Or if you have kids have you given them it? My parents never actually gave me any kind of sex or puberty talk. As far as I can remember I’ve always know that the difference between boys and girls is that “boys have a penis, girls don’t”, but until about 5th grade I thought girls were just blank down there (the Voyager space probe didn’t help). In 5th grade we had a health unit. One day all the girls had to east first lunch (with kindergarden and 1st grade), skip recess, and spend the rest of the day watching videos and getting presentations. Us boys ate last lunch, had recess, watched a short video on the changes we could expect in the next few years, and learned how to use deoderant (we got free samples). Then they had us watch sports videos for the rest of the day because the girls were still in class 
. I was curious about why the girls’s program took so much longer so the next time I went to the library (went every week as a kid) so I checked out book called It’s Perfectly Normal. Lots of cartoon drawing of naked boys, girls, men and women of all ages. So that’s how I learned the “facts of life” (well at least the straight version ;)) .
I never had, “The Talk” with my parents when I was growing up either (Although you ask them, they will claim that they did explain all that to me, but they never EVER did.). I learned about the differences between men and women and what is involved in sex from…
(Wait for it)
An Encyclopedia at the public library.
At least I got the facts.
When I was in third grade, I came home from school and said to my Mom, “I want to know what a word means but I think it might be a swear. Will you promise not to get mad at me if I say it this time?”
The word was “uterus” and I’d overheard one boy at school threaten to kick another boy in his uterus, so I was pretty sure it was a bad word. Mom took this pretty calmly, I think. First she told me that boys don’t have uteruses (uteri?) so of course I immediately assumed that a uterus was the girl-equivalent to a penis, and said so. I distinctly remember Mom sighing. But then she sat me down to tell me the basic biology involved. I told her I didn’t need to know all THAT stuff, but I guess she figured she was only going to deal with this once.
When my daughter was about 6, she was watching the Nickelodeon show Rugrats, an episode where Tommy was convinced that babies hatch from eggs. Hijinx ensued (like they do) and the episode ended with one little girl whispering to another “I know where babies come from.” I noticed my kid giving me the hairy eyeball, so I sighed, and then sat her down to tell her the basic biology. She was completely grossed out. When she was a teeny bit older, I bought her a book called “Where Did I Come From” and left it on her dresser, and told her too that there were a lot of books out there with incorrect info (Everything You’ve Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask, for example) and just told her if she ever had any questions or confusion, I promised I would give her the CORRECT answers. She’s 17 now, and while she’s still (officially, anyway) grossed out, she HAS asked me to clarify or confirm a couple questions over the years.
I have both had the talk and (as a result perhaps? 
) have had to give the talk to my 11 year old boy.
But its not just one big “talk” really, I’ve just been answering age appropriate questions and bringing up things in context.
When he was little (and at that age he where he was fascinated with his own junk) it was, “Yes, that’s your penis. Play with it all you like, but do it in your private places, like your room or in the bathroom with the door closed.”
Later, having seen me naked once or twice, we had the “Boys have a penis, girls have a vagina” talk.
We’ve gone from “Babies come from a special place inside mommy” to a more frank talk about how they get there as the subject has arisen.
He’s got a book in his room, too, but I take the opportunity to bring things up. He’s starting to get pimples a little, so I mentioned that was one of the changes you get at puberty, which (as I’d hoped it would) caused him to ask what the other changes were (and of course, I grossed him out. As you do. 
)
We’ve talked about our friends, who are gay, and about how mostly boys like girls but sometimes they like boys and that’s ok and nobody should make fun of them and you shouldn’t put up with people who make fun of them, because its mean, etc. (And vice versa with girls, thanks to our lesbian friends - who were actually part of the discussion because my son had an ephiphany that they weren’t just friends because I used the word partner and, tactful as he is, his eyes about bugged out of his head. That was actually amusing for everybody - they are fortunately good friends!)
I’m not convinced of the value of a “sit down and have a big talk all at once” scenario. I’d rather frankly answer the questions that he has, and give him the nudge to ask the right questions - its less embarrassing for both of us. Though thanks to my mom’s good handling of the situation, I’m not…I dunno, hung up, I guess about talking about sex.
Haven’t covered too much on birth control yet, though - he’s mostly just gotten his head around the concept that you don’t have a baby every time, and that you can stop that from happening. He’s 11, we’ll get there shortly. He’s just gotten over thinking girls have cooties!
Cheers,
G
We were the kind of kids who asked lots of awkward questions. We were given this book when I was maybe 4. It’s still on the parents’ shelves. When we were maybe about 9, another book filled us in on puberty and so on. Enough so that nothing in sex education came as a surprise. We never got a ‘talk’.
I remember asking my mom what “masterbation” meant, at the age of 12. She asked me where I’d heard of that word. I’d actually picked it up from some random book lying around the house, but I lied and said I’d seen it in a book that some kid had at school. She told me sternly never to hang out with said kid again and declined to explain what it meant. I had to ask a friend (the only dictionary I had at the time was a children’s one).
Yeah, my family was a typical conservative Korean family. Needless to say, I never got any sort of “talk” - I picked up knowledge from books and movies and later the Internet. I’ve vowed that my children, should I have any in the future, will not grow up as ignorant as I did on the subject.
But girls do have cooties.
