When Will AIDS End?

From an early age, youths are bombarded with sexual messages that encourage promiscuity. Intravenous drug use, another significant HIV route, is also widespread. Considering today’s pervasive climate of irresponsible behavior, you may wonder if AIDS will ever end.

HEALTH professionals aptly point to behavioral changes as a vital strategy in the fight against AIDS. “Each and every generation of young people,” says a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “needs comprehensive, sustained health information and interventions that help them develop life-long skills for avoiding behaviors that could lead to HIV infection. Such comprehensive programs should include the involvement of parents as well as educators.”

Clearly, parents need to educate their children about these dangers before they are misinformed by their peers or others. This is not always easy. But it can save your child’s life. Informing children about sex and drugs need not take away their innocence. It can actually protect them from losing their innocence.

Parental Training Is Vital

Among God’s ancient people, parents were expected to teach their children about sexual relations and how to protect their health. Interestingly, the laws of the ancient Israelites included clear moral guidelines as well as practices that protected them from infection. (Leviticus 18:22, 23; 19:29; Deuteronomy 23:12, 13) How were these laws to be taught to the people? Jehovah God told the Israelites: “These words that I am commanding you today must prove to be on your heart.” Parents first had to understand the benefits of adhering to these laws and the consequences for failing to do so. Then, they were instructed: “You must inculcate them in your son and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road and when you lie down and when you get up.”​—Deuteronomy 6:6, 7.

One dictionary defines “inculcate” as “to teach and impress by frequent repetitions or admonitions.” Obviously, time is involved. Parents who set aside time to teach their sons and daughters about the dangers of drug abuse and illicit sex certainly stand a better chance of seeing their children avoid types of behavior that can lead to contracting HIV and other diseases.a