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The OP acted like anyone who had talked to their children earlier were nuts. "NO one talks to pre-schoolers about this!". Well, yeah, people do. I did.
In fairness, I think that was another poster, not the OP.
My daughter kept asking me to tell her how babies come to be. I stalled for a bit, telling her I was going to get a book that would help me explain it better.
Then one day when she was nine, she came into my bedroom and said, "I want you to explain to me right now where babies come from." Desperate, I searched with my eyes around the room until they landed on the doorknob. I said, "See the keyhole in the door? And a key goes into it?"
She said, "So the key is like the penis, Mom?"
I said, "OK, what do you know already?" Turned out her friend had told her about intercourse and she wanted confirmation that it was true.
Then she trotted down the hall to our old set of World Book Encyclopedias, came back with "S", opened it to "Sex", and said, "Here's your book, Mom." She proceeded to read from it, and when she came to the part where it said, "A man places his penis inside the woman's vagina..." she started laughing and said, "They make it sound as if you are putting something on a shelf."
This is funny. When I was pregnant with my second child, my older son was almost six. He wanted to know where the baby came from,etc., so we watched the NOVA film, “The Miracle of Life,” and he said he understood most of it but still didn’t understand how the sperm got from the man to the woman. I gave the same explanation about the man putting his penis inside the woman’s vagina. His eyes got very big and he said in a horror-filled tone, “ they don’t REALLY!”
This is funny. When I was pregnant with my second child, my older son was almost six. He wanted to know where the baby came from,etc., so we watched the NOVA film, “The Miracle of Life,†and he said he understood most of it but still didn’t understand how the sperm got from the man to the woman. I gave the same explanation about the man putting his penis inside the woman’s vagina. His eyes got very big and he said in a horror-filled tone, “ they don’t REALLY!â€
I saw a pregnancy book in a library when I was 10 and just wanted to check it out because I thought the cover photo looked cool and my parents told me I was too young to learn about things like that.
The book was in the young adult section, which is usually reserved for 13+.
I can understand 11-12 or even 10, but 4-8 is literally insane.
Aside with agreeing with everything in this post, I want to expand on this. Knowledge and understanding are not given at a point in time like a candy bar. Knowledge, and more importantly wisdom and understanding, are a process of development. You can't say, this is driving, here, you are done. This is a debit card, here, you are done. This is sex, here, you are done. That is why I use the term scaffolding as a parental tool for knowledge and understanding development. With honesty, a parent develops trust. With trust a parent has access to the child to hold up their understanding with bits of information over time until the poles of the scaffold can be removed slowly and they can stand on their own with their understanding.
This learning is full of waste though.
There is a ton of redundancy there and the kid always wonders if he is actually being told the truth because the story changes every 2 years.
Its probably why kids are so distrustful of their parents as they get older and why the distrust does not stop until the kids learn the whole story.
We teach young, for preparation for the future. We do that with our children on all kinds of topics. Most toys are teaching children adult skills that will come in handy DOWN THE ROAD. Just because you give a kid a push car doesn't mean they're ready to go out and get their drivers license. But you will plant the expectation that SOME DAY driving a car will be in their future.
Giving a kid a doll doesn't mean she/he is ready to go out and get pregnant and parent a baby. But it's something to look forward to if that's what they desire.
Personally, I think teaching a 5 yr. old the basics is a good place to start. Mine were a little older, but a 5 yr. old can BEGIN to understand human reproduction.
Kids play with push cars and dolls because they are fun to play with, not because they hope to do the same when they are older.
A 5-year old cannot understand beyond what might happen on a cartoon.
Cartoons are not reality, so teaching them at that age is pointless.
I never thought that was the purpose of either one of those toys.
