My son recently turned 10, and we haven’t had “the talk” yet. I think by this time we should have had it and probably to some significant detail. But my wife seems concerned because none of his friends other parent’s (the ones we hang out with/know) have had the talk and she feels our son is going to spread the news and possibly cause embarrassment.
Personally, I don’t care and I worry about what nonsense his friends have already told him.He’s definitely been curious. He has a “crush” at school now and dotes on this girl. Also, 2 years ago thinking him nothing but an innocent little angel (and therefore neglecting to lock down our tablet) I caught him googling for “Princess Peach Naked”. We had a short conversation then, asking him if he had any questions and that it was normal to be curious about stuff like that. I wanted to follow up with some basic anatomy but my wife insisted he wasn’t ready for it and he would just clown around.
She’s finally letting me decide how to proceed, and I realize I’m not sure how to. Does anyone have any books they can recommend? I want to know how to approach the subject, how much information he should have at this age, and just any advice you can offer.
I remember being 10, and by that time I had already seen a girl naked, kissed girls, and even had some sexual experiences. But my wife reminds me that we were raised differently. Basically after school I was allowed to roam the neighborhood till dinner time without adult supervision. I don’t think my son was ever more than a few feet away from either one of us or another trusted adult. Definitely a different world than the one we grew up in…
I think you’re probably right. This is the 21st century and 10 is plenty old enough. What he doesn’t know he’ll find out from less useful or much worse sources. I don’t know what ammunition to offer you except that you’ll find plenty of people who’s personal experiences point to harm that follows ignorance in this regard.
When my daughter was 5 or 6 she had a pet corn snake. In order to save money, I set up an aquarium with some adult mice and we fed the snake mouse pups and eventually adult mice. One day I realized we hadn’t had any litters of mice recently. We looked over the situation and I commented that all the mice were females. She was ecstatic!! She knew that female mice had babies. I realized she did not know about the roll male mice played in the situation.
So, by 6 she knew the basics about reproduction. I got a videotape that covered sperm/egg level reproduction with cats. We discussed how all mammals have a uterus, etc.
There were a few awkward occasions where she corrected her friends’ misunderstandings, but all went well.
Most public middle schools cover the basics (“sex ed”) anyway, although by then, the damage done by peers spreading misinformation has usually already occurred.
You want kids to know important stuff before they need to know it. Not after.
It’s bewildering to hit puberty with no understanding of what’s going on. (You wanna know how many females get their 1st period and thought they were dying?)
You really don’t want to be the stupid cliché of having “the talk” shortly after being presented with your second grandchild.
Just don’t present it as this big thing. Calling it “The Talk” makes it seem like some horrible hush-hush secret.
You teach your kid stuff all the time, right? This is how you tie your shoes. This is how you put on a shirt. This is how you make a peanut butter sandwich.
… so - and ideally, your wife would, too - just treat this like yet another thing he needs to learn and be taught.
They gave me books and pamphlets, never uttered a word about the birds and bees. I read them thoroughly, and also ‘Our Bodies Ourselves’ a bit later… Because when I got in my teens, I got warned countless times if I ever got knocked up they would (fill in horrible options). … You might research online what are some good age-appropriate books to give to your kid to read. If you think he’ll read them and not just hide them under the bed. Age 10 is a bit late to begin, but it should be done. Is there a cool uncle or cousin who could do the talk for you ?
I have always been a proponent of answering questions directly, in this regard, but not elaborating. Usually the answer provided is sufficient to satisfy curiosity for a while. The follow up questions will come later. But this presupposes the child has curiosity and asked the questions as they came to them.
But a 10 year old? Yeah, that is definitely an age to get a more detailed foundation of knowledge. (Still child appropriate. I had a friend in high school who told how when she first asked about sex, they handed her the book “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask”. Maybe a little bit too much for an early teen.)
The point being they are easily exposed to lots of stuff we weren’t at that age back in the day, but without context. And, they are around kids a few years older, and more experienced, whether you like it or not. So this is something to get in front of.
There are dozens of books aimed at different age levels to help out. But one, read it, then give it to him and discuss it. Let him keep it in his room and refer to it as he wants, and get new books as he gets older.
My son was about 4 when we got him “it’s not the stork” which covers anatomy and gametes (penis, scrotum , testes, sperm, uterus, fallopian tube, ovary, vagina, vulva, clitoris, ovum) and how babies are made. There’s no explicit description of sex other than a goofy illustration of a man and woman in bed under a blanket, though he’s definitely on top. I’d have to go find the book but I think it keeps it very simple in that “the penis enters the vagina and releases sperm” and then focuses on fetal development.
The next book in the series is, I think, more targeted at 10+ and is called “it’s totally normal”. I haven’t read it, but it adds more details about puberty so presumably makes the link between erections and ejaculation and menstruation and sex. I should probably get it or another as my son is getting older!
We’ve always talked matter-of-fact about sex and our bodies, using the proper terms and just adding that it comes with really big emotions that are best handled when people are older. My SIL is a midwife who recently had a baby too, to lots of open, factual discussion has taken place around my son!
There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, really. Talking about it will help you and your wife as well, I think!
Does you son ride the bus? Hang out with friends that have older siblings? Then he already knows the basics (with lots of incorrect information thrown in), and has probably seen some videos that you wouldn’t have chosen for him. Have the talk this weekend. Search in youtube for sex education videos for 10 year-olds. Make sure you talk to him about porn and especially the dangers of sexting.
