Review of Passport to Purity: A Weekend Program for Parents and Preteens
by Kathryn de Bruin and Mariah McQueen
Dennis and Barbara Rainey came up with a program called Passport to Purity. It is a weekend Getaway Kit to work through with your preteen child. It looks like it’s been written for families with a Christian worldview, as it encourages prayer, has scripture integrated throughout and takes a biblical view on sexuality.
So essentially, as a parent you plan for a weekend away with your preteen. You do a special activity to have fun, but also spend the weekend working through the material. Topics covered include peer pressure, sex and dating. The program also includes doing projects together that make up object lessons. One of them includes collecting photos from your child’s different developmental stages. I like the idea of this project, as it shows gives your child an overview of their development and sets the stage to talk about the stage they are about to go through. Another exercise includes giving your child a journal, that includes notes from both their parents. Writing your child this note is very intentional, and I can imagine it might be something that they revisit during their teen years or later in life.
It seems to me that the benefit of taking a weekend with your preteen is the bonding time you get together, and the time you get to work through this material on sexuality in a non-rushed environment. The bigger benefit I think is that the program does the work for you. With a workbook, instructions, video footage, you are essentially getting taught together. As the authors says, taking the weekend to do this gives your child the meta message that this topic and that they themselves are very important to you.
So on a personal note, this program isn’t one for me. I think it’s a lovely idea, and I think it especially could work for parents who can take the time to do this, and who want a structured approach to teaching these topics. I prefer to educate my children as we go along in little bits and pieces. I don’t want these talks to be a ‘big deal’. I want them to be topics that are covered in everyday conversation. In fact, I explained menstruation to my daughter while we were sitting on a pavement waiting at a bus stop. But then that’s just my style. I’ve recommended this program to a number of my good friends. To read more about it, check out this link: