereto dull his curiosity, or was naming the parts right?

Thanks so much, hope you can help.

I was listening to your show today, Monday, and you mentioned a natural supplement that helps Attention Deficient Disorder.  What is it again?

On Thursday's show a caller asked about the adult family taking personality tests at the request of her college age daughter. I spoke about some fun ways to do that as a family night activity. I mentioned a few books that have personality tests in them, and I figured you couldn't write them down at the time. So before you all email me for the names of the books, here they are!

My 9 year old daughter is beginning to ask  questions such as " where do babies come out" ... I'm wondering the best way to answer this .