But what are tampax Mummy?

[curlytoes]

My 2 boys, (age 3 and 13mths), love finding and fiddling with tampax, (unused)!! Given that I'm pregnant I'm amazed how many of the little blighters are littered around the house. My 3yo wants to know what they are. I just said they're called tampax and they're Mummy's but this was not a good enough answer apparantly. So what can I say which doesn't sound frightening?

We use fanny for the willy-equivalent, and I agree with something like the the baby cushion explanation - it's much less cringey to explain the basic biology when they're little imo. Especially to boys.

curlytoes sorry not ignoring you - I was logged off. I agree with Showofhands.

We don't make up silly names for any other part of our body, so why for genitalia? It's very Victorian IMO.

Re tampax and what it's for, if kids know early on where babies come from etc then its just a fact and not a big deal, obviously simplify it so as not to confuse or frighten, but it doesn't make sense to make something up. My DD's both know the basics, and DD1 who is 5 is desperate to catch me actually inserting a tampon but has never been 'lucky' enough to do so!

One of the boys at DD2's nursery calls his penis a tail and so DD2 came home and told me (after we'd been on holiday to Lanzarote) that 'tail' was Spanish for penis!

I think its easier if you tell them a simple version from the start, then it never becomes a big shocking/embarassing secret thing

oh god. DS1 tried to bring in one of my tampons to show and tell last week. For some reason he thought it was a 'machine part'. I managed to intercept it.

When he was 9mo he did the 'where' sign after watching me insert one . I didn't realise he was actually watching and haven't let him in the loo with me since. He'll probably relive it in therapy in 20 years.

curlytoes there is a thread every week trying to work out what a female equivalent to "willy" is. Unfortunately no-one ever comes up with a good answer...

ROFL, Acebaby.

Age 8 or 9 I was in a dentist's waiting room reading Punch, as one did.

I came across a cartoon which I recall had a Blue Peter presenter saying "And today we are going to make a condom out of an old washing up bottle."

Inevitably, I innocently asked at the top of my voice "Mum, what's a condom?"

Fanny plugs

"machine part"!

My dd asked me aged around 2 what they were, I was flustered and told her that daddy sticks them up his bum. fast forward to age 7 (she knows allabout human reproduction) and she asked me again about daddy's white rockets. I decided the time had come to tell her about periods and did. Simply, obviously. She decided that it wasn't true so I left it. This summer (age 8.4) her and her friend were quietly in the bath together. I went in to get them out and found around 25 tampons floating in the bath. She wanted me to tell her about periods again. I waited until her friend had gone and told her. She just can't get her head around it and calls tampons periods and still doesn't understand the white rocket thing. I'll wait till she raises it again.

My DS2 (6) has always been interested, particularly since I switched to a mooncup a few years ago. I told him the truth (as above, the cushion for the baby stuff) and he took it on board so easily that from time to time he says things like 'dad, is mum taking her mooncup?' if we're going away. DD, 3, is also interested, particularly in the fact that she'll use one when she's older (do I get a MN prize for having a 3 year old mooncup convert?).

However, DS1 has never shown the slightest bit of interest, and I'm thinking I should bring up the subject with him as agree with BrokenArm that the sooner they know it all, the better. He's 8. Do I wait for him to ask (but he might never) or bring it up in conversation, do you think?

Miss Clavel, I don't know anything about boys apart from my dh and dad. FWIW, I think 8 is a bit young to bring it up with him, physically it won't affect him. I'd wait until he asks himself. I remember having the tampax nurse coming to our school to do a talk. All the boys were shooed out so my generation grew up with boys who sniggered. I wouldn't want to raise a sniggerer but as I said, I'd wait until he broaches the subject.

The tampax nurse! I remember her! She made it all sound terrifying. I wonder if they still exist and if so, whether boys are allowed to be privy to the mysteries of the female existence.
kreecher, I'm sure you're right. I'll wait until he asks...

My dd(3) has watched me deal with the aftermath of 2 mcs and a birth (simply because she sees the loo as a social space, not because I'm showing it off), she is well versed in the uses of 'Mummy's lady things'. She also did the sticker thing with panty liners although she was dissapointed that it was the white bit that was sticky and not the pretty flowery bit

The anti Tampax nurse is the one we got. She told us not to use them because they could get lost 'up there' . We had 'the hygiene talk' in the physics lab, and the scenario she described struck me as being similar to the phenomenon of space junk.

I've always used the correct anatomical terms for body parts and answer questions honestly and simply when they come up, but I have to say, I also lock the bathroom door when I'm in there. It's the only place I get a little privacy. After 5 DCs, I think there's such a thing as too much togetherness. And after paying a plumber mucho moola to fish half a box of tampons out of the drains, I now keep them out of reach of small hands.

When we were 11/12 we learned about periods in school biology (learning about reproduction, ie not a sex ed class) and the vast majority of boys in the class were gobsmacked and a combination of horrified and grossed out about what happened to girls each month. We (the girls) all thought their reactions were hilarious. None of them has ever heard about periods before, we all had both from parents and also a special girls only discussion a lot of us had at the end of yr 4 (8/9).
Tell the truth so that you are not trying to teach your sons about mysterious women things at the same time as they are starting to view women as sex objects.