If this kid is a bright 11-year-old, he knows what rape is. “Tim” is “uptight” to the point of being a dumbass.
That was my first thought as well. Why wouldn’t a kid that age already know what rape was?
Dweezil’s 11 (nearly 12) and still majorly clueless. I’m sure he’d accept the same explanation today as he did 4.5 years ago. Then again, he still writes letters to Santa (so we need to do some proactive explanations here soon!).
Moon Unit is 9-going-on-19 and entirely too curious for my “never let them grow up” parental comfort zone 
I don’t think she’d have bought the “TVs and VCRs” explanation even at age 7 :o (and yes, I’m aware of the irony of the embarassment smiley looking like the “orange blowjob smiley” in this context, hee!!!).
Okay, I’m :smack: ing myself again, because I should have phrased my OP differently. Randy was not being a Relentless Questioner; this was all about Tim’s reaction – and he really did get loud. (I remembered what Mr. Rilch said, too. We were talking about the possibility of going to the beach the next day – which we did not – and Mr. Rilch said “Wait’ll you see Rilchie in her stars-n-stripes bikini!” Which elicited another “YAUUUGHHH!!” from Tim, in anticipation of Mr. Rilch going into detail about my appearance in said bikini.)
But the impression I got was that Randy was completely tuning us out. He was probably focused on the stuff he was going to do at his friend’s house, so IMO, Tim was, as I think I said above, just borrowing trouble. Which gives rise to the question I should have asked: Parents, do you take it upon yourselves to explain stuff to your kids before they ask, or do you wait until they’ve made it clear that they want to know?
Because I’m wondering if this is part of the current Raising Superkid/Wrap the Kid in Bubblewrap and Disneyfy Everything trend. Tim would have been in an awkward position if Randy had piped up “What’s rape?”; I admit that. But I didn’t see any “have to” in that situation; it seemed that it would have been Tim’s choice to explain. And there seem to be so many parents these days who take on unnecessary "have to"s.
Maybe, the bikini thing certanly seems odd. But I do think there is a tendency to preemptively strike in terms of explaining things, and also to over explain. This is usually somewhat self corrected by the second child, and I think it mostly comes from a swinging of the pendulum away from a previous generation’s authoritarian approach. We didn’t like “because I said so” or “when you are older” so we explain every damn thing. And the prevailing wisdom is indeed to explain everything at lenagth, even to preverbal children, which I have never done.
Sometimes my kids want to know things and don’t want to ask. And sometimes they know things (or think they do) and so don’t ask when they really should. Sometimes I notice this and sometimes I do not. I try to notice. But to answer your question, I generally wait until I feel fairly sure they want to know. We have a long time together, I’m in no hurry.
As a parent, I’ve adopted the wait-until-they-ask approach. Sometimes I’ll ‘seed’ the conversation, if I think it’ll be important, but that’s rare. The last time I can remember having to do that was when we needed to reinforce modesty and the reason one did not change clothes for the pool party in the same room as the neighbor girl. It was innocent; they were both 5 at the time and completely unaware. Both her mom and my wife and I were more amused than anything else, but y’know, best nipped in the bud and all that. (Wide-eyed innocent boy: “Mommy, she doesn’t have a pee-pee!”)
Ahem. I would like, for the record, to point out that this is an unwarranted assumption on your part. There are many people out there much older than the age range you specify who play with LEGOs. I alone should count for two of them. 
Back to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress…
–sofaspud
Ghanima, age ~8, watching West Side Story at a friend’s house: What are they doing to her?
Mrs B.: They’re trying to rape her?
Ghanima, age ~8: What’s rape?
Mrs. B.: They’re trying to force themselves on her.
Ghanima: 
Mrs. B.: Ask your mother.
It depends on the subject. There are a lot of things that my kid does not know that she needs to know, of course, and those I bring up when I think I should. Like for example the official names of body parts; we use ‘peepee’ for everyday use, but when she was about 4 I started telling her the real names of things. (Since I dislike the blanket use of ‘vagina’ we had to learn 3 or 4 terms, which she promptly forgot. We go over them every few months, remembering each part and its purpose.) Or all that stuff about good touching vs. bad touching.
Other stuff I explain when she asks, such as how babies are born, menstruation, and so on. She really likes to hear about childbirth for some reason, and then she wants to hear about her own c-section birth. Yet other things are explained minimally, and will wait until she’s older–what Mommy’s (BC) pills are for, for example.
She did ask where babies come from a couple of months ago, and I told her about the sperm/egg thing, but not how it gets in there. She seemed happy, and wanted to know more about genetics, so we talked about that.
Decades ago, when I was a young child (and dinosaurs ruled the earth) the movie Johnny Belinda was on TV. For those who are not familiar with it, it’s about a young deaf woman who had not (yet) learned sign language. She was raped by a man who figured, “Hey, she can’t tell anyone about it.” The scene was not explicit. I asked my father what happened. He said, “That man attacked her, and now she’s going to have a baby.”
I was not entirely sure at the time what kind of attack could cause a woman to have a baby, and I certainly knew that my father would never have “attacked” my mother, and I pretty much knew that babies grew inside a mother, but the exact mechanism was not clear. However, his explanation was enough for me to understand the ensuing plot of the movie.
I also think that if the kid is old enough to ask a question, the kid is old enough for an honest, if age-appropriately simplified, answer. I really, really like you answer to the Lewinsky question. I don’t remember what we told WhyKid, or even if he asked about it.
I used to be an (over)explainer. What made me stop that was WhyKid having back sugery to remove a rib and correct a severe scoliosis. He was 11 at the time, and there was a lot of information from the doctors and nurses and whatnot. I finally asked him, “Do you want me to tell you everything they tell me about what could happen, or would you rather I wait until you want to know something specific?” He asked me to keep quiet. He said that for him personally, too much information is not reassuring (like it is for me.) He admitted to me that I did have a habit of telling him things that worried him.
It was a big wake-up call for me and how he and I process information differently. I want to know every possible outcome and plan accordingly, so that I don’t feel anxious about what could happen. I feel like the more I know about any topic, the more control over it I have. He wants to deal with what actually happens as it happens, and knowing other possible outcomes just makes him anxious. While he’s a bright kid and wants to know stuff, he also knows his limits.
So that’s been our deal for the last couple of years. When he wants to know something, he asks. Until then, he trusts me to worry about the bad things for him. I like that.
Parents need to keep some explanations to themselves, until the kids are mature enough to not use the information in a bad way. Two sister in-laws worked for years in preschool child care, and every group has had a couple kids that are perverted foul mouthed kids. Many are the children of parents that think they should tell their kids everything. The worst offenders being medical professionals. Those problem kids went around telling other kids that’s your virginia and this is your penis. “Do you know what a penis is for?” “This is how you make babies.” “Mommy had an orgasm.” The other group of problem kids lived with a parent that brought over new sex partners all the time, and they would witness the sex. Both groups of children were about equal in how they interacted with other children. Due to regulations the care providers can’t tell other parents about the kids, and have to watch those kids closely to stop the interaction until they can kick the kid out of class. It’s incredible how many kids 4-6 are mentally messed up in this way. Parents do need to tell their kids that it’s a grown up word, and when they grow up you’ll tell them, then kick yourself for discussing adult material in front of them.