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How do you truthfully answer questions of a 5 or 6 year old about procreation, childbirth and marriage without talking about sex, genetalia and pleasure. And is
by wanderingmind 5y ago
How do you truthfully answer questions of a 5 or 6 year old about procreation, childbirth and marriage without talking about sex, genetalia and pleasure. And is it a good idea to talk about them to a 6 year old?
- grapeskin 5y agoAny kid who grew up on a farm knew this. It’s a recent societal invention to think this is all something to be hidden until the 365th day of the 17th year of life.
- filthylurker 5y ago“I will answer that when you are older.”
- eimrine 5y agoThe worst answer possible. So not funny to reveal some unspoken secrets (or consider them unrevealable) after the parent has died.
- awb 5y agoIf they're curious, yes I've told my young kids about procreation. You don't have to be explicit, and they stopped me when they stopped being curious. I told them that sometimes a man will give a seed to the woman and that seed grows inside an egg in her body. It then grows until it's ready to come out, and that's the baby's birthday. Super simplified (and perhaps sheltered), but not lying. Marriage is even easier. Sometimes two people love each other and make a commitment to be together even when things are difficult. But sometimes they become too difficult and one or both of them decides they don't want to be married any more. But yes, I do think it's good to indulge a child's curiosity.
- germinalphrase 5y agoEveryone has to tailor to their own values, but I think these are good, clear descriptions.
- PartiallyTyped 5y ago> But yes, I do think it's good to indulge a child's curiosity. My mother indulging my curiosity is precisely why I am who I am today. She's told me that my most frequent word was why. That voracious thirst for knowledge and understanding shaped me into the scientist that I am, and we certainly need more scientists if we are to solve the pressing issues of our society.
- sumedh 5y agoHow does the man give the seed and can I see the seed?
- awb 5y agoWe used a book when the questions got more detailed: https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Funny-Word-Bodies-Feelings/dp/1609806069 https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Funny-Word-Bodies-Feelings/dp/160... Google Image search works too to show illustrations or medical drawings of sex organs.
- admiralpumpkin 5y agoWhat's your concern?
- Swizec 5y agoI was 6 years old when my mom explained where my new sister is coming from. She talked about genitalia, ovaries, sex, uteruses, fallopian tubes, menstruation, and all the rest. I remember really appreciating it and keeping track of my sister’s current size on a piece of paper from 1 cell onward.
- jjulius 5y ago>And is it a good idea to talk about them to a 6 year old? Why would it be a bad idea?
- hotpotamus 5y agoI have questions about when sex became taboo for children to learn about. Look at historical dwellings and family sizes and try to imagine how they kept kids from figuring it out from firsthand observation.
- bombcar 5y agoProbably with the advent of industrial infantilization of children. In a world where many children were married by 16 and before that lived in a farm and assisted with birth (both human and animal) it would be hard to keep it a mystery.
- irrational 5y ago16? Must be a spinster.
- mlyle 5y agoThis longstanding claim that age-of-marriage was historically that low is silly. Typical pattern in Western Europe was women married at 19-22 in the 1500s. You can find outliers like Tuscany in the 1400s where it looks like that number is 17-21. Typical ancient Roman marriage patterns were for women to wed at 20-25, it seems. There's outliers, of course. Especially with elites: where political and other concerns often created pressures for early marriage. Looking at the outliers in today's world, you can find e.g. in Sub-Saharan Africa about 35-40% of women wedding before age 18. So there's really only tiny pockets of the world in space and time where it seems that the average marriage would be under age 18.
- irrational 5y agoPerhaps this came from the age of consent rather than the age of marriage. I just did a quick search and found that for women the age of consent in the USA in the 1800s was typically down to 10 years old, except for Delaware where it was 7 (yes! 7!) years old.
- 5y ago
- bombcar 5y agoA true answer doesn’t have to be a complete answer. Even now many of the ways we teach science are not complete - they’re true but not the whole story. Is Newtonian physics untrue or incomplete?
- dexterdog 5y agoWhen you intentionally withhold the inconvenient/difficult part of it that you know to be true, it is untrue.
- Ancapistani 5y agoNot if you’re open about withholding it. That”s the approach we’ve taken.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoYou might find the below resources helpful for these conversations. Appropriate ages for each are listed mid page on each product listing. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1609804856 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1609804856 https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Funny-Word-Bodies-Feelings/dp/1609806069/ https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Funny-Word-Bodies-Feelings/dp/160... https://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-Stork-Families-Friends/dp/0763633313/ https://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-Stork-Families-Friends/dp/076...
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoI think the admonition is that you should tell the truth/be honest when you choose to speak on a subject. However your children don't have the right to demand that you speak on every possible subject at their convenience.
- Tao331 5y agoWhen our daughter was 3 or so, she would ask why she wasn't in our wedding pictures. "You weren't born yet" would trigger an incredible meltdown as she confronted the idea of having not been alive. Inconsolable. This kept happening. Eventually we just explained as much as it took to get her to settle down. She seemed content with the idea that the ovum that became her was in her mother at that time. At some point she hilariously distorted this into "I was just a head". Sometimes it's terrifying for them when they don't know the truth.
- afandian 5y agoSame with ours, at the same age. “When you were an egg” was a very satisfactory explanation, and true in most cases. And then “when mummy and daddy were eggs”, which at least lays the conceptual groundwork.
- irrational 5y agoWe have a photo book from just about every family vacation. Our youngest loves looking at them, but is incensed that we went on all these trips before she was born. “Why didn’t you wait till I was here!?” she often asks indignantly. We’ve had to redo so many older family vacations so that she can have a photo book with pictures of the family, including her, in those same places.
