# Birds and Bees



## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

So my oldest daughter, who is turning 9 this weekend just received the birds and bees talk from her mother last night. We'd discussed the differences between boys and girls parts at a high level already, but this was the first foray into the world of where babies come from. She cried a little ("you mean I have to touch someone's PRIVATE PARTS?"), but I think it was time, regardless.

How old were you when (if) you got the talk? How old were your kids? For older parents, did you make the right choice in terms of timing and how it was presented?


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## Homemaker_Numero_Uno (Jan 18, 2011)

Fozzy said:


> So my oldest daughter, who is turning 9 this weekend just received the birds and bees talk from her mother last night. We'd discussed the differences between boys and girls parts at a high level already, but this was the first foray into the world of where babies come from. She cried a little ("you mean I have to touch someone's PRIVATE PARTS?"), but I think it was time, regardless.
> 
> How old were you when (if) you got the talk? How old were your kids? For older parents, did you make the right choice in terms of timing and how it was presented?


Too funny!
My kids raise chickens, so they know all about fertilization. We also used to have goats, and their cats have always been spayed/neutered...
Anyhow, they got the My Bodies/My Selves books well before they went away to overnight summer camps and doing sleep overs.

Today I had to tell my son that if there was ever a war or crisis where people could not get to the grocery store, that he was not to trust anyone. Have heard stories from Chinese friends and also Hungarian friends about how people stay alive in crises, even in the 20th century. Sometimes the facts of life aren't pleasant, but we have to do our best to inform our kids how to stay out of harm's way and also all the ins and outs of being human...good and bad, and spectacular. 

My kids also liked to hear the stories of their births, so I just don't really censor, can add to or take away from it, they always enjoy it. The good, the bad and the ugly. (The births were easy, but there was also a baby I lost way before the younger two were born, and before the eldest.)

There's all kinds of ways you can tell your kids about the birds and the bees (and the buzzards and the worms). For us, it's just not a separate thing. It's ongoing and somewhat random.

We also talk about death, disability...sometimes we joke about good and bad days to have an accident, depends on the number of homemade dumplings we have in the freezer and whether I've recently made a cake. 

We're fairly matter of fact around here.
I had to give them the play by play of putting our lady kitty friend to sleep a couple weeks ago.


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## Rowan (Apr 3, 2012)

I've always been factual with my son about his body, the differences between male and female bodies, etc., so he's always been somewhat aware. My husband kept telling me he was going to have "the talk" with our son to cover the basics of sex. But it just never seemed to happen. So, when our son was going into the 6th grade at age 10, I realized his dad just wasn't ever going to do it. I wasn't about to let him start middle school without knowing where babies come from, especially since it's not uncommon for there to be at least one pregnant student at the middle school at any given time. So, I ended up giving him the talk, buying him two books to read, and answering all of his questions about sex, girls, his body, everything. My now-ex-husband has, to this day, never tried to talk to him about anything related to sex. And I don't think it ever occurred to my son to bother asking his dad anything when he had questions. 

I don't remember ever having a talk with my mother. Nor do I remember ever not knowing how babies of all types were made. We had farm animals when I was a child, I read a tremendous amount without regard to "age appropriateness", and at the time they had basic sex-ed every year starting in the 4th grade at school. I don't think it ever occurred to my parents that I wouldn't already be well informed.

My ex-husband's father had the talk with him while they were on a fishing trip. His dad's advice was to try to stay away from "fast" women. He also mentioned that Deep Woods Off would kill crabs, but warned that you have to be careful with it because it burns like hell if you get it on the tip of your pecker. And that was pretty much it. Interestingly, that was the one and only time that anyone in my ex's family ever spoke about sex to him. He was 22 and had been sexually active for 5 years. :slap:


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## Theseus (Feb 22, 2013)

Fozzy said:


> How old were you when (if) you got the talk? How old were your kids? For older parents, did you make the right choice in terms of timing and how it was presented?


I never got it from parents, nor did I want it. I wasn't close to either of my parents, and a sex talk is the last thing I wanted from them. 

