Having I fucked up the sex talk?

The quote went funny then… being scientific and factual is what I did and I think is definitely the right way. Don’t be euphemistic, it’s a recipe for misunderstandings.

I think they're a bit too young for the gory details. Whatever happened to the stork that carries baby from the sky?

The same happened in our family OP.

DH said “You can’t tell them that!” He admitted he’d have told DC the stork brought them! Eh?

In didnt want my kids to learn making babies from school. My mum told me honestly so I did the same. Kids aren’t bothered. They aren’t traumatised. They are 17 & 18 now and they aren’t embarrassed to ask me or their dad anything.

I don't understand

🙌

You’ve said basically what I did. My children are totally normal, innocent kids. Telling them it’s a special cuddle is actually quite disturbing. They’ll worry cuddles could cause someone to have a baby. What a plonker.

Exactly what I said.

What do you mean

Mine are young adults now but I think there WAS some advice when they were young that if they asked about it (as in specifically the HOW) when they were KS1 age to simply say something along the lines of "when a mummy and daddy love each other very much they sometimes have a special grown up cuddle that only mummies and daddies have. Children don't have that type of cuddle together or with a grownup, and neither do friends - only grown-up mummies and daddies do. The teeny tiny seed from the mummy and a teeny tiny thing called an egg from the mummy join together and start to grow to make a tiny baby which slowly gets bigger and bigger and stays nice and comfy inside the mummy's belly until it's big enough to come out." So that's how I described it if they asked when they were around 4 or 5. It was enough to satisfy their curiosity anyway and on they went playing having forgotten about it.

I can't recall them asking again for another couple of years till they were going into Juniors, so around age 6 or 7.. I think I probably expanded on that when they started asking about what the special cuddle involved, or talking together about it and getting it all wrong, so I told them then using the right words eg "it is called sex where the man's willy (rthe proper word is penis, as I think you know) goes into the woman's hole in her front bottom which is called a vagina." etc etc I did remember the youngest being totally disgusted by that idea. 😂I only told them because they asked me. I wouldn't have sat them down for "the talk" or anything at that age. There's no need.

They don't actually teach them that in school till Year 5 I think. Year 4 is all about puberty and knowing the proper names of the body parts but I'm pretty sure they don't actually talk about the sex part until Year 5 or 6. So I really don't think there's much need for parents to go into too much depth about the act of sex itself to someone who is only 4 simply because they just won't understand it.

I think your DH is a bit silly for saying you've taken your kids' innocence away. Half of it's probably gone over their heads! I remember my eldest when he was in Year 4 I think telling me he knew the name of the female part cos they'd done it in school: "It's called Chinese window or something". I never knew what he meant and it totally confused me. Then it struck me a couple of years later that he probably just remembered "hole" as the description and thought it was called a "va-China". So hole became window and the "-gina" bit became "Chinese". 😂

Subtle makes it sound so sleazy.

Factual, biological and scientific is always the best approach.

@AndItBegins yes my children believe in Father Christmas! But so do all the other 5 & 7 year olds I know (& some even older too actually.) More lies to fuck them up?

Coincidently although I haven’t asked, I’m fairly certain a good chunk of the children (age 6) I know don’t know a man’s penis goes into a woman’s vagina to make a baby either. But this is mumsnet, I think the stats are always a bit off.

Every time I read the phrase 'special cuddle' my innards sort of shrink and contort with disgust! 😱

You did the right thing OP!

Always makes me laugh when people think telling kids babies come out of vaginas is horrifying, but making up stuff such as they “pop out of your belly button” is somehow much less weird
For the longest time I though babies somehow were cut out of a womans thigh. Like it was a picture in my head. My mum who told me NOTHING she wasn't forced to and never accurate (see above.lol) told me the baby comes out of a womans legs.

Your DH is being unreasonable. It’s biology, pure and simple. It’s neither innocent nor corrupt. My mum described it this way to me at the same age – I gave a specific memory of it. I grew up perfectly well thanks!

I don't think young kids need to know about sex. It isn't relevant to them. They just do learn in a subtle way from the world around them as they get older

I don't think 6 is very young at all. Probably because dc1 began to ask some questions at 3 and knew it all at 4. If a child is old enough to be considering it, they are old enough to heae the truth.

It is because your parents took you out, they taught you it is not appropriate to talk about, when it really is not a big deal.

You have just contradicted yourself!

I am a midwife and my boys have known about sex/periods/birth/puberty/consent ect in as age appropriate way as I can manage but factual since they were little. I never started the conversations but they would ask questions. Now 13 and 10 and very open and ask what they want with no embarrassment which is how it should be.

Absolutely not fucking them up.

If it helps I had a very pleased teacher literally thank me for keeping it frank and no-nonsense with my then six year old. They'd had a very basic level sex Ed lesson (essentially body parts but proper names and the notion of privacy, safety). Apparently very few 6 year olds had a single clue that penis, vagina, breasts were either words or anything other than stupidly rude . Most of them had an impressive range of nonsense words (dilly and sparkle were mentioned) which, let's face it, are one of the many ways children can be subject to abuse through ignorance.

There's no point in teaching something (special cuddle) that then has to be unlearned later.

I’m the same as you, I try to answer these sort of questions truthfully. Although I’ll never forget when I told my daughter her response was ‘I can’t believe you and Daddy did that!’

You did a great job. It's your husband who needs rethink his approach.

When my daughter was about 6 an older boy in the playground said to her ‘you wouldn’t even know what a penis was, do you want to see my penis, you’d like it’ thinking he was all hilarious and she’d be confused/ scared. She told me she scoffed at him and said ‘of course I know what a penis is, you’re pathetic’ and just like that the wind was taken out of his proverbial sexual bullying sails. Information is protection.

I knew what a period was, but the blood was weird the first time, and I thought I had worms inside me. I couldn't talk to anyone and I was terrified

It was usbourne facts of life I think?

Anyway it really messed things up for me with the strange illustrations I think they were box like male and female robots? I was scared ! I wondered how long you had to stay still and if it took a long time 😂😂

Upset them more than weird lies? Than learning they can't trust you to give them sexual information?