Talking About Sex to Preteens: What do you say?
Wednesday May 10, 2006
While some parents feel it is hard to break the ice when bringing up discussions about the birds and the bees, many parents get lost in the subject matter during the discussions. One parent shared with me that she couldn't bring herself to say the word pregnancy. All of the words for body parts came flying out of her mouth, but as she looked at her young daughter the word pregnancy got stuck in her throat. These talks are hard. Hopefully, these five tips will help.
I recently had to have a discussion with my 10 year old about sex. We were watching a television show and one of the characters discovered she was pregnant, happily, after having issues with infertility. My son blurted out how wasn’t supposed to be able to have babies so “she must have swallowed something with some sperms in it.” I said, “Like what?” And he said, “Maybe some strawberries or something.”Needless to say, I couldn’t let that misinformation remain in his head… I was rather nervous starting to talk about it, but once we got going, he had lots of good questions and it was clear to me that there are things he’s been curious about for a while. When we were finished with our conversation I actually felt very relieved, and trust that he will come to me in the future for questions on the subject.