Instead, I would read through my dad's stash of _Playboy_ and _Penthouse_ magazines starting when I was about 10. Let's just say I was naturally curious. Learned everything I needed to know and then some. 

Our children's school had a pretty thorough sex education program. But today, it's so easy for a kid to learn anything they want from the Internet anyway.


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

Theseus said:


> I never got it from parents, nor did I want it. I wasn't close to either of my parents, and a sex talk is the last thing I wanted from them.
> 
> Instead, I would read through my dad's stash of _Playboy_ and _Penthouse_ magazines starting when I was about 10. Let's just say I was naturally curious. Learned everything I needed to know and then some.
> 
> Our children's school had a pretty thorough sex education program. But today, it's so easy for a kid to learn anything they want from the Internet anyway.


This was pretty much my experience growing up, also. Parents never even acknowledged the existence of sex, so i did my own research (Penthouse). 

Your point about the internet is exactly why I wanted to get out in front of the issue. It's terrifying what children have ready access to these days. And even if you somehow manage to keep your kids away from it, their friends will fill them in on anything they've missed. 

Sometimes it makes me a little sad that kids have to grow up so much faster now.


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## Homemaker_Numero_Uno (Jan 18, 2011)

Fozzy said:


> This was pretty much my experience growing up, also. Parents never even acknowledged the existence of sex, so i did my own research (Penthouse).
> 
> Your point about the internet is exactly why I wanted to get out in front of the issue. It's terrifying what children have ready access to these days. And even if you somehow manage to keep your kids away from it, their friends will fill them in on anything they've missed.
> 
> Sometimes it makes me a little sad that kids have to grow up so much faster now.


I don't think they do.
They may be exposed to a lot of highly sexualized content but overall I think kids stay kids a lot longer now and are more or less naive and in 'experimental/exploratory' stage for a lot, lot longer. 

My kids said that their friends know squat about sex or perverts or even std's or pregnancy, let alone relationships, mental illness, various acts of violence or depravity...

On the other hand they all have tv's in their rooms and know the names of the teen pop stars and the plots of all the various sit comes, and what style is in, song lyrics, etc. Nice.

When we were 10 we were watching Mash, at the very least, also Dark Shadows, Monty Python, SNL...and of course live coverage of Viet Nam. Any teen boy lived with the knowledge that in a few years his number would come up. We regularly played with explosives, M60's etc. 

Pornographic literature was widely available. And, unlike internet, there was no filter or history or credit card needed. Also no video surveillance or internet or cell phone for Mom and Dad to check up on kids. You generally got home for dinner. If you were late, nobody worried for a while. We knew about the various 'hazards' in our town, perverts included.


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## frusdil (Sep 5, 2013)

My husbands parents were absolute puritans when it came to discussing sex with the kids. They never talked about it. My parents were ok, answered questions as they came up but it was all about the mechanics of it and that's all.

I'm pretty open with my SD about it, so is her mum and I follow her lead. I'll answer a question if she asks me, and I just answer in a matter of fact way, and if she giggles I say "It's just a word sweetie, like foot, nose or ear, it's just a body part". 

She's starting to ask more questions now, she's almost 10, and will often talk to me about boys etc. so we're starting to talk more and more about this kind of stuff.

I managed to persuade hubby round to my way of thinking because he wasn't going to address this with her until she was 13 or 14!!!! Far too late in my opinion. She needs to know all of this stuff BEFORE she finds herself in a situation where she has to make a decision. I'd rather she get this info from us and not her schoolfriends.


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## EnjoliWoman (Jul 2, 2012)

One of the few things ex and I agreed on was to be open about sex. Ours weren't. When I started dating Dad said "if you get pregnant, I'll cut his balls off". Mom told my sister (in my hearing) that "everything she needed to know about sex she would learn in 10th grade biology" so I didn't bother to ask. I deferred to Mom's medical books for physiology and fact and Dad's Playboy for anecdotal sex stories.

