"The Talk" and what leads up to it

[Duke]

From the main page:

As a child you wonder if your parents will ever have "The Talk" with you and usually dread it, as a parent you usually hope your child will never ask you. Approaching this area, as a parent is pretty much the same as all other areas of parenting, you should have a plan in case your child starts asking questions.

The article posted on MSN Family is an interview with Steven C. Atkins (Psy.D., a clinical associate at Dartmouth Medical School's department of child psychiatry and the coauthor of Talking to Your Kids About Sex From Toddlers to Preteens) and the editors of Scholastic's Parent & Child.

I won't go into details of the articles content but I can say that some of its views seem a little more liberal than my own belief values. Maybe I'm fortunate but I've still managed to get my message across with my child in a less abrupt nature.

[Duke]

What were your thoughts on this article?

[Star]

well, I had started talking to them about these things from the time they knew the word NO. they didn't call their private body parts by their proper names. I don;t know, i find it gross when i hear kids calling it a vagina or penis. My kids called theirs a cookie and a boy's was a birdie. it didn't confuse them at all. Of course they knew what they were really called but never used the real words to describe the parts.

at age 7, i bought a really good book called "where did i come from?" and read it to them. that book covered everything. krystal had only 1 question to ask and kassandra had none. at age 9, I bought another book called "what's happening to me?" and read that to them. The combination of those 2 books covered absolutely everything.

talking about private parts, sex, bad touching, good touching, strangers, drugs was never a closed topic in our home. always open for discussion and still is.

my kids never asked me to see my private area in public. they knew from the get go that it is called a private area for a reason, because it is private.

duke, since you have a daughter, do you talk to her about all of this too? if you do, is she comfortable talking to you about it?

my kids were never comfortable going to thei dad to talk about these things. they always came to me. maybe that's because they live with the both of us? and since mom is always here, they choose to talk to another female instead?

although, krystal talks about her pregnancy to the both of us.

[Duke]

Actually, my daughter asks me the tough questions and I have to answer them. She asked me about her monthly visit from Mr. Grumpy instead of mom, along with other wonderful questions of that nature. I answered as best I could, sometimes using the internet as a reference because you can find virtually everything you want.

We never referred to privates as anything other than privates really. She is aware of what they are called but I think using the actual terms can be offensive if blurted out in public, which kids have a habit of doing.

Since the time she was very little, I've made sure to put the fear of God into her about strangers. This is something that I felt was a must just to help lay some of my own fears to rest. I remember twice she got too far away from me either riding her bike or just outside of a playground and when I got to her I exploded all of my pent up fear and shoved it down her throat to the point that she was hitching from crying so hard. The thought of my kid getting nabbed scares the crap out of me and all that fear comes out verbally should she compromise her own safety.

I never hit, spanked, slapped my daughter because she never elevated any situation with me save once. The one time I did hit my daughter was one single spank on her bum when she was 2 for repeatedly (over the course of a month or so) running up a flight of slippery, narrow and carpeted stairs. Not a huge flight of stairs, but enough for her to seriously hurt herself, possibly break her neck should she fall. She was wearing a diaper of course so I doubt it hurt her but she did scream for a while, prolly more out of shock since I don't hit. I put her in bed so I could get away from her to cool down, went to the living room and balled myself. That was the first, and last time I ever hit my kid.

I have a funny feeling that Dwoing will be the same with me as my female cousins were with my uncle Peter. He is prolly one of the best men I've ever met, very kind, creative and just a pleasure to be around. Unfortunately, his kids always took advantage of him but thats more becaue they got away with murder. Anyway, his daughters would come home, sometimes the next day, after a date and tell old Pete the gory details. I'm not sure how he actually felt about this but the guy was so approachable that you could tell him virtually everything.

[matthewmurcia]

I think that there should be absolutely no problems in talking to kids about this. Thery're just words, and if we are 'embarrased' about using them or talking about that stuff, then kids are bound to be. No reason at all for kids not to know and know how to describe that stuff.

I remember being given a book by my parents similar to the one described by star above but i have NEVER talked to my parents about sex or relationships because I think from an early age I learned they weren't interested in listening.

Since then, I've met many people who have absolutely fantastic relationships with their parents about these topics and have always talked about all of this stuff with no problems and that's definitely what I'm going to do if I ever have kids.

[Merika]

Awww...that's sad MM! I think some parents just don't know what to say. If a kid asked questions based on the stuff they hear today...some parents would be mortified to even go there. The talk about 'pumpkin patches' is long out of date.

[Star]

i talk about sex with my kids all the time. any question they had or have are answered by me. i admit that at time it was embarassing for me but i had to push that aside, as a parent, and answer their questions. I believe that if a kid is old enough to ask, then they are deffinately old enough to know.

when i was pregnant with kassandra, krystal was only 3 years old or so. she asked me how the baby is going to come out of my tummy. i told her the truth. "out of mommy's cookie" i said. i remember her look. like it was a look of how? then the rest of the questions came up. isn't that going to hurt? will you bleed? i answered them all truthfully but in words that she would understand.

the books i used didn't sugar coat anything. they were drawn in cartoon but very clear about everything. body parts were drawn, they even had a couple laying in bed making love! they were the perfect books to help out with "the talk" when they were 7. I still have those books. my grandkids can use them next.

[darkangelism]

i already knew about it for the wrong reasons

[Weiser]

I never had the "Talk". I did learn all about it in gr.5. Go catholic school...

[hezekiah]

I'm still waiting for the talk-i dont understand this stuff at all

[Fayebelle]

on another note I heard it is important to make certain children know the appropriate proper terms for private parts b/c of molestation

If a child says "so and so touched my private parts" it can be too grey of an area to really prove molestation

Sad but true

It's hard b/c The Talk encompasses so much more these days

I do think some people go about it the wrong way b/c of their own discomfort. My ex's lil sis (she was 12) asked me what an orgasm was. I said I think it would be best if she discussed it w/her mom. She sighed and said she did but her mom said she "shouldn't ask about such things" I think if a child asks they deserve an answer. The funny part- I told her it's a part of sex and she'll learn more when she's older and it is appropriate. She said "eewwww sex!" LOL she really had no idea what the word meant and that was her curiosity. Imagine the education she would have received had she turned to her friends w/the question b/c her parents thought it was too taboo to discuss! She would have learned more than she wanted to know LOL

On a funny note my best pal was watching an after school special bout babies when she was young and turned to her mom and said "you know they always show how those babies get out but they never show how they got in there" LOL

[Merika]

I guess Fayebelle never got 'the talk'....that's why she's PREGGERS! LOL!

[Fayebelle]

I got talk alright. Words have power. The pen is mightier than the sword LMAO