How old to have the "how babies are made" chat?!

[GallopingGreen]

My son is 8 and has no interest and quite happily thinks babies come when a mum and dad love each other... but not all are lucky and so not all have babies. I think I must have told him this at 4 and he has never questioned it since.

However at what age did you have the talk about how babies are made with your child? And what level of detail? It's only come up for me as a friend told me her son (also 8) had asked and so she was straight up with him. Fair enough, but now I know it will be discussed in the school yard I want to prepare my ds!

To be honest I'm a bit sad. Seems like a loss of innocence to tell him :(

When they ask, just adjust the level of detail as they get older.

@laserbird16 thanks! Just ordered that book.

My 7.5 year old has literally never asked this, and I’m not really sure that any of her peers have either. I personally think my DD is too young to have sex explained to her, but if she happened to ask the question then I would probably just say seed and egg meet in the mums tummy like other posters have mentioned.

I think most kids find out through friends / school anyway, I don’t recall ever having a “bird and bees” sit down talk with my mum.

I think most kids find out through friends / school anyway, I don’t recall ever having a “bird and bees” sit down talk with my mum.

This is precisely the problem and what should be prevented. Chances are high that most of the information they get from their peers is not accurate.

From about 3 in an age appropriate way

I go with the 'if they are old enough to ask, they're old enough to hear the answer' approach. At the last chat we moved on from the sperm and the egg to how the sperm actually gets in there. He stopped me half way through and said he didn't want to know any more because it was gross 😂

When my ds was 6 he asked so I told him. I must have done a rubbish job because his reply was "Oh mummy, how embarrassing. And you had to do it twice" 😂

I think mine first started to ask around 4. We gave the scientific ‘bit of DNA from daddy, but from mummy’ explanation, without actually describing ‘how’ that happened. She came across an exhibit in a museum at 6 that led to move questions about the mechanics of it all around 6. So I explained more. Not phased by that (though found it a bit funny and gross) and hasn’t asked more about it since.

Not all children are particularly curious, but all children need to know.
We like this book and there's one for older children too. It's fairly anti sexist too.

www.amazon.co.uk/About-Babies-Bodies-Families-Friends/dp/1406306061?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

My son was 8 when we told him. It seems that most of my friends with similar aged children haven't told theirs yet though.
He'd started asking what sex is and I bought a few books but they were far too detailed, some with pages about STIs etc. Eventually I just told him that sex is making babies, the dad puts his willy in the mum's vagina and the sperm comes out and fertilises her egg. I likened it to the animals we see on nature programmes. He found it hilarious and chuckled about it for days.
He has since heard sex mentioned on TV programmes and realised it isn't always about making babies so I've said that sometimes people do it just because it feels nice.
He has also asked what rape is after hearing it on the news and I've said it's when someone forces someone to have sex when they don't want to, just to be horrible to them. He seems quite happy with the simple explanations which I will obviously add to as more questions come up.

Actually, DS did ask what Sex was... it was askwardly timed in a busy place.

I breathed, asked him where he'd heard the word and it turned out he was talking about the second hand games shop

Good job I didn't plough into the answer from a biological perspective, although it could have lead to floppy disks and hard drives

My sons 4.5 and knows what sex between men and women is and how it can make babies, he also knows that grown up couples sometimes do it because they like the feel and not just to have a baby. He’s adopted so it’s an important tool in helping him understand that he has a birth father as well as a birth mother.

Please don't use the term "special cuddle". It's open to misinterpretation and is something that could be used to go from inappropriate contact/ touching to child abuse.

As for the original question, we answer questions honestly, in age appropriate terminology. I was pregnant with ds when dd was 4 so we started then as that was when she started asking questions. We used the Usborne flip flaps book How are babies made? and like many of the above parents discussed the idea of a seed and an egg.

Since then we added that the penis goes into vagina and anything else she's asked about.

Adults after generally more embarrassed by this topic than kids. If they ask they ready to know

* sorry, just reread my first post. Obviously inappropriate touching is chid abuse and I've worded that very badly*

Thanks for all the replies - good to get perspective on this. Definitely buying the book and getting more factual. Don't want him getting misinformation in the playground

Don't worry Sweetiepie - I knew what you meant!