With my daughter, she was asking some curious things around age 5 and I talked to our counselor (saw for help with addressing divorce issues with her) who told me to answer her questions directly and honestly in an age appropriate way and to keep answering until she stopped asking questions - that kids will let you know when they've heard enough to satisfy their curiosity.

She was right. The more I answered questions, the more she'd come back with to clarify or to ask more details. Probably the most awkward was "how does the sperm get in there?" but I answered it. Then, of course, were things like "did it hurt?" and other more personal questions. 

And as necessary I also added in the things I learned from those medical books, discussed what the boys were going through as well as crazy myths I'd heard in school. One was that you could douche with coke after sex as a form of birth control. Even she thought that was nuts and was surprised anyone ever gave their friend that kind of advice but it opened up the conversation to the things SHE overheard and questioned. I have addressed masturbation tho I've never caught her and I don't want to know.

It's worked great. No one big talk - now she'll throw out a question over dinner or in the car on the way to the mall. She knows I will answer anything (except things that are personal to me) and that keeps the lines of communication open. She's not so curious she wants to go have sex but she'll be confident about protecting herself when she's ready.


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## Jellybeans (Mar 8, 2011)

My parents never gave me "The Talk."

Once, in my teens, I was getting ready to board a plane to go overseas and my father looked me very seriously and in his deep voice said, "Don't do anything stupid." I knew exactly what he meant and was scared straight at how he said it.

It worked. 

I still don't have any kids and am a grown ass woman now.


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## nice777guy (Nov 23, 2009)

I think I was about 10. Someone wrote "FU&K" in spray paint on a wall at school. I came home asking what it meant and why it was so bad.

Next thing I know, my Mom is showing me what I recall were Encyclopedia Britannica books with diagrams of vaginas and penis's and trying to explain ovulation!!! 

Sorry I asked!!! Lol!


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

*No birds & bees lectures here! Just a stern speech from my old man, just prior to my senior year of HS, advising me that if I ever succeeded in knocking some poor unfortunate little girl up, that my plate at the proverbial family table would be summarily broken!

Scared the literal hell out of me!*


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## TurtleRun (Oct 18, 2013)

My mom just handed me a book over the summer before I was entering the 6th grade. She asked me to write a book report. It had medical pictures on the male and female reproductive system. lol.


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## Fozzy (Jul 20, 2013)

TurtleRun said:


> My mom just handed me a book over the summer before I was entering the 6th grade. She asked me to write a book report. It had medical pictures on the male and female reproductive system. lol.


That seems to have been the common thing when we were growing up--very little information coupled with occasional threats. It's amazing we're not all crazy


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## 6301 (May 11, 2013)

In my case, my dad asked me on day, How I was doing in school and I said "fine". Then he asked if I liked girls and I said "yes", and he said, anything you want to know about girls and I said "no" and he said OK and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

I pretty much knew where babies came from by listening to the older guys, you know the 15 and 16 year old guys who knew everything. In other word, I got a lot of information from word of mouth and a lot of bull $h!t along with it, but none the less and honestly, I think it would have been harder on my dad than me.


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## TurtleRun (Oct 18, 2013)

Fozzy said:


> That seems to have been the common thing when we were growing up--very little information coupled with occasional threats. It's amazing we're not all crazy


It was very detailed on everything including contraception. My book report was 2 pages front and back.

I already knew what sex was though :/ I found my parents porn stash when I was 9 on accident. It was a WTF kind of moment when I found it. I didn't know doing that "deed" made people pregnant though lol. Put two and two together.


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## Miss Taken (Aug 18, 2012)

I wasn’t raised with “the talk” but several, ongoing, open-ended ones when I was a kid and that’s how I raise my kids too. My ten year old is pretty well informed already because of me and his dad. He already knows about where babies come from, that I get a period (thank you tampax), what sex is, proper names for genitals., that his penis is normal (yes, he came in the room with pants down and asked me lol (I could have died ha! ha! but faked my comfort really well), puberty and masturbation.

