I am the parent of a two year old, it occurs to me I have zero desire to lie or make any kind of obfuscating statements on human reproduction if he should ask. Making exceptions for simplified language and leaving the more painful or exotic acts for later I don’t see a problem with being truthful.
Am I crazy here? I absolutely hated anytime my parents did that shit to me, but I am a bit odd of a personality.
Your kid, your choice.
This is written for very young kids. It is factual and simple.
I’m pretty sure I just answered my kid’s questions in a similar way when she asked. It’s never been a big deal.
I’m with you. I have a 2 year old and we’ve already had the basic talk of where babies come from and anatomy (I also have a 5 month old which prompted the questions). I’m not proactively bringing the topic up, but every so often she asks a question which chisels away at the mystery. We do get to complicate things as both girls were IVF (so there is a whole story of what we did to get them, which differs from the norm), but we’ve talked about this in general terms as well.
I taught my kids biology from the start. The only drawback was a complaint from another parent when my daughter corrected the misinformation the girl was spreading.
Yeah, go for it. If they are old enough to ask they are old enough to deserve an answer.
If they asked about eating or drinking or breathing we wouldn’t think twice about coming up with an age-appropriate factual answer and human reproduction is just as fundamental.
We’ve done precisely that with our 5 and 6 year olds from that age, backed up with relevant books where necessary. Do it early enough and be open with them and they see it as no big deal. That seems a healthy outlook to me.
I agree with the responses so far - I always responded to my daughter’s questions with a simplified version of the biological facts. It would be hard to lie now and go back later and explain WHY we lied about it.
And yes, Santa is totally different.
Not sure why, but I agree, it is.
Perhaps it is because we set up the Santa myth as something to enhance excitement whilst always knowing the bubble will burst and leave no lasting damage.
The same can’t be said for sex education or other persistent myths.
The simplest true answer to “Where do babies come from?” is “From inside their moms.” Is that not a satisfactory answer for a two year old?
I never thought this was an issue at all, until I saw other parents talking about it. One objection I’ve heard is that children will try to do it, I think that is silly.
Interesting. Parents I know are firmly in the age-appropriate facts camp. I didn’t know there WAS another camp anymore, actually.
It might be, for my daughter age three she wanted to know how it got there which led onto eggs and sperm and daddy’s part in the proceedings. Not difficult to put that into age appropriate language though it does rather confirm the existence of sex, which can be a problem for some people apparently.
I don’t see anything odd about having hated the stork-type answers. I think all kids do, no?
I got the simplified facts when I was three and my mother was pregnant again. My daughter’s almost three, and she knows she grew inside my tummy and then popped out when she got big enough - but she doesn’t have siblings so far, so it hasn’t occurred to her to ask how she got in there. When she does, she’ll get the age-appropriate version of the facts. I’m pretty sure all my friends are doing/planning the same thing.
The only bit I’ve had trouble with so far is the mechanics of how she got out. She was a C-section, so I have to cover both kinds of birth - most babies come out through the mama’s girl bits, but she got tired and needed some help so the doctor made a hole in my tummy and helped her out through there. Somehow she’s come up with the idea that he dropped a string into my tummy and she pulled herself out on the string. Telling her that’s not exactly how it worked makes no difference: she’s 100% certain.
It’s a good idea to be prepared for the following question, too: “How does food turn into poop?” My son asked me this, right before adding, “Daddy probably knows.”
Did you have to teach her about meiosis to explain the origin of eggs and sperm? 
I’m kind of curious now if there was ever a standard answer for “How do the storks get the babies?”
Thankfully no, I’d have to dredge the back of my memories to remember the mechanics of that. She has just got a science encyclopaedia that covers some rudimentary genetics so I’d better refresh my memory in readiness for that.
It does rather paint the storks in a sinister light doesn’t it.
My daughter is 4 now and we have never lied to her about reproduction. There are some things I still think she’s too young to get into details with, but we don’t make stuff up.
She’s asked where babies come from and we’ve told her all along that the parents decide to make a baby (well, we haven’t discussed accidental pregnancy yet, but that will come), and they do some things that she isn’t quite old enough to hear about yet, and then the baby grows inside the mommy until it’s ready to be born. She’s been OK when we tell her she’s not old enough to learn specifics yet. She knows that boys and girls have different genitals and such, but I’m not going to detail intercourse to my 4 year old girl unless she get’s really involved in the why. This might come up moderately soon, as my wife and I are likely to start trying for a second kid sometime soon.
Her daycare lady just had a baby, so she got to see the whole pregnancy, and knows that it takes a while, and that the baby grows in the mom’s belly and that when born comes out of the vagina. We have not gone into graphic detail or anything like that.
When she gets a little older and she asks exactly ‘how’ the man and woman make the baby, we’ll tell her, but she’s a bit young for that right now.
Oh, as an aside, we’ve had interesting conversations about all sorts of things that might disturb little kids, and she’s taken it in stride, so I’m sure she’d handle a rudimentary sex talk fine, but I’m not going to bring it up unless she presses on the issue right now.
She has been interested in where her food comes from. She was very insistent on knowing how chicken nuggets are made. I told her she didn’t want to know. When she continued on and on and on, I just laid it out: “well, they kill a chicken, pull off the feathers, remove its guts and bones, grind it all up and fry it.” She just looked at me and asked, “Is that true?” I said yes, and she thought for a second and said ‘Ok!’ and continued eating her nuggets.
I read that book, and even though I never had kids, it’s the one I would have got if I did have kids old enough to ask.
I didn’t learn about how a man impregnates a woman until I was in the seventh grade, and boy, was that a weird read in sex ed class.
I cannot re-recommend Where Do I Come From? strongly enough. It’s how mom and dad told me. My mom, who owned and operated a day care center for 15 years, kept it on a special shelf and recommended it to other parents.
I can’t remember the comedian’s name. But, his wife had recently had the talk with their young child and the kid was telling daddy about it on a phone call.
“So, daddy put the baby in mommy’s tummy.”
“That’s right, son.”
“Can I do that to mommy?”
At which point she put in
“No, dear. That’s reserved for daddy and Harrison Ford.”
Good thing I wasn’t drinking when I read that, or you’d owe me a new laptop :D.
We gave our kids the same book. Actually we heard about it years earlier, when there was a rash of friends, in the spirit of being helpful, giving copies of it as wedding gifts :).