Do you recall the opening credits of 80s romcom Look Who’s Talking?
Well nor did I, until I found myself sitting on the sofa with my eight-year-old watching talking sperm racing through a vagina in a frenzied bid to fertilise an egg.
“What are they?” came the inevitable question.
“Umm, I’ve no idea,” came my faux-casual reply.
This was followed by a creeping sense of having said the wrong thing.
But what should I have answered? And why was I so keen to avoid the conversation?
“It is uncomfortable,” said sex educator, content creator and author Milly Evans.
“I think a lot of parents get embarrassed that they’re going to have to share about their own experiences when they actually absolutely don’t have to.
“A lot of parents never got any good sex ed themselves, they never had comfortable conversations with their parents.”
She said being faced with such questions from a child could sometimes expose the lack of knowledge some adults have.
Milly grew up with her parents running a sex toy business and no question was off the table.
Questions were answered on walks, while cooking, wherever they came up.
She thinks this relaxed, little and often approach is better than one big explanation about the birds and the bees, which could be “scary and uncomfortable for all parties involved”.
“I think a lot of parents worry about this conversation because they think, ‘oh, it’s the sex conversation’, but it’s actually not,” she said.
“It’s hundreds of little conversations starting from when kids are toddlers about bodily autonomy, communication, how their body works, friendships, families – and it kind of builds up over time.”
Relationship, health and sex educator Kerry Wolstenholme agreed and said parents should not feel pressured to answer a difficult question off the hoof.
“You can say ‘oh, that’s a really lovely question, let me think about it and I’ll come back to you tomorrow’,” she said.
“Then you can go away and prep yourself.
“I don’t go into a classroom unprepared, so give yourself some time to prepare and research what you want to say.”
Kerry said she supported a child-led approach.
“When your child starts to be inquisitive and ask questions then you know it’s the right time to answer those questions,” she said.
“If you don’t, they will seek that information from somewhere else or they will pick up the answers from friends at school or online.”
But what sort of detail is appropriate to give?
Kerry said when she was pregnant with her second child her eight-year-old asked her how the baby had got into her tummy while they were at a bus stop.
“She was ready to know the answer, but it just wasn’t the right time to give it,” explained Kerry.
She said she later gave her an honest answer “but without being too descriptive”.
“I think I remember telling her about different parts of the body, that boys have testicles and they have sperm in them and the daddy’s sperm goes and meets with the mummy’s egg and that’s how a baby grows.
“That was enough information for her at that age. So it was an honest answer, but I didn’t go into ‘we have sex’ because she didn’t need that then.”
So what’s the top advice they would they give to parents?
For Kerry it is about being confident and age-appropriate, while accepting that you may have to have these conversations earlier than you might have planned depending on what your child wants to know.
She said it was also important to check why they are asking to ensure they haven’t seen or heard anything that has worried them.
For Milly it’s all about maintaining an open dialogue at home but also getting across what is being taught to your child at school and encouraging schools when they do it well.
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