My son asked where babies come from and how they get there when he was seven. I explained that cats, dogs and other animals mate to make babies. When humans mate, it’s called sex. Male animals and humans have sperm and female animals and humans have eggs and the sperm is passed from the man to the woman during sex to fertilize the egg and make a baby. I gave birth to his brother when he was eight. So he knew that mom and dad must of had sex it was/is no big deal.

We have a really casual attitude about sex/body parts in this house. I have always used the proper terms – penis, vulva, vagina, testicles etc. with my kids. I don’t use pet names and don’t get flustered about it. Since I’m not usually embarrassed to talk about it neither is he. He’s pretty good about asking any questions he wants to know about and right now is VERY CURIOUS about sex so those talks are more frequent.

It just so happened that this morning on our walk to school, we had another sex-ed talk about fertilization. There’s a robin nesting on our front porch so it brought up some curiosity. Talking to him about sperm and eggs was as natural as talking about the basketball game he’s going to watch tonight.


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## Anonymous07 (Aug 4, 2012)

Jellybeans said:


> My parents never gave me "The Talk."
> 
> Once, in my teens, I was getting ready to board a plane to go overseas and my father looked me very seriously and in his deep voice said, "Don't do anything stupid." I knew exactly what he meant and was scared straight at how he said it.
> 
> ...


:lol: Same here(except the no kids part). 

I never got "The Talk". I had 2 older female cousins who got knocked up in high school and I knew I didn't want to end up like them, so I didn't have sex(wanted to wait for the right guy). I did have my mom who told me to not get pregnant, very matter of fact as a sit down at the kitchen table, but no discussions or anything. I did get an "about me" book when I was in jr high school about the female body, which was somewhat interesting/helpful, I guess. My mom was way too embarrassed to talk about anything. I had to learn everything on my own. 

I do want to do things differently with my son(and maybe future child) though. I want to be able to be open with him and can talk about anything. I'm not afraid to talk about sex, body parts, or anything health related(have my bachelor's degree in health science), so it never bothers me. I plan to do things similar to Miss Taken and hope it all goes well.


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## TheCuriousWife (Jan 28, 2013)

I never got the talk.

On my wedding day my mother looked at me and said, "is there anything you want to talk about or any questions you have?" I said no, and that was that.

Thankfully I was quite intrigued by sex even at a young age and I read every book and online article I could find. (While my parents were sleeping of course. ) 

I was pretty educated.

I hope to be open with my own children. So they don't feel awkward asking me things, and so they don't have to learn incorrect crap about sex from locker room gossip.


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## SpinDaddy (Nov 12, 2012)

Two books of invaluable worth to share with your child: “Where did I Come From?” and “What’s Happening to Me?”


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## the2ofus (Jan 28, 2014)

EnjoliWoman said:


> With my daughter, she was asking some curious things around age 5 and I talked to our counselor (saw for help with addressing divorce issues with her) who told me to answer her questions directly and honestly in an age appropriate way and to keep answering until she stopped asking questions - that kids will let you know when they've heard enough to satisfy their curiosity.
> 
> She was right. The more I answered questions, the more she'd come back with to clarify or to ask more details. Probably the most awkward was "how does the sperm get in there?" but I answered it. Then, of course, were things like "did it hurt?" and other more personal questions.


We also mostly just answer questions. And yes, the question of how the sperm get in there is the most awkward, especially when you weren't expecting it for a while longer! Our oldest daughter asked how they got in there at a family gathering (to us but within earshot of others) and added "do they just crawl accross the sheets":rofl:my husband just said "something like that" cause he really didn't want input from any of the family or for it to be implied it was wrong of her to ask. She was very curious and within a few days she asked if they had legs and we were able to explain it all to her. Our next daughter (12) we finally had to talk with her recently cause she just wasn't asking questions, the older kids were in the other room and thought it was funny the way dad just blurted out all the facts. She just looked at him oddly then looked at me disbelieving and said "really", I said "yes, that is how it works" she looked at dad then back at me and said "really". She spent the next day with her head in the body book I had showed her when she questioned how they fit.:rofl: my 8 yr old has defintely said some hilarious things the last few years, my favorite was "That's disgusting, why would anyone want to do that?" My husband told them that his opinion of it being gross would change.