IANA parent. But I was a very curious 10yo boy in an era where real info was hard for a kid to come by.
The moment your son expresses real interest in girls, that’s evidence the hormones are starting. Likewise if you notice he has the beginnings of pubic hair and other typical changes. Either sign says it’s already past time to teach.
Your wife seems squeamish about this. I think it would be productive for you to try to explore with her what signals or timelines would she use to decide to teach her son if you were totally out of the picture, like dead or divorced or in the military overseas.
Depending on how well you two communicate in general you might discover that her true decision point is “never”. Some tasks, like killing spiders in the bathroom, are just man-work, and so you gut it out and do it. You don’t need her approval, but it’ll be a lot better if you have her conscious acquiescence.
It’s also worth asking her what she would want to happen next after your 11yo son reports his crush is pregnant. That too is a conversation better had while it’s hypothetical, not real.
“Prior plentiful planning prevents piss poor performance” is a saying for a reason.
I’m a little surprised he hasn’t had anything yet. Our district covers it in 5th grade (but maybe the OP’s son is still in 4th grade, given age 10). But I agree overall that 10 is plenty old enough to learn the basics of where babies come from.
I grew up in liberal SoCal. The first time sex was part of a formal school treatment was 7th grade, so age 12 to13. That was ~1970, so maybe they’ve gotten farther ahead of the curve in the intervening 50 (!) years.
But I’m also sure that even here in 2024 there are many conservative parts of the country where the very idea of the schools touching this topic would result in the school board being shot by an armed mob acting in Jeebus’ name.
My mother was giving my sister and I “the talk” when we were 8 and 5, respectively. However, being a biologist, she did it by cleverly making the topic sound as boring and dreary as possible - making it all science-y, using X-ray-ish diagrams, then pairing it with some lecture about mitosis, zygotes, etc. I was bored out of my mind and couldn’t wait for the talk to end soon enough.
When I was in 5th grade in Colorado, my school had a comprehensive sex education program where I learned the nuts and bolts about the reproductive system. I think 10 years old is a perfectly good time to learn about the birds & the bees.
Either your kid has engaged in other Internet searches you don’t know about, or has friends with their own access, but kids these days are pretty well exposed to sex stuff, even more than generations before.
By 10, your son probably has almost certainly had sexual thoughts and feelings, and may have even begun masturbating.
That’s not a problem, though, but it does warrant some discussion about “modern” concerns, like the dangers of sexting (such as being blackmailed or shamed, and including criminal liability) and how pornography doesn’t depict realistic love making by people in a committed relationship.
How do you get there? I agree with the comment upthread about not making it sound so bad as needing “The Talk”.
Maybe next time you hear some music, or see a show, that invariably refers to sex, you can use that to ask if he knows what they’re talking about. I’d couch it in terms of your own experience; “when I was a kid, I heard lots of stories from friends that turned out to totally not be true.”
You don’t even have to wait for his contribution. You can just dovetail into some good information, even if it just covers the basics of “young men and women are very fertile and diseases can be spread this way, so you have to be sure to use protection. And, people can be lied about, hurt, or get in trouble with sex, so it’s important to be with somebody you know and trust.”
It sounds like the obstacle for the OP is peer relations among the parents rather than how to talk to kids. If the relationships are close enough it might be worth a special barbeque get-together to lay our your plans and solicit feedback.
It depends a lot on the child too. I have had “the talk”, or at least tried to, with my son at various ages. Generally he was not the least bit interested.
Same thing with boys experiencing their first ejaculations. “I thought I’d broken something inside me” is a very common story. I know my first orgasm scared the crap out of me.
I’ve always tried to make sure my kids at least knew the basics, starting with a very vague description of eggs and sperm at age 6 or 7. I was definitely the first parent among their friends to do this, but fortunately my kids are not the type to blurt out things at school. (And I’ve told them that this is stuff you shouldn’t talk about at school – we had a similar discussion about expletives, which occasionally they do see in books, and I’m like, yeah, I won’t prevent you reading the word f*** or whatever, but you have to not say these words at school or with your friends or else the other parents will get upset with me and not let you have playdates!)
Just this week my almost-9-year-old son and I had a talk because he was with me when I bought sanitary pads for my 14-year-old daughter at the pharmacy. He asked me what they were, and I said they were for his sister’s period. Somehow, even though she’s had a period for about 6 months (and obviously I’ve had one his whole life) he didn’t know what a period was or what it involved. So he got a short, non-detailed description of how every month when a woman ovulates, either she gets pregnant or the uterine lining sheds along with the egg.
Me: …and wait, you know how the pregnancy happens, right?
Him: There’s a sperm, right? That meets the egg?
Me: Yep. Do you know where the sperm comes from?
Him: The daddy?
Me: Yep.
That’s all he needs right now. He still has no idea what sex is – has a year or two I think before we have to really get into that – although he once asked me about having an erection (which he did, in the bath) and I explained that when he got older this would be related to making sperm and having babies, and that was enough for him.
When his sister was showing signs of being near entering puberty (at age 11 or so; her period started at age 13) I had her read a couple of books about puberty, her body, what sex was, etc., and I expect to do that for him too at around that same age. (But hmm, maybe I should explain what an ejaculation is now, in case my timing is off.)