We had an interesting discussion in Psych class one semester about child development and when to talk about sex to your child. My professor asked the class at what age did (or will) you talk to your child about how all of that works? Most of the class said not until their teens. He replied that waiting until then was entirely too late. He believes in talking to them about it as early as possible, at 2 and 3 years old. He says that children are curious and some develop sexually as early as age 9. (Girls getting their periods and such.) I was wondering where you guys stand on this! Here’s an interesting article… http://www.babyzone.com/toddler/touchy-talks-with-toddlers/talking-to-toddlers-sexual-curiosity_72463
My parents told me when I was 3 I believe. I asked, and they told me. I’m very happy about that, I’ve grown up in a family where we’ve been able to talk about everything, and that makes most things easier when the children get older, if they know the lines of communication are open. I am going to tell my children when they ask me as well, I don’t see the point of making up stories/lies for them. They don’t need to know everything (obviously) but the general picture of things. When they get older it becomes more awkward (for both parties) but if you keep it a casual topic from they’re young, I think that’s the healthiest for everyone involved. I also don’t want my kids to end up with kids at 16, or std’s or other “fun” stuff, and I think the best way to prevent that is conversing about it. I know I told my mum & dad when I started having sex, and I want my children to do that with me too.
My parents have always been forthcoming about things. I don’t specifically remember them telling me what sex was but I don’t remember not knowing where babies come from. It probably came up when my mom was pregnant with my sister. When I was younger and something adult was mentioned on TV or movies, they told that they would tell me when I was older, depending on how inappropriate it was. When I was about eleven my mom gave me an informational book about sex and said that I could ask her questions if I had any. I agree with Ottillie completely and want to raise my future children similarly.
My parents have told my siblings and I at what ever age we asked about it. When we were little we were just told that a baby comes when the sperm meets the egg and not much more than that but we all learned about sex by the time we were 8 or so. I grew up on a farm too so we have seen animales breeding pretty much our entire lifes, our parents never tried to hide what the animals were doing from us.
Me too. I don’t remember not knowing, so it must’ve come up at a fairly young age and talked about quite matter of factly. This would be the way I’d go about it when my own kid’s start asking.
I remember we used to go the library almost every weekend and loan stacks of books, and as I neared puberty mum would just throw in a couple of developmental books and leave them in my room. Although reading about periods is quite different than actually having your first one! I was 11 and happened to be staying over at a friend’s house, I remember pretending not to feel well and ringing my mum to come and pick me up ASAP!
We are fairly open with our kids. Never used words like “wee wee” or what not, named the body parts what they were etc. My older 3 know where babies come from and about sex. Not in the “details” but pretty much what it is and how it can make babies. Of course my older 2 now know what a vascetomy is because they overheard [name]Andy[/name] and I talking about it. Plus, [name]Seb[/name] has a friend who comes from a same-sex couple family so we also have gone over how you need sperm and an egg to make a baby not nessicarily a man and woman. I am of the opinion there is no need to go into certain details but you also should not shelter them since that tends to backfire more often than not. Talk to them in ways they will understand? Sure. Show them porn of variety of positions and styles? Um, NO!
I also want to add that I wanted to equip my children to know about their bodies and what was “ok” and “not ok” when it came to others. I have friends who grew up in a very conservative home where they didnt talk about sex etc and the 2 oldest girls were molested by a neighbor (a teen when they were of grade school age) and they sadly had no clue that what he was doing was wrong and the only thing they did know is that their mom would tell them not to “touch themselves down there its dirty” (when they were getting dressed as little kids etc) and since they were homeschooled (and I know not all HS’d families would do this, trust me) they got no outside influence except at church…and the neighbor attended the same church.
So anyways, while I have not gotten into the details of molestation, I have always taught them about how their body is their body and about what people can and shouldnt do involving it (not “sex details” but pretty much "nobody should look at your penis or vaginal area unless you are at a drs appointment with mommy etc) .
[name]Bronwen[/name] has a really good book called “The Care and Keeping of You” by the american girl doll company and just got the 2nd edition (its a continuation) and that covers a lot of “body stuff”. I have always been open with her about her cycles (she hasnt started yet, she’s just 9 and I am guessing in a few years they will etc) because my mom was “sort of open” but not really and I want her to be able to talk about it as much as she would like which actually she has had a lot of questions so that is nice. 
“talking to your kids about sex” is (obviously) multiple talks on a variety of topics spread throughout the years.
[name]Young[/name] children, starting at 2-3, will naturally be curious about where babies come from. After all, it is one of the most amazing things that any of us get to witness- an egg and a sperm turning into a human being. A purely mechanical understanding of eggs from mothers and sperm from fathers developing into a baby is very age-appropriate. It’s a bit more thorny about how much detail you want to go into in terms of how those eggs and sperm happen to meet.
I think by the preteen years a child should completely understand the mechanics of sex, and should understand the changes that they can expect to undergo during puberty. I think they should never be caught unawares or unprepared for any of those pubertal changes, and they should understand what happens to the opposite gender too. And before puberty, before even their most precocious friends/acquaintances begin having sex, there should be frank discussions about the emotional and medical dimensions to sex.
I think by the early teen years parents should have frank discussions about how a child can know they’re ready, what having sex truly means/entails, and again reinforcing messages about STD and pregnancy prevention and emotional damage. The point is to time is at least a couple of years ahead of when the kid will actually begin experimenting. Obviously this will be strongly guided by the parents’/family’s religious, social and cultural beliefs.
I agree with everything [name]Blade[/name] just said. Definitely make sure you tell them about the emotional part of it. That’s one thing my parents didn’t do and it caught me off guard. I mean, I knew that emotions were involved but I didn’t know how much they played into it. After a month of sex with SO I was so tangled up in emotions that I was overwhelmed by it all.
Eh. I won’t be giving [name]Amelie[/name] the full facts for another couple of years. I just don’t feel like the information is necessary at the moment - She’s only 4.
She does know she’s getting another brother or sister soon. However, she thinks that we ordered the baby from the hospital (like a pizza, lol) and he/she won’t be ready for us to take home until the [name]Summer[/name]. I didn’t tell her this, this is simply the conclusion she came to herself when we told her she was getting a sibling and I didn’t correct her.
I did, however, make her aware that all sorts of families get babies. I told her sometimes there are two daddies, sometimes two mommies, or just a mommy/daddy etc.
Interestingly she hasn’t noticed my growing belly at all, despite the fact I was a size UK 10 pre pregnancy… She simply hasn’t noticed.
I will tell her when I feel its necessary and that she is mature enough to handle the talk. If she came into me tomorrow and gave me an accurate version of events, I would of course tell her that she is correct and that that is indeed how babies are made. But when she came to such an innocent conclusion on her own I don’t feel the need to trouble her with information that is irrelevant to her so I’ll be sticking with this story for the time being.
Starting at the age of 4 (I can’t remember anything before), I figured out all the mechanics from my obsession with biology. I figured out the emotional part myself and decided by the time I was 5 that I’d wait till I was married to do the deed. I’ve stood by that decision and my parents never gave me “the talk”. However, I was a bit naive when it came to sexual references and innuendos, mainly because I didn’t pay attention till I got older.
I’ll probably spread it out over the years with my own kids. [name]One[/name] big “talk” all about the birds and the bees with a preteen isn’t exactly my idea of a pleasant afternoon.
Starting at the age of 4 (I can’t remember anything before), I figured out all the mechanics from my obsession with biology. I figured out the emotional part myself and decided by the time I was 5 that I’d wait till I was married to do the deed. I’ve stood by that decision and my parents never gave me “the talk”. However, I was a bit naive when it came to sexual references and innuendos, mainly because I didn’t pay attention till I got older.
I’ll probably spread it out over the years with my own kids. [name]One[/name] big “talk” all about the birds and the bees with a preteen isn’t exactly my idea of a pleasant afternoon.
My sex education was a series of disasters lol. In the particular culture associated with the faith/denomination I was raised in, sex is treated as something secret to the point of being dirty (I was never even allowed to use the word “sexy”). I didn’t know where babies come from until my older cousin told me, probably around 6th grade, and even then her facts were way off. Of course I immediately relayed this information to my best friend, who hadn’t had the talk yet either, and she was so freaked out she told her parents, who called MY parents, who wanted to know who I’d been talking about sex with. I never did get any straight answers.
Backing up a few years, I’d been exposed to pornography at the age of 9. I had no idea what they were doing, I just knew that it made me “feel funny” and I probably shouldn’t tell my mom because there were naked people, and nakedness was bad. However, my curiousity at that age was insatiable. I managed to connect the naked people with the half-naked people on the front of those bodice-ripper romance novels, so I used to sit in the “book section” and read those (secretly of course) while my mom was grocery shopping. Somehow I did NOT manage to connect these discoveries with the concept of sex.
I turned 11 when my mom was pregnant with my sister, and at that point babies came from Mama’s tummy. This was prior to the incident with my cousin, so I made no connection between babies and sex.
In 7th grade I had this weird all-girls class at my school called Home Arts which is apparently all about being a woman?? Anyway, I remember we talked about periods and all of us were totally grossed. I told my mom about the class, and I guess she realized she needed to give me the talk. She was too flustered to do it in person I guess, so she left me this “your body is changing” book with these ridiculous illustrations. I got my period shortly thereafter, but there was nothing in that book connecting puberty to sex.
So until I was a full-on teenager, I didn’t even understand the basic connections between puberty, babies, the stuff in porn/“romance novels” and the actual word sex. I learned a lot once my group of friends expanded beyond people who went to my church/school, and a lot more later in life when I moved away, but I still feel really ignorant. I waited until I was married to have intercourse (so did my husband) and boy, was THAT different than we had expected! And just recently, I went to the doctor because I was having pain in my lower right abdomen after sex. I would have gone sooner, but I didn’t even know that was abnormal! Ugh.