It can definitely be hard keeping a straight face at times.


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## over20 (Nov 15, 2013)

I was in 6th grade, I can still picture it now. My mom was making dinner and I casually, out of the blue asked how a baby is made. My mom looked shocked and told me how the man's penis goes inside the woman's vagina....in my little mind I kept thinking the man had to push his soft privates in...and what if It didn't go in? :rofl:

That night my dad, a pharmacist, drew on paper how a sperm and egg unite. The next year in school we had a unit that explained it properly...:rofl:


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## Ikaika (Apr 23, 2012)

So now I know why I am screwed up. My parents never gave me "the talk". I learned about sex from the combination of sex education classes taught from of all people a nun in a habit at catholic school and from Playboy and Penthouse. 

I have tried the conversation with my sons, they get grossed out and figure it will be a process rather than just a one time "talking to" with them.


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## Ikaika (Apr 23, 2012)

over20 said:


> I was in 6th grade, I can still picture it now. My mom was making dinner and I casually, out of the blue asked how a baby is made. My mom looked shocked and told me how the man's penis goes inside the woman's vagina....in my little mind I kept thinking the man had to push his soft privates in...and what if It didn't go in? :rofl:
> 
> That night my dad, a pharmacist, drew on paper how a sperm and egg unite. The next year in school we had a unit that explained it properly...:rofl:


Oh hell, the nun even had a lesson in which she demonstrated putting a condom on a phallic model.  

Just not right to do this to a young man. So I can't close my eyes during sex otherwise I see Sister Maria in my head.


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## Homemaker_Numero_Uno (Jan 18, 2011)

When my kids are ready they know where the sex DVD is (in the attic gathering dust...) they saw it when I was putting books away I didn't use and were carrying the stacks upstairs.

I told them when they have a partner in mind they should get the DVD and watch it so they didn't hurt anyone, or something along those lines. If they are going to have sex, they should at least be good at it not just "know about it." 

Maybe this is different approach than some but I don't want my kids having an unfulfilling sex life. They deserve to know the ins and outs (pun not intended but I'll leave it be.) I think the DVD is more knowledgeable than I am on that one.


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## Anonymous07 (Aug 4, 2012)

drerio said:


> So now I know why I am screwed up. My parents never gave me "the talk". I learned about sex from the combination of sex education classes taught from of all people a nun in a habit at catholic school and from Playboy and Penthouse.
> 
> I have tried the conversation with my sons, they get grossed out and figure it will be a process rather than just a one time "talking to" with them.


I'm surprised the nun did all of that. I went to Catholic school for part of elementary school and jr high. Our sex ed was a boring video about our bodies and talk of abstinence(just don't have sex!). Doesn't really teach you anything. I learned everything from Google.


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## Ikaika (Apr 23, 2012)

Anonymous07 said:


> I'm surprised the nun did all of that. I went to Catholic school for part of elementary school and jr high. Our sex ed was a boring video about our bodies and talk of abstinence(just don't have sex!). Doesn't really teach you anything. I learned everything from Google.



I think after the summer of love 1968, the nuns were going to be realistic about their chances of teaching abstinence. Granted I got this education in the early 70s.


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## 6301 (May 11, 2013)

drerio said:


> I think after the summer of love 1968, the nuns were going to be realistic about their chances of teaching abstinence. Granted I got this education in the early 70s.


 I went to catholic for three years 3,4,5th grade back in the 50's and the nuns taught us something too.

They told the girls not to wear patent leather shoes because the boys can look at the shoes and see up their dress.

Now, at the time, us boys had NO IDEA that you can do that sooooooooooooooooo what do you think we tried to do?

Granted it was next to impossible to do this stunt but they put the thought in your head. Be different if the girls wore mirrors on their shoes. 

Boys weren't allowed to keep our hands in our pockets for fear that we would play pocket pool.


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