I've been following this thread, and I think a lot of people are being incredibly rude and somewhat nasty to the OP. While I agree there is no "The Talk", I think having A talk is a good idea. The OP came here in good faith. Her daughter is almost 12. OP has already talked to her about periods. If she hasn't talked about sex yet, there is no way to go back in time and do it at a younger age. It's quite possible, even probable, that the DD already has heard some "playground talk" on the subject. It would be a good idea for the mom to correct any misinformation she may have picked up, and to expand on her knowledge.
12 is a fine time to talk, but girls really don't talk about this much before 12.
The playground talk is that 1 kid that comes from parents who don't pay attention to her that is a couple years ahead. Even so, no girl 9 or under talks about anything sexual, unless it's something she overheard her sister talking about and, even then, it is talked about for part of a day and forgotten.
Has she asked you any questions? Your daughter probably already knows some stuff. My daughter acts like she has no clue but she has said things that confirm to me she knows.
There are so many good books on the market now for kids that cover everything. Maybe buy one or two on different topics and leave them in her room. Tell her if she has questions she can ask. Every kid is different though some may just want to read and be left alone until/unless they have questions others will have no problem asking.
A lot of the books have age recommendations starting at 4+.
The idea that a 4 year old needs to know about anything sexual is literally insane.
I know authors write them for 4+ because if this topic is any indication, there are plenty of misguided parents out there who will pay for it, but that does not mean it is right.
Why not start having pregnancy clinics at your pre school?
At 3 years old, I started asking a lot of questions about where babies come from. Why? Our cat had delivered her kittens in my bed! My mom didn't go into great detail, but started telling me the bits and pieces...enough to make me happy and go away. I would go around telling people how the kittens were born in my bed and that they had a mommy and daddy. I can just imagine people like zesty thinking I was insane at 3 years old for talking about where babies came from! By 5, I had more knowledge than zesty! LOL When one grows up with a variety animals and babies come into the picture, kids learn these things without the help of parents. Like you growing up on a farm. You knew all about babies at an early age. Magically, you made it to adulthood!
That isn't knowing anything sexual.
That's like in the old days when people thought mold were living beings because they left a piece of bread out for a week and mold formed.
They had no idea what causes the mold to form. They just left something there and something else grew.
That was the extent of your knowledge about how babies were born.
That is not insane. That is an observation.
What is insane is talking about sexual specifics to a 4-year old.
Is insane your go to word. Why shouldn't 5 year olds know about sex? 5 year olds ask about where babies come from. 5 year olds walk in on their parents having sex. Why lie? You're not building an honest relationship with your children by lying.
At 5 years old, I totally understood the biology. My mother had a medical book and showed me the photos. I had siblings I saw naked and wondered why we were different and why she got a giant belly all of a sudden. What was she supposed to say? Oh the stork made me fat?
So no one should ever have sex unless they want a baby? So the 20+ years I've been married we should never have had sex because we didn't want children? That's insane! Not to mention just stupid. People have sex! People of all ages have sex! Get over it. You telling someone not to have sex because they don't want a baby isn't going to stop them from having sex.
Don't worry about what I buy. My bills are paid. If I wanted a mansion on the sea and can make the payments, what do you care?
You can not control who someone dates. My goodness teens see each other in school all day long! You're living in a dream world where you think you can control everything teens or anyone does.
Yes, there is scientific proof about the crazy brain chemistry going on in teens. Their hormones are completely out of whack. Take a biology course!
If you saw your teen girl sibling naked on a regular basis, that might explain why we view the world so differently.
I cannot imagine that being normal anywhere.
And yes, no one should ever have sex unless they want a baby.
And yes, if you do not want a child, you should never have sex.
Just because people do something does not make it right.
Me telling them not to do it might not stop it the first time, but it will stop it every other time when their whole life is gone, they never see their friends, they spend 18 hours a day caring for their baby, and have their parent control how the baby is raised because they have no money to pay for the baby's expenses because they are a teenager.
I never said you could control who they date, but you can stop them from having sex.
There are tons of scientific "proofs" that never verify and are retracted 10 years later. Scientists really do not know much. I would not take anything they say seriously if it does not make sense.
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