ISE is intended to facilitate conversations between parents and their teens or young adult children ages 14 and up. It is not appropriate for younger children.

ISE is also a useful program for married or co-parenting couples to explore their values together. This can help build your confidence when your children ask awkward questions at awkward times!

If your children need puberty education, many hospitals have a "Growing Up" class that might meet your needs. A librarian can also help you find a suitable book.

If your children are under 8 years old, "It's Not the Stork" is a lighthearted book with cartoon images that covers all the factual anatomical information that prepubescent children need to know. As with all sources, review carefully before reading with your child. Depending on your values and your child's interests, you may wish to skip some pages, or seek other resources for specific concepts.

ISE promotes the idea that questioning and examining a variety of ideas provides the opportunity to recognize and fix flaws. Good ideas worth believing will stand up to inspection and challenge. Bad ideas will fail inspection and be properly rejected.

Another perspective states that bad ideas can contaminate and corrupt good ideas, and thus exposure should be minimized. If this is your perspective, ISE is not the right program for your family. Look for a program based on your specific doctrine or belief system instead.

ISE presents all positions in as neutral a manner as possible, but bias will leak through. Ideas and concepts that are deeply sacred to you may be presented in a neutral, trivial, or negative way. Ideas and concepts that are deeply abhorrent to you may be presented in a neutral, trivial, or positive way. The ISE program will sometimes annoy or upset you by failing to take the correct stance on a moral issue. That's deliberate.

Out in the real world, bad ideas come wrapped in convincing propaganda and look very appealing. Conversely, good ideas may look superficially unpleasant or unfair. In some traditions, this process of picking apart the good ideas and the bad ideas is called discernment.

ISE provides a safe way for both parents and teens to practice standing up for their values by arguing with the recordings. The ISE program is incomplete and ineffective if parents are not willing to add the vital element of moral discernment.

If you want a program that has moral discernment built in already, look for a program based on a specific doctrine or belief system.

The conversational nature of the ISE program provides space for parents to add their own beliefs and values to the program. This makes it an excellent choice for families of any faith tradition, including mixed-faith and no-faith.

If you prefer a program where Christian theology is already integrated with the program, these two programs might be easier and shorter to implement:

• mamabearapologetics.com/guide-to-sexuality/
• sexedreclaimed.com

If you prefer a program that merges the teachings of Alfred Kinsey with basic concepts in Queer Theory, these programs might be a better match:

• amaze.org
• https://www.3rs.org/

If you know of any other good sex ed programs, please send us that information. We'd love to add more resources to this list.

Because ISE is entirely audio recordings, it fits easily into your schedule. Each recording is 15-30 minutes long. Discussion will take anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours, depending on how long your family likes to talk.

However, each chapter has a dozen or more sessions. A chapter takes anywhere from a month to four months to complete, depending on how often you want to do a session. If you wish to complete all four chapters, anticipate taking a year or more to do so.

ISE is flexible and complete, but it is not quick.

Keep in mind that each chapter in ISE functions as a stand alone program. Some families may choose to use the first chapter to explore values, then delegate education about anatomy and sexual risk management to a school or community organization.

Do whatever works best for your family.

ISE uses a gamete-based definition of male and female. Males are human beings born with testicular tissue. Females are human beings born with ovaries. Under this definition, male and female are binary. Differences of Sexual Development (DSD) conditions are often called intersex, but do not constitute a third reproductive category.

The concept of gender identity is mentioned briefly, and left for parents to expand on as they see fit. It is not centered. The multivariate definition of sex pioneered by John Money is mentioned briefly in a critical manner.

Parents who believe that sex is a social construct may be happier with one of these programs. These are also suitable for people who prefer a multivariate definition of sex:

amaze.org
https://www.3rs.org/

ISE recognizes that children are sensual from birth, but absolutely rejects the idea that prepubescent children are sexual. ISE promotes the worldview that sexuality awakens only after puberty and then unfolds slowly over a decade or so. We believe that trying to either accelerate or impede this process of unfolding does serious harm.

If you believe that children are sexual from birth, ISE is probably not the right program for you. Consider these programs instead:

amaze.org
https://www.3rs.org/

ISE includes the value that there is an objective physical reality, that can be explored through the use of the scientific method. This objective physical reality is universal.

