When did you talk to your child about sex? Was it thoroughly planned and mapped out? Or did they walk in on you and your husband in the heat of the moment and you had to give an explanation? Or did you wait until it came up organically? Or did you wait until they came to you?I’m on what I’d like to think of as the 10-year plan. The Big Guy and I have never given the girls made up explanations for procreation, where babies come from and how they get here. There’s never been hoohas and hoohoos or peepees or whatever? No innies or outies. It’s always been girls have vaginas and boys have penises (or as my youngest has always mispronounced the word “Peanuts” but that’s okay because she also calls wiener dogs corn dogs so it all works itself out).

They both know that mommies and daddies have babies, storks don’t bring them, nor do they come from space. They know that babies grow and live in mommy’s belly (uterus) and when the time comes, the baby is born. We’ve not gone into great detail about how they get out. I told the girls once that the baby comes out of the mommy’s vagina but it somehow got Chinese telephone twisted into going to the hospital and having the baby removed via surgery which may have something to do with them knowing that my sister had a c-section. She is very traumatized about the possibility of having to have “Surgery” so I’ve told her that she probably won’t need surgery to have a baby. I’ve not, however, explained the excruciatingly painful transatlantic journey through the birth canal and out of the vagina. I think that could seriously scare her off the whole thing, indefinitely. That’s a conversation for a later date.

Anyways, my oldest is only 7 and in my opinion she knows enough. This is where my 10-year program comes in, all will be revealed by the time she is ten. I’ve not explained the whole insert penis into the vagina aspect or how babies get into mommy’s belly because I think they are too young to have that conversation.If it came up organically, that’s one thing but to just sit them down and start explaining the act of sex seems awkward for all of us at this age.

I live in a middle class neighborhood in the suburbs in the Midwest. My girls go to a private parochial school. At this point, I supervise everything they do. This is no accident. I do these things so that I don’t have to worry about unexpectedly finding out that my kid is being peer pressured into involving themselves in some scandalous prepubescent blowjob ring like I’ve read on the news.

The other day, I wrote a post on another site about a child who had a baby the backlash I received in the comments floored me. Readers suggested that I’m a bad mother because I’ve not explained sex to my girls yet. According to these women, I should have already shown my daughters diagrams of the act of sex and explained that this is what you do to show someone you love them because that is the world we live in. But the point is that I don’t I need to jump on the bandwagon just because they’ve accepted that kids are going to have sex by the time they’re 12. What happened to teaching our kids morals and self-respect?

Excuse me but isn’t telling them that you have sex to show someone that you love them sending them the exact wrong message. Isn’t that the exact message teenage boys everywhere hive used for centuries?

No, I will instead teach my girls to respect themselves and their bodies and that sex is something that two consenting, responsible adults do to evolve their relationship to a deeper level. They will also know that if you are dating someone, there should already be a mutual respect and love for one another in place. Sex consummates love. It doesn’t constitute it. I don’t want to raise girls who confuse the two.

Sex with love is wonderful, sex without love is just sex and that is fine but we need to teach our girls to know the difference or we are setting them up for disappointment. I have a plan to teach my girls about sex when I feel they are ready to know. I don’t need strangers who know nothing about me or my girls telling me that I am a bad parent because I didn’t give them the birds and bees talk the moment they realized they had a vagina.

What do you think? When did you talk to your child about sex, puberty and where babies come from?

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