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Little Birds & Bees
Kristen Gregory on Talking to Young Children About Sex
When we first cradle our newborn babies in our arms, we desperately want to shelter and protect them from everything. From sin, from death, from the power of the devil. And, maybe more urgently, from s-e-x. After all, modern American culture treats it so lightly and frivolously that they will be exposed to it soon enough. Just go through the grocery line with your kids. The images on the magazines are shocking enough, but if your kids can read, they will learn a lot more than you want them to. Walking past Victoria's Secret isn't even possible once they can see past the end of their noses: girls and boys alike are forced to confront a hypersexualized standard of "beauty" with larger-than-life images that will arouse and never completely leave their minds.
As parents, my husband and I initially set out to protect our kids from all thoughts and knowledge of sex until as late as possible. Age 20 sounded good. But as we have been raising them, we've come to realize that we don't want to shelter them from it completely, but instead to give them something better: a beautiful, true, and good view of sex, presented as is appropriate for each child's age and level of curiosity.
As I write, we have three girls and two boys, all under age ten, so we admittedly have a long way to go in the parenting journey. My own parents wisely held me out of the sex education class taught to fifth-graders in my public school, but they didn't discuss the topic with me either, which was fine by me because I obtained the necessary facts from my friends that day at recess anyway. (And then felt compelled to tell my first-grade sister later that week so she wouldn't be in the dark.)
As an adult, my first basic "sex talk" with a child was with a five-year-old who wasn't mine. She peered over my shoulder as I was breastfeeding my newborn, and gasped, "What is she doing to you? Why are you letting her do that?"
"She's nursing. This is how she gets her food."
"That's disgusting."
I received an email later that night from the girl's mother, angrily "thanking" me for having to explain to her daughter what breasts are for. She had hoped to avoid that one. When my next child came along, that same girl caught me breastfeeding in the church bathroom. She had apparently forgotten the previous conversation. As she opened her mouth to ask a question, I interrupted with, "Just go ask your mother." These situations showed me that I wanted to be honest and proactive in teaching my children about why God made our bodies the way he did.
Teaching Our Children
I've been surprised that with our own children (well before fifth grade), the topic has naturally come up from time to time. "What are those turtles doing?" or "Where do babies come from?" are just normal parts of weekly conversations. Our family has spent enough time outdoors and read enough books that the topic is a natural one. How did my husband and I answer the questions? At first, it was enough to explain that God brings together a cell from a man and a cell from a woman and from them he creates a new person. Until one day when my husband had all the kids in the mini-van and my four-year-old piped up from the back seat, "Dad, Mom told me how babies are made." My husband tried not to appear shocked.
"Oh, interesting, honey. What exactly did Mommy tell you?"
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