How young parents tell children about sex
Not so long ago, we were interested in from which sources did our peers learn the first knowledge about sex. It turned out that many parents were content to buy one specialized book and tried not to return to the difficult topic. This time we asked those peers who already have children, and found out whether they are going to repeat the experience of their parents or want to educate children differently.
First, I do not believe that sex education can be separated from everything else. It seems to me that if the topic itself does not cause tension in an adult and all questions for him are clarified, then this happens quite naturally. I often answer questions, including tricky ones, at work, so I try to remember that sometimes it’s enough just to answer the question posed ("- Holmes, where are we? - We are in a balloon."). Without details. Often, having accepted the answer, the child easily switches to another topic, and can return for details in another six months or a year. So, in my opinion, it is pointless to hold conversations: they asked - they answered, we live on. The main thing is that the answers must be honest and given without tension, so that the child continues to ask them further.
I don’t remember at all the first talk on the topic “where children come from”. Well, that is taken from the mother's belly. One day, on the way to kindergarten, Masha told me very seriously that she did not want children and would not have children. I was surprised and asked why. "Well, because then you have to cut the belly and get them out of there. Dasha told me that her mother did this." I had to say that it is not necessary to cut the stomach at all, they do it as a last resort, when mother or child is in danger, but my stomach is full and you and I did not have an operation. Only two years later I had to clarify what kind of hole in the body children are born. At first, it seems to me, the child wonders about himself, how small he was? How did mom wear it? How to feed? Did I also sit in your stomach? Because the world before its appearance did not exist.
At home we have a great BBC film “The Body of a Man”, which I myself watched with interest during pregnancy and highly recommend it. Mashka looked at him at the age of five or six, and learned a lot of interesting things about the structure of the ear, crawling speed, and all such details. The problems of puberty were not interesting to her then and did not cause any questions. And the difference between boys and girls, anyone who goes to kindergarten, in my opinion, will learn without the help of their parents. About the difference between an adult and a child, on the contrary - looking at parents of the same sex and asking the question “Will it be so with me? And when?”. When Masha had her first love in kindergarten and she told me that she and Kirill were kissing, I told her that there is such an effect that when you kiss and hug someone, like with your family and friends, for example then he becomes your family and friends. And no longer want to part with it, but always want to be near. And this means that the young man will have to settle somewhere, share toys with him and all that, and I am not sure that his parents will let him go. So with this it is better to wait until you grow up. Masha was not ready to share toys, so the issue was resolved. We talked about gender and gender too. Met in Thailand at the hotel waiter-transgender. Masha noticed something unusual and asked me why. I told. The world, in principle, is large and diverse, and there are many things in the world: families with mother and child, mother and father without children, two mothers or two fathers, or one father and two or three mothers. It is just there. As a fact. Without a doubt.
Masha loves to watch movies with me. Often it turns out the series, which I watch in parallel with the homework, choosing, of course, the most neutral ones. Here, for example, about Sherlock Holmes. We look. After some time, Masha looks like a conspirator and asks: "Mom, is sex a man and a woman in a toilet without panties?" Where already there was this, I do not remember. But there is no place to go: “It’s absolutely not necessary in the toilet,” I answered. “More often, adults do it in the bedroom and behind the closed door. In the toilet it is possible, but uncomfortable.” Pure truth.
My daughter is five years old, and, in principle, the time to talk about stamens and pistils has not come yet, so I decided that I would act on the situation and answer questions as they were asked. My parents, in turn, perfectly taught me how not to do it. Throwing out porn magazines around the house is not necessary (“hiding” between the TV program and the telephone directory is “scattering”). Keep in the house with children reading books like "Valley of Dolls" and "Machines of Love" Jacqueline Susann is not necessary. Loud sex at night, thinking that children sleep in the same room and do not hear, do not.
My daughter and my daughter's father have long ceased to be a couple, and she still does not ask questions why mom and dad are sleeping together and kissing. I answer truthfully and boringly for everything else, because for her now it is more important to ask a question than to get an answer. Mom, why do you have big breasts, and I have a small one? Due to the content of the hormone estrogen. Thirteen years old and you will grow up. Why hair there and there, but I do not have? Also because of estrogen. Mom, where did I come from? Was born Where was born from? From here (he will ask how she got there, - I will answer about the spermatozoon and the egg cell). Why do boys pee while standing? They are differently arranged. In general, I decided to say everything as it is, without making a terrible secret out of it and without being silent as if it were indecent - but without imposing it either. If she in the middle of a pharmacy asks why I need tampons, I’m talking about the menstrual cycle and ovulation in an everyday tone. If she asks about it at ten years old - I will tell you so that it is truly understandable. We still lack such a powerful tool for sex education, but from the kindergarten, though they are dragging out alternative names for some parts of the body, I hope that all games like “doctor” are somehow regulated by the presence of educators.
