Q: I am a mother to two sons, 9 & 11. We have a lot of open science conversations and where babies come from has been well covered for a few years, including menstruation and physiology. A friend has got pregnant via IVF so we have covered frozen sperm this week too! We are now dipping toes into the realm of pleasure conversations, not pure functionality. They’ve joined the dots that not every act of sex makes a baby! How would you strike the balance of talking about sex with kids this age?
A:
It’s wonderful to hear that you’ve been educating your sons for years. I want to just say for the benefit of parents reading this who may not have been doing the same, you cannot begin having this conversation too early. By which I don’t necessarily mean, ‘Talk about sex’, but more what you do the very first time your child asks where babies come from, touches themselves or does something else sex-related.