To ask if your 12yo knows/ talks too much about sex?

[Whatafustercluck]

I don't mean the basics - the body, how to prevent pregnancy/ STDs etc. I mean sexual positions, innuendos, the things people enjoy doing together, slightly smutty observations etc.

Reason I ask is because we've had to speak to my niece recently about sharing too much sexual knowledge with our 10yo ds who keeps asking us what things mean and why she said it. Things like funny little smirks when the number 69 is mentioned and saying to him "do you know why I'm smiling?"

We're not prudish about discussing sex and bodily changes etc with our ds, we just don't believe a 12yo should be making these kinds of sexual references to her younger cousin. Dsis believes this talk is normal among that age group, particularly girls who will be going through puberty earlier than boys, although she doesn't necessarily like to hear it.

I can't remember what I spoke about at age 12 but I doubt I'd have known the Karma Sutra. Just curious really - is this a normal level of knowledge and banter? As a parent, how would you feel about your son or daughter talking like this?

12 year olds go to secondary schools and older children try to shock them.
There is the internet.
I suspect this is quite common behaviour for 12 year olds - they are trying to pretend to be grown up. They will grow out of it in a year or 2.

That's what I figured too @UserStillatLarge It just makes me a bit uncomfortable. Children do seem to grow up too quickly these days with so many influences around them.

My daughter is 15. We talk openly if she brings sex up, she does sometimes shock me with what she knows but she didn’t know much at 12 or even 13!

From things he has let slip, DS(12) knows more than he let's on, but the sort of comments your DN makes around her cousin would be stopped pretty promptly if my son made them in front of his 10 yr old brother.

At 12/13 we were passing around Shout magazine, which definitely had bits on boyfriends and sex. My friends who had older sisters could get their hands on Just-17, where you could read about sexual positions and blow jobs. I don’t think at that age we had any real understanding of what a blow job etc actually was, and I doubt your niece does either - she just knows it’s “sex” and “rude” and is enjoying being the older cousin and having one over on her young and naive in comparison cousin.

Totally right for you to be firm with her that it’s not appropriate stuff to discuss outside her peer group, with a much younger child.

Definitely keep telling her it's inappropriate to discuss these things around a 10yr old. Tell her to keep it for her friends.

I work in a secondary school and the kids will frequently smirk at each other when these sort of things come up and have a little giggle. I would find it odd that she’s so blatant about it in front of you though, it does suggest something off about her boundaries. If I pull any of the students this age up about it they look horrified at having to explain/repeat in front of an adult.

Yes that's what I thought too @Babynames2 Most children are horrified by speaking like this in front of an adult. Ds, who is very open about most things, will sometimes say to me "OK mum, can we stop talking about this now? It's making me feel uncomfortable." So we do. We do seem to be undergoing yet another phase of fascination with everything penis-related though - which is quite tiresome.

I would absolutely pull her up on this. Extremely inappropriate to be speaking to your ds about this. I agree with pp that boundaries are being crossed here.

It's inappropriate to talk like this Infront of and to children no matter how old you are.
I would be so angry if ANYBODY spoke to my ten year old and told them what a 69 was.
A 12 year old may know what these words mean but she clearly doesn't understand them, as you wouldn't expect a child of that age to. She's showing off trying to show your ten year old "I know something you don't know but all the grown ups know it" just so he feels left out and she can laugh because he doesn't know.

She needs to stop talking like this. People generally don't sit there making comments like that all the time and that's what she needs to be taught, that she's being rude, inappropriate and offensive and that it isn't funny. Your sister needs to know that if she don't put a stop to it you will.