In my ideal world, I have always harboured the intention of initiating sex education with my kids. I also imagined that I’d start young with them, introducing them to the right words instead of using the “birds and bees” language when talking about sex with them.
In my real world though, I now have a pre-teen and a teenager (according to this age guideline as to what they should learn and when). And no, I have not done any sex education with them! Reason being — I am utterly uncomfortable with it.
That’s not a good reason to skip it altogether. In this day and age, our children are highly engaged and exposed to the real world. They are constantly fed with sexual innuendos even from a young age from just about any screen time. Many games, advertisements, characters of shows, etc, are laced with sexual language, behaviour, and images.
So much so that young children may end up asking parents about what they have seen or heard. This has happened to us before, and we tried as best we can to answer the kids straight up. This, I can do pretty well. But not when I have to talk about body parts, how babies come about, and the boy-girl attraction kind of topics.
So I did some searching around for some guidance to help me overcome this uneasiness to talk about sexuality with my kids. I’m sharing what I’ve gathered. If there are other mummies like me out there, maybe this is for you too.
I Learned to Start With Micro Talks
Micro talk is essentially about having a little chat in a casual sort of way during the course of conversation. Instead of having a serious sit-down session to talk, this is an informal and short chat.
We can even slip this into an on-going conversation, relating what we are talking about to a certain aspect of sex education that we can impart in that given moment. This will seem like a more natural and less awkward kind of conversation.
Spontaneous Question And Answer
Recently I heard my nine year old learning a new song by Justin Bieber. I couldn’t really catch the words he was singing, but it sounded like a song about how much boy likes girl kind of situation.
In this instance, it would be more natural to pick up a conversation by asking my son whether he understands what the singer is expressing. Many songs talk about lovers embracing and kissing, so it’s also a good way to start a micro talk about the what’s appropriate and not when it comes to physical touching of body parts.
My elder child, a teenager, enjoys watching some popular Singaporean Youtubers’ videos. They contain many couple-hood scenes in which the characters are high students, like himself. I find it easier to broach the subject with him by picking up scenes from what he’s watching and casually talking about it.
When approaching these topics of sexuality from these angles, I feel more at ease to talk openly with my boys. It makes it easier to slip in teachings about values and morality issues by using third party references like the singer’s song innuendoes or a show’s storyline that they can relate to.
The tone of the talks also sound more friendly and at the same time it can easily be turned into a discussion or debate by talking about different points of views. It also gives me a glimpse into what they already know without having to ask directly, and their thoughts about it.
Interestingly, they may also reveal what their peers say and think about it. This helps me understand where they have learned much more than we ever taught them at home on this topic!
Borrowing From Nature Science Talk
One other way that helped to ease me into sex education is by talking about animal breeding. We have various pets at home. Some of them mate at times. When this happens, it presents a very good opportunity to talk about the process of reproduction that extends to human beings.
Again, this seems like a natural progression when we talk about how dogs mate and how that also works in us, humans. And somehow, for me at least, it seems easier to say the correct anatomy names and it passes as just another normal word when it would have been dead awkward when referring to a human.
Better To Face The Soft Music Now Than a Hard Place Later On
Even if we don’t talk about it at home, children these days will still learn about it from everywhere else that they have interaction with. Friends, YouTubers, games, movies, etc. So no matter how uncomfortable it was for me, I decided to just do it by finding easier ways to do so for me.
The discomfort lies in me, not my children. Perhaps they are more exposed than I thought and they have not formed a kind of taboo around the topic. I see this as a positive thing. We just need to be able to guide them properly so that they understand what’s right and wrong, good and bad.
If you’re unlike me and have no qualms diving straight into the topic with your child, that’s absolutely fantastic. There are many good pointers on how to talk about sex with children that you can tailor to your own talks with them.