How to talk to 9 year old about their school PHSE lessons on reproduction?

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I'd like my sons to grow up with a healthy attitude to sex and relationships, but I'm also very keen to keep them children for as long as possible. We've always used the correct names for body parts and I do my best to never be prudish about answering any questions they've come to me with. But we've never talked about how babies are made - the question was never really asked so it's never seemed like the right time. My 9 year old is now going to be taught about reproduction in PHSE, which I think is great. I'd like to keep a dialogue open so he knows he can come to me with any questions and to try to normalise what he's learned at school as much as possible in his mind. I'm interested in peoples perspective on how to do that? If he doesn't come to me, should I bring it up for instance? How much do they learn? What have other people done?

We bought this book for our girls, and have gone through it with them from quite a young age.

I think it is important to have age appropriate conversations as young as possible (not an issue for your son, but I started my periods at 10!).

You could buy a book and read it together. It'll not just be about how babies are made, but about relationships and how their bodies are changing

Mine is 9 and has known for a few years now. He's known about periods, puberty too. I got him a book about how babies are made. He asks me horrific questions!! But I'm determined to be open and factual.

We had the conversation as a what do you know, what do you want to know? Then gave a brief description of sex using correct terminology, it took no more than 5 mins and was factual. We will follow it up with more information as he gets older, but initially I wanted him armed with the correct information rather than something from another 9 yr old ! The most pressing thing was so you and dad did this, I confirmed we did, huh was his reply!

Adam Kay’s book is brilliant ans have heard good things about Dr Ranj but not read it. The good thing about a book is you can leave it on a shelf and they can go back to it in their own time to digest info

Definitely get a book and read it with him before the lessons. If they don’t ask they will be getting information from the playground which may not be accurate and cause confusion.

My sons were younger but we had "Mummy Laid an Egg" which is a lovely and very funny book and is shown on YouTube and I think it sums it up beautifully.

Then once we got to around year 4 I bought the Usborne What's Happening to Me? book that covers puberty body changes. The boy's book does cover girls too which I loved.

Usually with schools the parents get to watch any videos beforehand usually in school but with Covid I know my children's old school are doing it via Zoom.

A great way to approach it is to talk about friendships, what constitutes a good friendship and a bad one, this is obviously the foundation for a great relationship. Hopefully you have a great relationship yourself and you can bring in real life examples of how your Dh/partner shows he loves you. This is also needed to show children about enemies which will come in for secondary school. I know they will be talking about reproduction but this part is important too.

You don't have to wait for children to talk to you, you can just bring things up so you can have a pretend friend who is pregnant and you just tell them how babies are made using that video if you wish.

When I taught it (as a year 5 teacher) we started off looking at how animals reproduce and different types of reproduction (as in laying eggs, frog spawn and live birth) and then link it back to humans. After discussing reproduction through animals, a lot of the children make the connection to human reproduction themselves before it is taught scientifically.