Myself, I had two sisters very close in age (in the 60’s) and Mom bought a book and insisted that we all read it. One of the most powerful things I remember her telling us was that it was “our bodies” and we should choose what to do and not to do; and also that if we thought we were ready to become sexually active then she would go with us to the Ob-Gyn for birth control. Fairly forward-thinking, for a Mom of that day and time.
With my kids, they are only 3 years apart and many years I bathed them together. I explained to them that ‘girls parts are made mostly on the inside but some boy parts are made on the outside’. Since I shrugged it off to Nature they both did too. Since I taught them not to pick their noses in public I also taught them not to play with their privates in public. What you do in your bathroom or bedroom is nobody else’s business.
I think that the key is in giving enough information to the child considering his/her age; and letting them know that you are available for further discussion as questions come up down the road.
Sex ed in school was wide enough that the closest I got to needing any kind of “talk” from my parents was Mom teaching me how to use a tampon.
Wikipedia is your friend.
Other than that, deduction based on scattered info picked up is how I learned everything. I changed areas between 8th grade and high school, so I missed out on any sort of sex-ed classes.
I got damn all from either of my parents, unless you count any of the following from Malacandra mater:
Dating advice: “Don’t go mad”, and “Don’t bring disgrace on the family”. (It’s funny. She was wont to complain how unhelpful her own mother had been in warning her not to drink because “that sort of thing leads to other things”, but she couldn’t manage to be any more helpful herself.)
And warning me before I went to university that homosexuals could be very persuasive. Yup, mum, I just bet you’re the fount of all knowledge on queerness. :dubious:
Otherwise, it was odds and ends of whatever I could pick up out of encyclopædias and Woman magazine. It was a Ladybird book, of all things, that first told me exactly what male and female genitals had to do with each other.
I want my kids to learn the facts of life the way I did…
“Zookeeper…those monkeys are killing each other…!”
My mother insisted that my father sit me down and explain the facts of life.
No sooner had he started, when my mother (who was listening in from around a corner) came in and told him that he had it all wrong.
I slipped out during the ensuing squabble.
Did I mention that it took my parents several years of courting, and then six years of marriage, before I, their first child, came along?
No Talk. Just picked it up as I went along. From my step father’s Playboys (where I learned among other things that women are very much akin to stereo equitment :dubious: ) to hearing them have sex ( :eek: ), to seeing said stepfather naked (it was an accident, he wasn’t a creep or anything.) And then later, from my mother’s college text books on human sexuality. Probably the best source. Then of course we had The Class as has been mentioned, where they divide the sheep from the goats…I mean the girls from the boys…because it would be terrible if boys knew about periods and girls knew about wet dreams. Do they still do that?
I don’t know when I knew what (and I recall some major misconceptions) but I knew enough to ask if my aunt was gay when I was in 3rd grade.
My folks never gave me the talk. I had to learn about sex at school, in sex ed. I’m h hoping to one day get a chance to (again) practice it.
My parents’ insensitivety and lack of concern for for my wordly knowledge irritates me to this day. Now, they divorced when I was eight, just so you know I had no consistant exposure to either of them.
Sometime around the age of 12-14 I started growing up. I didn’t understand what was going on and had no male figure around I could trust (I did not get along with my stepfather) so I waited as long as I could bear it. Finally one day I went to Mom and told her that from time to time my penis was inexplicable “getting big.” I was worried something was wrong with me.
She burst out laughing and just couldn’t seem to rein it in.
I fled to my room and probably cried. I never spoke of it again. To anyone.
A couple years later, while driving somewhere or other, my Dad suddenly asked me why I didn’t have a girlfriend yet. Being a 15-16 year old whose only knowledge of sex and personal growth was from friends’ gutter talk or what the school had embarrassingly tried to push on us, I shrugged.
He then gave me his version of The Talk. “Well, remember to always wear a rubber, because if you make me a grandfather before I’m 40, I’ll kill you.”
I fully intend to be more attentive and forthcoming when my kids start asking questions.
I got all my info about the inner workings of men and women from our set of World Book Encyclopedias. (In fact, I was such a nerd that I used to just pick a volume to read whenever I was out of fresh library books.) So by the time I was 7 or so, I had a pretty good idea about the various bits, but had no idea about how any of it related to sex until a school friend loaned me a Harold Robbins book, when I was 12.
My mom had a conversation with me about how to manage my period when that first started, but apart from that neither of my parents ever said a word about birds, bees, etc. After all, there really wasn’t any need for me to know until I was about to get married, right? :rolleyes:
I never got the talk. I had to learn by reading about it in various places. There was no such thing as sex education when I went to school.
No, girls have cookies. Some have delicious thin mints that you have to be very gentle with. Some have short-breads, which start out a little dry but with a little patience and coaxing, will melt in your mouth. Some have chewy Tagalongs that can last for hours and hours. Some have Do-si-do cookies that are so delicious, you can eat them all day…
*writes on blackboard: I must not post before breakfast. I must not post before breakfast. *
Age 9- I think it was because I was picking up sex-related dirty words from friends at school that my parents decided to talk with me about sex as well as proper language, so they got a 4-book set, The Life Cycle Library, for me to read & discuss with them.
School sex ed came in 7th grade, basically solid info but with one day of pictures of VD sores :eek: