"THE TALK" At what age (on average) is it most appropriate for parents to discuss

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relstudent

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Hello Again,

Me and my wife are thinking about starting a family in the next few years. Neither of us ever got “the talk” from our parents when we were growing up because they were too nervous talking about sex. I KNOW THAT EVERY CASE IS DIFFERENT, but on average what is the best time to bring this up?
 
Just relating the anecdote of what passed for “THE TALK” in my case.

I was probably around 12 years old, and my parents had just switched me from Catholic school to public school. Very quickly in public school, I learned all sorts of swear words and things I’d been sheltered from in Catholic school.

So my mom broached the subject by calling my name one day near the kitchen table, and asking, “Do you know?”

Somehow, telepathically or something, I knew the moment had come for “THE TALK.”

So I answered simply, “Yes, I know.”

Mom visibly relaxed. “Oh. Okay.”

… and that was about it. 🙂

Seriously though, my parents always set a good example, and as for my mom, she used to write articles in support of Pope Paul VI and Humanae Vitae, as well as pro-life letters to the editor.

…
 
My first “talk” was around kindergarten when I asked how babies got into the belly. My mom told me that daddies plant a seed into the mommies. :rolleyes: It wasn’t a lie, it was totally vague, and it satisfied me.

My mom was 9 when she started her period. Since she was so young, she didn’t know what was going on or why. Because of that, I had my “your body is about to change, this is what happens, and this is why” talk around 8 years old. I was also probably the only 3rd grader with pads in her book bag, but my mom didn’t want me to freak out and think I was dying when it happened.

When I started liking boys and wanting to go to mixed birthday parties around 11 or 12, she had another talk with me.
She had another talk with me when I was around 15.

It wasn’t a this is the talk and we aren’t going to talk about it anymore type thing. She never just handed me a pamphlet and let me freak out. lol.
I’m married now and if I had a question I know I could call my mom and she would give me open and honest advice.
I hope when I have kiddos that I will be able to have an open and honest relationship with them, like my mom and I do.
 
it will depend on your kids i think. i do advise getting to them before their schoolmates though especially if they are not going to a catholic school. i think a healthy balance is needed; is needs to be discussed and not swept under the rug but you can’t make it seem too casual or make them think it’s no big deal. not that i’m saying you will, it just happens a lot. especially in those school system sex ed classes. i think it will be up to you and your significan other to discern when the time is right though. you probably wont’ have to worry about that for another decade or so i would think
 
Well I can say that my own experiences with my own mother giving me that talk at 12 yrs old was quite mortifying! No real mention of periods & body changes until I got my first period & freaked out. I was told that now I have my period it was time to tell me about ‘The law of chastity’ & ‘Mormon modesty’ Yes my mum wasn’t a very affectionate person & so I was pretty much left to my own mind to freak out about what was happening to my body. I pretty much learnt most of what i knew at school & through friends.
Fast forward to now, & I’m a mother to 2 very young children & I know that I will have a much more loving approach to discussing the ‘birds & the bees’ so to speak.
I do believe that it is important to teach the kids with God in mind, about their bodies & about sex morality in an age appropriate manner, so that they grow up to have strong healthy morals on that matter. I certainly wouldn’t want my kids growing up with loose morals thinking that what our society in general says about sex is ok.
 
I tend to agree with the “every age with appropriate material.” My wife, however, is less convinced and doesnt want to scandalize our children.
 
I never had a “talk”, thus I was left in the sexual realm on my own. This led to masturbation from when I was ten or early eleven and pornography. I highly urge any parents to not wait and talk to your sons and daughters when they are about ten. Yes, I know you see them as your “little boy/girl”, but they need to know before they start learning from someone else, or before they start learning all by themselves. Masturbation and pornography are happening at increasingly younger ages, so you need to strike before they get into it. Doing the “every age as appropriate” thing is something I recommend.
 