- jcampbell1 5y agoThis has nothing to do with sex or being born, it is the normal age where children learn they aren’t the center of the universe. That is what is stressful for them… the idea of independence is scary. There are other childhood development phases such as edge detection physics that make parents bonkers. How many times do we have to pick up spoons from the floor before they just understand that stuff always crashes to the floor when knocked off a high chair?
- dddnzzz334 5y agoYep it is better when they find themselves find out from some degenerate hardcore pornography.
- amluto 5y agoIf a 5 or 6 year old actually asks a question that needs answers about sex, then why not? But keep in mind that it’s easy for adults to project their adult experiences into children. When a kid asks how babies are made, they are very unlikely to be asking about intercourse or romance or eroticism or pleasure or any such thing, nor are they even likely to be particularly interested in those topics. They are probably asking for something about how a sperm and an egg combine to make an embryo and how that embryo grows up into a baby inside of a mommy. They might be interested in how the baby gets out. They might be interested in how the sperm and egg combine, and, depending on their age, they might be fascinated by genetics. Maybe they’re interested in how some animals fertilize eggs inside of mommies and how some other animals fertilize eggs after they’ve been laid. Some kids will be interested to learn that plants do this too. (But mosses are quite different, as are creatures like aphids and even oranges!). And yes, kids should know how sex works, how consent works, and how sex results in babies before they figure it out by accident. But that’s unlikely to be anything that a 5 or 6 year old asks. (5 year olds are very likely to need to be aware of consent in non-sexual contexts, though.)
- ummwhat 5y agoEven that assumes a fair bit of background knowledge. At that age it would be perfectly logical to suppose that "making a baby" means assembling all the parts together like Ikea furniture.
- dexterdog 5y agoHow do you tell a 5 or 6yo why mommy/daddy left? Almost anything you say there outside of death is a lie.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoMommy and daddy failed to agree on such fundamental aspects of living together that they couldn't, anymore.
- Hackbraten 5y agoIf they’re old enough to ask that question, they’re old enough to know a honest answer. “You remember how Mommy used to be in so much pain? That was her (name of sickness). It can no longer hurt her, and the pain is finally over for her. The sad part is that Mommy’s body lost the struggle with (name of sickness). That’s why she is no longer with us now.“ “So, is Mommy dead?” “Yes, my dear. The (name of sickness) was just too strong in the end. The doctors worked so hard and did everything they could. In the end, even they weren’t able to help Mommy. We’re going to be very sad for a long time and that’s going to be tough for us. But you’re not alone, we’re going to get help wherever we can, and we’ll be pulling through that sad time together.”
- Freak_NL 5y agoExperts recommend broaching such topics as young as possible. Recently such a case was discussed in a question/answer column in a Dutch national newspaper where two experts answer such dilemmas. “When do you tell a child that their father isn't their biological parent?” was that week's question, and the answer was a unanimous “As soon as possible”. Don't hide it, don't make a big deal out of it; just explain it in terms a child can understand. Keep it hidden, and the moment they learn the truth (which inevitably won't be through their parents) you will have to deal with very strong feelings of betrayal and rejection that could have been avoided. It seems that the younger children are, the more readily they can just accept such facts. Keeping secrets will inevitably backfire and cause trust issues.
- dexterdog 5y agoI wasn't talking about death as a reason for leaving. I was talking about all other reasons.
- School-Cotton 5y agoMy mom told me what sex was and answered whatever I asked completely frankly since as early as I can remember. I turned out fine.
- omnicognate 5y agoThere isn't a recipe for this. Use common sense and empathy. When a 6 year old asks you about sex there are limits and a context to their curiosity. Usually there's some particular unresolved question in their mind that can be answered truthfully without going into things they're not ready for. You need to understand their mental state. You don't need to pull down an anatomical chart and start talking about sperm. You don't need to clam up and lie or give them the impression the whole thing is an inimaginable eldritch nightmare. You just need to answer the question. (Source: Bringing up kids, since these are the only sorts of questions parents have some special insight into.)
- giorgioz 5y agoMy parents are both doctors. When I was a child they bought some VHS tapes (that was the 90s) cartoons documentaries for children about the human body covering also the reproductive system. When my partner was pregnant we told explicitly to our 2yo daughter that there was a baby in mom's belly. When the baby was born we told her we went to the hospital and the baby came out of mom's zezette/vagina (zezette is the french word for kids to call vaginas). I understand that the sex part and human psychology might be harder to explain but you can definitely explain the mechanical part. Sex have a lot of taboos and emotions attached to it but you can describe it to a child without those parts taking a medical/anatomic perspective. As they say in the Scrubs tv show: "Maybe the dirty little secret about sex is that it isn't so dirty after all"
- Aeolun 5y agoI don’t see the issue with this? Why would you not want to talk about sex, genitalia or pleasure? I mean, I’d keep it circumspect, wouldn’t want him trying it at school, but the basic concepts are fine I think. He’s now 3 and he’s definitely discovered playing with his peepee is fun.
- Markoff 5y agowe were listening to radio (with 4 and 6yo) and host mentioned something about prostitutes (regarding TV show) so my kid ask me what is prostitute? someone who does sex for money obvious question followed, what is the sex? it's exercise done by adults in bed when they wanna have baby or sometimes even when they don't want because they just like the exercise kids lost interest after that, now tell me, did I lie? by all accounts sex is pretty good calorie burning exercise btw. I told them already like year before that how is baby done, that penis goes inside vagina, then sperms go from penis to egg inside and there will grow baby, didn't even bother with some bees and other crap, but dunno how much kids remembered because they were not interested about it. we also watched already around that time amazing (dubbed) TV show Il était une fois... la vie (Once Upon a Time... Life) though I think it's more suitable for old children, I liked it when I was in primary school we still though tell christmas gifts are brought by santa claus/baby jesus
- Hackbraten 5y agoI feel that was a very good answer.