I remember back in the day, before starting kindergarten, when my mother sat down with me and read a book called Where Did I Come From?.
She was very open and friendly, and I left feeling like I knew what was up without feeling yucky. When I went to school and all the kids started talking about various ways to have sex (because they all do it, I promise), I was a bit confused by it all and knew I could go to my mom for a review — which I did a few times.
When my son started kindergarten, he was on the younger side and didn’t turn 5 until a few weeks after school began. It never occurred to me to have the talk with him before he went to school, but it wasn’t long before I realized I should have.
He had learned about “making sex with your butt” on the playground from one of his new friends. I was glad he came home and told me about it, because it was my cue to have the talk with him.
I wanted him to know about sex in a way that was appropriate for his age and I wanted him to feel confident about it, not uncomfortable.
That was a good lesson for me to learn as a mom. As a result, his brother and sister got the sex talk before they started kindergarten and this is why:
They will hear about it anyway
And no, it won’t come at the end of the year, next year, or in three years when we are a bit more comfortable. Three out of my three kids heard about sex from their new friends at school within the first few weeks. They are going to talk about it, and that’s OK. Even if your child hasn’t come to you with any of this, chances are they are still hearing about it. They just haven’t told you.
You want them to hear the correct information
Don’t leave it up to other kids to teach your kids about sex education, because that’s exactly what will happen. Some of them know exactly how it all works, but a lot of them don’t, and they are teaching your kids about it.
They have access to a lot more than you think
A friend of mine called me crying because someone had shown her daughter a porn on the bus with their iPad. Kids have access to a lot these days, and we can’t bank on the fact that all these sites are blocked by other parents.
This will help start a healthy, open dialogue around sex
This is so important. Talking to them at a young age made it a lot more comfortable for me to talk with them as they got older, because we’d been having this discussion for a long time. They are all teenagers now, and we have open conversations regularly.
I think it makes them feel safer to hear about sex from someone they trust. Even if they don’t talk about it much, they will be more comfortable and will believe what you tell them over what one of their schoolmates says.
It will make it easier for them to come to you if they have questions
And believe me, if they hear it from someone at school, they will have questions. If you’ve already discussed it with them, they will be comfortable coming to you.
We may not be ready for it, but I’ve seen it time and time again – our elementary school-aged kids are having sex talks whenever they can, and I think we can all agree that we’d rather have our kids hear it from us, not from Tommy on the playground.
