Oh God, Rushgeekgirl, I’m so, so sorry that your daughter - and you - went through that. That’s hideous. Strong thoughts coming your way.
I apparently did, when I was three - but, like I said, my mother was pregnant. So it wasn’t an abstract ‘Where do babies come from?’, it was a very concrete ‘How did that baby get in there?’
Olivesmarch, that sounds way confusing, but it sounds like the problem was quantity of info, rather than quality. Your problem wasn’t the accurate terminology; it was the fact that you got wayyy more info than a little kid needs, or can take in. I understood perfectly that penis-in-vagina = baby, because that’s basically all the info I got, along with a bit about an egg and a seed. No pictures, no developmental stages, nothing like that. It took me a lot longer to figure out that penis-in-vagina could have any other purpose (I think there was some stuff about when a man and a woman love each other, but I didn’t really see what that had to do with anything), but the link between sex and procreation was solid.
Are you currently at a table quiz in Dublin? Because if you are, bring me home a pear.
If you’re not, we just have parallel existences and someone is probably writing an eerie SF short story about us right now.
My two were ICSI pixies, so their specific installation process will take a little more explaining too.
But my just-3 year old has known for at least 6 months that she has a vagina, vulva and that boys have a penis. She asked me in the bath at the time why she had two holes down there, so I gave her the basics. I had also just had a baby so explained that that was how babies normally got out. She’s got a doll and has been very focused on being a mummy to her baby (breastfeeding etc), so we have talked about how all of that may happen to her once she’s a grown up, I.e. the pregnancy/birth experience. Then again, she’s a very articulate perceptive child and I would judge the nature of the child when it came to the discussion with my younger girl when the time comes.
She hasn’t yet asked about how babies get in there, but when she asks, we will be factual and biological, just as it was for me when my mum got out the Encyclopaedia Brittanica when I was 6. I believe a teacher got mad at her for having explained the basics to my 9 year old brother, and she was irate and intent on making sure that sex was no big deal and that we got the facts. I had no desire to put it into practice at that age, in fact I recall getting bored and wondering what the big deal was.
And RushGeekgirl, how awful to hear. Hope your little one recovers well both in body and mind, I can think of few things I fear more.
Rushgeekgirl I am very sorry this happened to your daughter. I have a nine year old and can’t imagine. I hope she is healing, both physically and emotionally.
I answered the questions my daughter asked as she asked them. She knew the proper names for her body parts, first of all since it’s her body, shouldn’t she know, but also so she can tell me if something is wrong and also so if a predator did touch her or hurt her, she would have the words to tell me. So, at three, she knew all the words and knew babies came from their Mommies but didn’t ask further - I wasn’t pregnant so she didn’t have that curiousity until she ran into her first pregnant Momma.
Most kids are content with answers, in my experience and don’t ask the follow-ups you’d expect. As long as you answer honestly, they take the time to mull that over.
As far as the “sexy” thing, since she knows what the word “sex” means, she stopped describing herself as sexy when I told her the two are tied.
Rushgeekgirl, I am so sorry. That is just appalling. Please accept my very best wishes for your daughter and also for you.
I was the kid who propositioned a little boy my age (I think about 4) - I read that penises go into vaginas and wanted to try it. He declined, saying there was no point since we weren’t old enough to make a baby. :eek: I didn’t understand why my parents made such a big fuss about my asking for years, but I never did it again, since they were so upset.
When my daughter was 4 and I was pregnant, she had a whole monologue worked up: “My momy has a baby in her tummy and he has a special room called a uterus and he has an umbilical cord and a placenta and when she eats he gets some of her food through his belly button!!” We haven’t explained the penis-in-vagina thing because she hasn’t asked, but I think she knows about it from this book (which I recommend, by the way - it’s great for little kids).
(Apologies for not reading the whole thread in detail before answering, and I hope I’m not repeating concepts that have been well discussed already - but I did see what RushGeekgirl’s daughter went through and I’m terribly sorry.)
My son is now 14 and when he was little we always gave simple, factual, euphemism-free answers to any questions he had about sex, which when he was very young sometimes included statements like “that’s the simple version. Just ask if you want more information.”
The sample conversations in the OP reflect our reality quite well. Kids generally don’t ask for more detail than they can handle, so if you give matter-of-fact answers to their questions and let THEM guide how explicit the information becomes, it will be fine.
My son is not perfect by any means, but I’ll have to say, in the “knowledge of, and maturity about, sex and male-female relations” department, he is a terrific teenager. He understands the biology, isn’t embarrassed to ask questions, and seems extremely respectful of his girlfriend. (It’s a long-distance relationship, so no physical stuff at the moment.) He knows all about condoms. Last year when he was definitely still pre-pubescent, we gave him some*. He knows why you have to take sex seriously. (Our mantra: disease, pregnancy, hurt feelings.)
In short, I think my son is a poster child for the success of the strategy outlined in the OP. That is, assuming your goal is to produce a knowledgeable teen without hang-ups about sex or relationships; if you want to produce a straight-laced kid who struggles with their desires and obsesses on virginity, maybe it’s not so good. I also realize that 14 is still pretty young; we have a long way to go yet
I don’t know if schools do that automatically in the US so it seems odd that we would do it ourselves and think it worthy of mention. Here in Jakarta the international school tries their best to provide a decent sex education, but it’s a multicultural environment and they have to take a pretty conservative approach or some of the parents would go apeshit.
I still think “good hard pounding” is more appropriate terminology.
Seriously, I just think it’s important to avoid this:
[QUOTE=Volokh commenter]
I believe Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, once told a story about a child who asked his parents where babies came from. After some hemming and hawing, they eventually explained that Mommy and Daddy “had sex” and that it had something to do with Mommy and Daddy being close, but left out most other details. Some time after, at a dinner party that both the parents, the child, and Miss Manners herself were attending, the father happened to put his hand on Miss Manners’s shoulder. “Mommy! Mommy!” shouted the observant child. “Daddy is having sex with Miss Manners!” Miss Manners later reflected that she had never gotten a room’s attention so absolutely focused on her before or since.
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Thanks you guys. We’ve been in therapy since May at the Memphis Child Advocacy Center and she’s getting much better. At first it was really, really bad but now she rarely has nightmares and a lot of the anxiety she had is getting a lot better. PTSD has been my biggest concern because I’ve been living with it for 34 years myself but she is scoring much lower than she had on whatever scale they use, according to her therapist.
I am so sorry that this happened to your daughter. Many of the kids I worked with were victims of abuse, often from around the same age as your daughter. I am so glad that you are getting her such great help, because I have seen how much it can benefit children. Children can be resilient and can astound us in their capacity for understanding things in ways that even we couldn’t. With the right help and support I have seen children come to understand what happened, and place it in their life and go on to live wonderful lives. I just wanted to tell you that so that you know that, although what happened was awful and damaging, there is every chance that she will come out of this very well.