I was 3 when my mom gave me a book called “How Babies are Made” lol :rolleyes:
Of course, I couldn’t read yet, so she had to read it to me.
 
laircy said:
I was 3 when my mom gave me a book called “How Babies are Made” lol :rolleyes:
Of course, I couldn’t read yet, so she had to read it to me.
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What was your experience like with that?
 
relstudent said:
What was your experience like with that?
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I was too young to find it “awkward” so I just grew up always thinking sex was something special married people do when they want a baby. The “sex for pleasure only” idea never made sense to me.
 
laircy said:
I was too young to find it “awkward” so I just grew up always thinking sex was something special married people do when they want a baby. The “sex for pleasure only” idea never made sense to me.
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I have always felt like the younger a child is exposed to what sex really is that the less ackward it actually is… do you think this is true?
 
The Christian book store had a very nice series of books, age-appropriate, starting, IIRC, from a pre-school POV.

I found them very helpful. It’s better to begin in small steps.
 
I picked 4th-8th grade, although I think that’s a bit too broad a span for a good answer. I would have preferred having the talk with my daughters when they were in 7th-8th grade, depending on the girl. Our son’s sex-ed started in 7th grade and we had a series of talks instead of one comprehensive discussion.

With our daughters, though, we had the misfortune of their school library carrying a storybook that was very graphic in nature. Our daughter got it in 1st or 2nd grade and kept telling us about this wonderful book she had gotten from the library. She thought it was a beautiful story and kept telling us how it was her favorite book. When we went in to check it out ourselves, she had already returned it. She got it out a couple more times throughout the school year and her teacher assured us it was an innocuous, age-appropriate book (we later found out she never even looked at it). We found it at a used book store that summer, brought it home and decided to read it to the kids. I normally wouldn’t do that with a book of that nature without looking through it first, but it had taken on such a mystique with our daughter, and everyone had assured us it was fine so I just started reading it. It got to the point about the mommy & daddy wanting a baby. I turned the page and, even though it was still storybook artwork, it was an extremely graphic picture of exactly how mommy & daddy make that baby. That put an end to story time. I read the rest of the book and found that it had a lot of other very frank, graphic content, much of which ran counter to Catholic teachings. This led to a long talk with our daughter, a shorter talk with our younger daughter and a call to the school.

As luck would have it, in the year or two following that we had several family members who thought it was awfully funny to tell our daughters all manner of extremely inappropriate things behind our backs. This led to lots of other talks and us distancing ourselves from certain family members. Our girls now have a much better understanding of sex than my wife or I had at that age. The only benefit of it is that our daughters are very open with us when it comes to anything related to sex or their bodies. Someone told me how great that is and simply couldn’t understand that it really should have been up to us when they heard some of the things they were told.
 
I had three different “talks” with my mom on the subject. The first was when I was in 1st grade, with the typical “Where do babies come from?” question. My mom is a doctor, so she bought me a children’s book on anatomy and explained it using the anatomical drawings. It was really informative and much better, I think, than a vague answer would have been. The second “talk” happened when I was around 10, as she wanted me to be prepared for puberty and not freak out when I got my period, so she basically just explained what was going to happen and what to do about it. Since I already knew what to expect, I was able to help some friends of mine whose parents hadn’t told them and thought they were going to bleed to death at school when they got their period the first time. lol

The real in-depth “talk” about it happened when I was 13. That’s sort of the age of “adulthood” in my religion and my mom and her friends made me a care package with some fun things like simple make-up and perfume, a diary, and some books for teenagers on dating, beauty care, and general advice on how to deal with the typical teen problems that weren’t too preachy or cheesy. My mom also sat me down and talked about sex issues like protection, pregnancy, personal boundaries and having respect for my body, etc. The thing that stuck with is that my mom told me that I was old enough to start making my own decisions about my body and that, while she had opinions on what I should do, she would still love me even if I made what she thought were poor decisions and that the most important thing was that I talk to her or my dad if I ever felt unsafe or got into trouble.
 
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