Dr Tim Hawkes, principal of the Kings School in Sydney, has written a book called Ten Conversations you must have with your son. Here he speaks with pastor and Sydney radio host for 2CH, Dominic Steele.

Tim, ‘Ten conversations you must have with your son’. You’ve got my attention.

And ten, I mean, really you should be having tens of thousands, each delicately nuanced to be relevant to the time.

But I guess that’s the thing. You’re talking about establishing a genre that you are talking lots about all sorts of things with your boys.

Well, that’s right. And of course it’s also important not to talk, it’s also very, very important at times to listen.  And in deed to have conversations which are trivial enough to form the bedrock of authenticity, so that when you are wanting to get a heavy topic discussed, you’ve established a good and strong relational bridge, and that takes time.

Somebody described it to me once as, ‘you put the cement in between the bricks’, and you’ve got to have the cement in between the bricks or things don’t work.

Absolutely right. You do need to have enough of the trivial and the fun on which you can build that which is serious later on. There are some times that we can come in, as parents, with something that is very heavy and we haven’t won the right to speak, sometimes. It’s particular bad if it’s a ‘you just wait till your father gets home’ and that sort of thing, where you get this father who comes in like the caped crusader trying to fix whatever the problem is at home. And we sometimes need to spend a bit more time with our sons to build up the relationship so they’re going to hear us, I think.

And I take it some of the, if you like, the dad/son relationships are complex, and sometimes it’s because dads aren’t spending enough time with their boys.

Well, yes, the problem is often particularly with the fathers, though not exclusively so. But I think one of the problems with us dads, and I’m Exhibit A here, I’m the prime example of this, is that so often we can try and be somebody outside of the home that we forget to be somebody inside of the home. For us as dads, we often get our relevance, our sense of significance if you like in our work, and at the end of the day when we get off the [bus] or whatever we’ve often spent the emotional reserves we’ve got, and you just come home…

And you flop on the couch.

Yes, and hide behind newspapers or in front of the television, and lower the meniscus of a decent glass of red or something.

Now, some of the big conversations you must have with your sons—what are they?

Well I think one of the most important things that a son’s got to hear is that he is loved. And although sons can play up like a second-hand lawn mower from time to time, and can be seriously bovine in their behaviours, they must recognise that the love they’re going to get from mum and dad is unconditional. It is going to be there. And in this world swamp, where nature is read in tooth and claw, and in the world outside where love and acceptance is very conditional, to have a home where love is unconditional where a boy is adored, is absolutely vital. For it gives him, I think the strength and the courage and capacity to move out into that world knowing that there is a firm island in this world from which he can take his bearings. So yes, I think our sons need to know that they’re loved, and I think that’s a very important message.

Now, let me put you on the spot. It seems to me, from my perspective, I think I am, in the Christian ministry that I do, reasonably good at having difficult conversations with all sorts of people but how do you have the conversation about pornography with your teenage boy? How do you have the conversation about masturbation with your teenage boy? Help!

Yes, well I think firstly that it’s probably good that there is established within the home, a sort of habit of chatting. So the setting up of informal conversation pits, if you like, becomes a really good idea. The kitchen bench is a fabulous conversation pit, augmented by food and mum’s cooking and sometimes dad’s cooking as well, why not?

The dining room table, the idea of dining together becomes really important. Don’t allow children to have their meals taken to them in their bedroom, let them come down—and I know my son, who I was just chatting with the other day, and he with his son (because I’m a granddad now), and my granddaughter as well, they share high points and low points of the day. And that’s great. In the car as well.

We find the best time for us is family Bible time.

And that’s absolutely lovely. A family that meets together and has devotions together, and that sharing time. And even, ‘let’s pray for each other, what is it that we can pray about?’. These moments are absolute gold. And I know in saying all this, I haven’t yet answered your question.

[laughs] I’ll accuse you of dodging it in a moment.

[laughs] Look, I think those difficult conversations that you mentioned, you know, conversations about sex and intimacy, clearly they have greater relevancy when they arrive naturally. It might be that you’ve seen a film or something like that.

Well, for us, we started to do it reading through the Book of Genesis. The Book of Genesis just has got every messy incident that you can possibly imagine, and issue after issue came up.

Well, that’s great, absolutely. And you know, “therefore a man shall leave his parents and cleave to a wife”, I mean, what does it mean? And what does marriage mean? Or union? The lovely thing is that the Bible can give such a solid foundation and illustration and anecdote for just about every single human failing you can possibly think of.

Oh, well and you keep reading through and there’s the rape of Tamar and …

That’s right, and David.

And every messy issue But I’m just wondering, outside the Bible, in your position as Principal of Kings, you must have occasionally thought, ‘gee I wish a dad had sat down and talked about the dangers of pornography.”

Well it’s a very real issue. We’re now having to raise our children in a raunch culture, a culture which sees the premature sexualizing of children. Where there is ready access to pornography and so on. And where there is a dangerous amount of ignorance.

For example, if a boy took a photograph of his girlfriend who’s topless, or something like that, and shows it to his mate, emails it to him or something, he is committing a very serious time and one that is potentially punishable by prison.

And things like sexting, things such as cyber-bullying and these sorts of things, and I think that very often… I’ve got a pet theory. I think, Saint Peter at the gates of heaven—are you ready for this, cos this is the new bit of heresy—Saint Peter at the gates of heaven, he will take possession of their mobile phones and he’s going to say, ‘right, well let’s find out what your soul is like. Let’s find out what you’re doing in secret. Let’s find out what is it you watch, what is it you think, what language you choose to use and what sort of person you really are. And they’ll go into the mobile phone, and they’ll find out [laughs].

And they’re a bit like the [Native Americans] who would have these lovely little nets they used to call them dream catchers and they’d wave them around, and in many ways our phones are like soul catchers—they collect and they find out who we are and it sort of records them there. And so, there is a serious element in my levity, in that I do think that so often parents, if they want to find out what the children are really doing and thinking saying what their values are, they can often betray these—if indeed they have access—to their children’s browsers and social media devices.

Thanks very much for talking to us, Tim.

That’s Dr Tim Hawkes, the author of the new book 10 Conversations you must have with your son.