If you're praying for sixth-grade health class to spare you the dreaded sex-ed discussion, it's time to face reality. "I can't tell you how often parents say, 'I can't talk to my kids about sex; they still believe in Santa Claus!'" says Sharon Maxwell, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Canton, Massachusetts, and author of The Talk: What Your Kids Need to Hear from You About Sex (Avery). "If your child is 8 and you think he's too young, get over it," adds Maxwell, who argues that pop culture—from video games to underwear ads—will quickly fill in the blanks if you don't.
Myth #1
Talking to my child about sex will traumatize her (not to mention me) for years to come.
Sharon Maxwell: Many parents I see are anxious about the conversation because they think it represents a loss of innocence. I remind them that if we all still lived on farms, the topic of intercourse and how babies are made would be as common as breakfast; it would be no big deal. That's not a loss of innocence. The video games little boys are playing can cause a loss of innocence. Little girls shaking their booties, not knowing what they're doing but thinking it's important—that's a loss of innocence.
To help with the basics, there's a great book by Peter Mayle called Where Did I Come From? (Lyle Stewart). It lays out the biology of sex with plump little figure drawings of mommies and daddies who love each other. I tell parents to read it with their child first, then begin the conversation. A very important part of it can happen when your child goes, "Oh! Do you do that with Daddy? That's so gross!" That's when parents think, I've traumatized her for life. But instead of panicking, say, "Well, the main difference between a child's body and a grown-up's is that children can't make babies and grown-ups can. So you're not interested in this kind of stuff, and it seems gross to you, because your body hasn't changed yet." For kids, this demonstrates a natural boundary between understanding the biology of sex and knowing they don't have to worry about acting sexy.
Kids value what their parents have to say about sex. They act like they don't, but they really do see parents as the best resource—the people who care about them and want the best for them.
Myth #2
My kid is a few years from hitting puberty—he's too young to hear about sex.
SM: If your 8-year-old has never asked you about sex, you need to get in there. You could start with: "You may have heard about this whole sexy thing, and I want to tell you about it—it's private, but I think you're old enough."
But if your kid is 4 and you're pregnant, and she wants to know where babies come from, you don't have to get into the specifics of penises and vaginas. It's perfectly fine to say, "Mommies and daddies have a special kind of grown-up love that helps them make babies." That's enough for a 4-year-old. The idea of a special kind of love covers all the bases when they're really young.
Myth #3
If my child asks me a question about sex and I'm caught unprepared, it's okay to make something up.
SM: You need to answer the question, but be smart about it. When your child says, "I want to know where babies come from," you can say, "That's a really good question. Where do you think babies come from?" This way you'll find out if he heard something about adoption in school or if he heard about a weird way of having sex from a friend on the playground. It's important to know what he's actually asking. And if your kid asks an explicit question, give a straightforward answer. The last thing you want is for him to know you gave him a bullshit answer, because then that's it—he's not going to come back.
Myth #4
It's better for me to invent a name for private parts (say, "Mr. Tiddlywinks") than to tell my young child the actual word.
SM: Just say the word. If she pointed at her elbow, you wouldn't say, "That's just part of your arm." If your daughter is pointing to her vagina and asking what it's called, say, "That's your vagina. All girls have them." If you make it into a big deal, it's going to be a big deal. But remember, kids like to practice words. So if you're terribly uptight about their saying "penis" or "vagina" in the supermarket, just say, "These are your private parts," and leave it at that until they're capable of understanding more. You don't want to tell them the word and then snap at them when they use it in public—then you're creating a horribly negative association.
Myth #5
I can't compete with the media.
SM: My son came from a friend's house, where he had played a James Bond video game, and said, "Mom, I don't understand why in this game all the boys have suits on and all the girls have bathing suits on." My response was: "You know, that's the whole sexy thing. That's the whole power thing that I was telling you about—when they show a lady with a bathing suit on, businesses think they're going to sell more games." And another thing you can tell your son—and it's the same if your daughter says, "I want to be sexy, like that girl in the Victoria's Secret commercial"—is "I understand that TV, movies, and video games are all about this sexy thing, but in our family, we think acting sexy is for when you're older. When your body starts to change and look like a grown-up body, then it's time to start thinking about sexy." You can make that distinction. Again, it's all about creating an island of family culture in the raging stream of the media culture. You're not changing the culture, but you can give your children a framework to understand it. One of the biggest mistakes parents can make is thinking, Oh, I haven't figured it all out yet, so I'll just wait until I've done a little more research. No. No matter how badly you botch it, you're going to be better than the CW.
Myth #6
If I talk to my children about the importance of controlling sexual desire, I'll sound like a puritan, and they'll tune me out.
SM: You need to reframe the issue. Culturally, we tend to talk about desire as if it were something bad, even when kids are very small. The way I look at it in The Talk, desire isn't bad. Desire is great—it's what keeps the species going. But what kids need to understand is that while it gives us incredible energy, desire can, in turn, also control us. So parents should talk about the muscle of self-control. If a car had no brakes, it would be useless to us. It's the same with desire: It's not good when we can't control it.
You can start teaching kids to control general desire at an early age—3 or 4. If your child is shopping with you at the supermarket and another kid is having a meltdown in the candy aisle, you can say, "See? That child hasn't figured out how to control all that energy yet. He's just screaming and having a tantrum."
I give this example in the book: Your kid gets in the car after school. She's starving, and you forgot her snack. Acknowledge that her hunger is giving her a lot of energy and ask her, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how big is your hunger right now?" If she says, "It's a 12!" then you say, "Wow, that's huge—you have to be very strong to control a 12." This validates the hunger but also reinforces that it's a force that your child can control and direct. It's important to teach kids that success isn't defined just by how much you can shove on your plate; it's also defined by what you choose not to take.