I will definitely be doing things differently when I have children. I believe that knowledge is power, and the more information you have about a situation, the more personal power that gives you. If my children are informed about their bodies, if they grow up knowing that puberty and sex and pregnancy and birth are all completely natural parts of life, not secret, and not dirty…I think that will give them the power to make intelligent decisions about their bodies and their lifestyles. Ignorance doesn’t help anyone, and I would have even preferred too much information over not enough!
I also had a very interesting…sex education. My parents were both raised in families where you did not talk about sex or puberty or anything like that. SO my mom grew up very naive. My dad less so, because he learned from his friends as a kid, but they were both very uncomfortable about all that. That being said, they tried to teach me, they really did. They would try to answer my questions as a kid. I got the whole speech about how when too people love each other very much, they make a decision and God sends them a baby if they are meant to have one. As I got older my Mom tried her best to teach me about puberty. I always knew I could come to her about that. It was a bit difficult, because she had grown up never talking about it. Although when it comes to sex, they really never gave me the talk. I never really put anything together until about 9th grade. I was able to talk about it with my friends then. It would have been nice to talk about it with my parents a little, and I will definitely be doing that with my kids.
I’m going to speak from the perspective of someone who is not a parent, but a young adult. This is a very erm, frank…post. I have no shame. XD
I knew what sex was and where babies came from at a fairly young age. I never got the “talk” though. I had cursory sex ed twice (switched schools) in HS. I learned the basic biology and about abstinence, condoms, and a few other forms of birth control. They had a speaker from the local rape crisis team talk to us about "no means no. However, we didn’t have anything on communication other than that. When I left high school, I had never seen a condom. I had no idea how to communicate with a partner. I didn’t know women could orgasm(!).
Then I went to college. I took a psych class as a freshman, and my professor was amazing. Her specialty is sex and relationships, so we talked about that a lot. I ended up taking another class from her solely devoted to sexuality and expression. I learned 90% of what I should have learned in high school sex ed.
And the internet was extremely helpful. Planned Parenthood and a certain youtube vlogger really helped me out. I learned the rest of what, I feel, should be basic information provided by parents AND schools. I thought a woman’s hymen tore like a piece of paper the first time she had sex. That terrified me. I avoided dating and guys because I was afraid of having sex and it being painful. Then I learned the hymen is actually elastic and stretches. It doesn’t have to tear.
I think children should be taught from as young as possible the names of [name]EVERY[/name] body part. That includes the anus/butt, and penis for boys and vulva/vagina for girls. Vulva is the correct term, as it refers to the outside, whereas vagina is the inside. Teaching good/bad touching is incredibly important. [name]Don[/name]'t shame children for masturbating or exploring their genitals. It’s completely natural.
Kids can and do become sexually active at a very young age–10,11,12,13! A friend is TAing in a 6th grade class. These kids are 11-12 years old. [name]One[/name] is pregnant! By that age they absolutely need to know that sex can cause babies and STDs.
I never understood about waiting until marriage. I know people do it for religious reasons, which I get. I just don’t get the pressure to “lose it” or “keep it”. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with waiting until x time, including marriage. I feel it’s really up to the individual to understand when they are ready and act on it (or not).
I really wish my mom had spent more time with me, explaining all of this. I feel everything would have been so much easier for me.
I also really like the book “Femalia” , which shows a wide variety of normal vulvas. I thought there was something wrong twiht mine until I saw this book. It really eased my fears.
I’m extremely [name]Lib[/name] on this issue and for the longest time, I wanted to become a counselor for young girls to try and remedy the boat load of misinformation, religious propaganda, and fear that comes with sex in this country. If you explain what is normal, the straight up biological facts to prepubescent kids (say, around 8-10) they will have the groundwork for being well informed and good decision making skills when it comes time for sexual exploration. I think many parents refuse to believe just how young kids start thinking about sex and experimenting. I was about 8. By the time I started my period at 11, I was “crazed” to say the least. I was obsessed with all things sex and boys. I never really had a formal “sex education” class or anything, one chapter in health class in the 6th grade about puberty was all we got (I did grow up in a very Conservative Southern town where teaching sex ed and birth control education was EVIL and yet we had many pregnant 8th graders…go figure) but my family and extended family were very hippie, so I knew from older kids more than most preteen girls should know.
Sex is a HUGE part of humanity and it (literally) makes the world thrive and flourish, so when [name]Rowan[/name] is old enough I will explain to her the factual biological aspect of it, and I will answer all her questions. I will explain to her that while it is normal to feel a certain way, it’s not always a good idea to experiment too young. I want her to hear it from us, not her school mates or slightly older girls because the misinformation can be potentially devastating. I’m still shocked at how much grown women don’t understand about sex and their bodies, it’s really sad.
Whenever they are mature enough to understand the concept is a good age to tell them. I think it is better to tell them soon before they find out from kids at school or someone other than you. I think six-eight is a good age.