However, human understanding of this objective physical reality is fallible and prone to error. The scientific method isn't always applied perfectly. Human sexuality is exceptionally difficult to study using the scientific method. Even basic anatomical facts have been updated within the last 20 years.

ISE presents the most accurate information available to the author at the time of writing, including honest information about areas of human ignorance or uncertainty.

People who prioritize ideological purity over scientific inquiry may not be a good fit for ISE.

People who are distressed when previously established scientific Truths get overturned by new data may find some aspects of the ISE program upsetting. It is likely that a great deal has changed since you last studied this subject, and it is probable that more will change in the near future.

Sorry, those don't exist. If you want to pass your values on to your children, this area of education is your responsibility.

That said, delegating sex ed completely to someone else can be a great choice in some cases.

Parents who have had sexual contact with their own children absolutely should not teach this subject to their kids, even if it was minor event a long time ago and there have been abject apologies. Delegate to a trusted friend or a trained professional.

Parents who struggle with self-destructive sexual patterns may also wish to delegate. If a key sex ed goal is to free your children from your personal trauma patterns, a professional program might be able to help. Another option is to join up with another family who has children of a similar age. ISE works well for a multifamily group.

A professional sex ed program can be found in most high schools, both public and private. Some hospitals offer this education. Many churches offer this education. Some private organizations offer this education. Websites and books can also be excellent resources, if ISE isn't right for you and you can't find any suitable classes.

No matter your history, warn your kids not to seek sex ed from pornography. That's like getting driver's ed from "The Fast and the Furious" movies. Porn involves a lot of camera tricks, and some teens have been seriously injured trying to imitate a porn scene. Pornography is fantasy entertainment, not sex ed.

The core educational philosophy of ISE rejects the appeal to authority fallacy. For this reason, ISE is not accredited.

If you are a homeschooler and your state allows you to assign high school credit, the complete ISE program would be one credit.

If you are a public schooler, your public school may be willing to grant independent study credits.

Audio Pros and Cons
ISE is a series of audio recordings, with some additional text resources for parents. The audio-only format allows you to combine the program with other activities, and can help make the conversations less awkward. However, if any members of your family have auditory processing difficulties, the recording may need to be paused frequently or played at a slower speed.

Video pros and cons
Video-based programs are often more engaging, but don't combine as well with other activities. They tend to pull the focus to the screen and away from family, which has both advantages and disadvantages. The ones that include cute animations and catchy tunes are memorable, but often include appeals to emotion that can verge into manipulation. Encourage your children to discuss the subtle underlying messages, rather than just thoughtlessly humming the catchy tune.

Book Pros and Cons
Book-based programs are low-tech, but difficult to share in a group. While young children enjoy curling up in a parent's lap with a book, teenagers generally prefer to read alone. Getting conversation started after a solo reading time can be challenging. A book club model can be helpful, where family members complete reading separately then come together to discuss the reading assignment.

Standard Curricula Pros and Cons
Standard curriculum sex ed programs provide instructions for the teacher, but require significant advance preparation of supplies. In addition, many of the standard curricula are designed for groups of ten or more people. Translating them to a single-family format takes a great deal of time and effort.

Assess your situation realistically and choose your sex ed program accordingly.

Consider purchasing the ISE Reference Pack. This contains an annotated list of of every book, article, video, and website that is referenced in the ISE program.

Prices for sex ed programs range from free to hundreds of dollars. Oddly enough, the most professional and polished of the sex ed programs are often free. It's worth investigating the funding sources for these programs. Large corporations are rarely truly altruistic.

There's an old advertising saying that "sex sells," and it's certainly true that sex reliably sells products such as fancy cars and perfume. However, sex is also powerful tool for social control. Carefully consider the likely motivations of anyone giving out an expensive product for free. That's usually bait. A clever fish can steal the bait without getting hooked, but it's important to watch out for those hooks.

ISE is currently priced at $150 per chapter. We don't do data mining and we don't want to sell you anything other than the products openly advertised. Our motivations are up front and direct: restore the art of talking about things that matter.

However, this program development is also in the early stages. We're desperately in need of beta testers. If you're willing to try out a slightly rough program and provide feedback, enter the code EARLYBIRD at checkout. Beta testers get 90% off the program and our profound gratitude.