What's a Parent's Role?

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Start talking to your child about their body earlier than you might think.

Don't have just one conversation; have many conversations over time.

Answer any questions your child has about their body or yours. Stay factual and judgement-free.

Do you bring up sex and sexuality with your kids, or do you wait for them to ask? This question came up in our parenting group yesterday. And opinions were mixed. The mother who asked the question had a 10-year-old who had never asked, and so she had never spoken to her son about sex or sexuality. Another mother told her daughter at age four what sex "is". One mother admitted that she also had never brought up the subject with her 10-year-old. She didn't say she was anxious about doing so but when I mentioned that sometimes the parent is nervous about initiating this conversation, she admitted that this was true for her.

One thing to remember, however, is that your child may also be anxious about talking about their body or about sex. They may feel embarrassed; they may have heard things from their friends, and they may not know what is OK to bring up and what is not.

But children need to know about their bodies — they need to know what to expect, that is, what will happen with their bodies as they reach puberty. They need to know what sex is before they hear about it from a peer, and as they get to be young adolescents, they need to know why people have sex; they need to know that sex is a voluntary act, that they........

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