My mother is afraid that I will raise a lesbian from Martha, because I go with her and wear blue and "everything with cars". But my mother told me that menstruation is the blood of the priests of those who do not eat well, so for me she is not an authority on issues of gender and sex education. It seems to me that the main thing is to build such a trusting relationship so that, as a teenager, my daughter would look for answers to my questions about sex, and not in the books of Jacqueline Susann. Perhaps this is only in an ideal world, it happens, but what happens? I myself did not ask my mother a single question and learned through trial and error, which, given the specifics of the topic, is fraught. As I did not rumbled to an abortion or to a venereologist in my fifteen years without parental advice and even “Google” - only God knows. In porn magazines do not write that sex - is, for a moment, about love or procreation, at worst. Therefore, it seemed to me that such mud can only be dealt with boys that you do not particularly like. This is what I’m afraid of and don’t want to admit with my daughter, and if she decides to become a lesbian or, there, a swinger and be as informed as possible about the topic - please. Well, not exactly “please”, I will not encourage or encourage this, but also prohibit or condemn it - either.
Okay, in fact, I'm lying here, and when puberty begins in my daughter, I will put her under house arrest, and I’m sure that I will not find any boys, and I will read her diary, and then I will also tell her father about what is there. About the children, I will say what they find in cabbage, and if you touch yourself for the genitals, the hair on your arms will grow. Joke.
My children periodically ask where the children come from, but for some reason they very quickly forget the answer and ask again. In general, I’ve probably already talked about it three times: when they were about 3 and 6 years old, 4 and 7, and more recently, 5 and 8. The most difficult thing is to call things by their proper names, because these names are scary foolish. Well, really, do not say the same "pips". And on the other hand - how to talk? Katya Krongauz and I once even made a round table on this topic in the “Poster” - in particular, why it is so difficult to do it in Russian. The last time I said that a man and a woman are such a puzzle that develops: the penis falls into the vagina, the two cells join into one, and the child gradually grows out of it. I felt very proud, but still there was a feeling that in English this text would sound somehow more natural. In general, we have an Italian pop-up book "Il Corpo Umano" ("The Human Body"). It clearly shows how the human body works, how a child is born and so on. It all opens, moves and looks great. As far as orientation is concerned, one day my son Petya once asked whether it was that the boy loved the boy. He was four years old, and he somehow even accidentally asked this question, that is, it was not exactly that he thought about it. I said that it happens and that we have a lot of friends, who have just that. But she didn’t clarify - it seems to me, so far they don’t need to know.
Like many of my peers, I was engaged in sex education on my own. Rather, it itself with unpleasant jerks overtook me since kindergarten and independent walks in the yard (very grateful to my parents that it did not start with a porn tape found in them). There are several reasons for this. First, my parents in the 90s were busy with our survival and physically could not devote enough time to this issue. Secondly, a rare representative of the generation of the 60s was himself properly sexually educated, and therefore could not really convey anything to his own children, unless he specifically delved into the topic. Well, the first reason for many turned out to be an excellent second cover.
When I was already older, my mother talked to me about female physiology, but nobody specifically touched on the topic of sex. Once representatives of Always came to our school, it seems, with a lecture for girls about menstruation and gifts from the company. It was between the 8th and 10th grade, or rather I don’t remember. A boy from our class secretly snuck into the assembly hall for a lecture and then begged someone from a classmate to lay a gasket. At recess, he pasted her on the table to a young math teacher with the silent-giggling approval of almost the entire class (those who were against did not have time or decided not to remove). The teacher went into the classroom, sat down at the table, saw the gasket, flushed with paint, in a deaf voice said to remove it and left the classroom. A few minutes later she returned and held a lesson almost as usual, without commenting on the situation (the laying was removed by one of the girls). This story, I think, illustrates the state of sex education in the former USSR better than any statistics. Wrong on absolutely all levels, right? And now you need to work with this baggage, sometimes transforming a traumatic experience into an adequate picture of the world for our children.
It seems to me - and many authors confirm this - sex education (and everything connected with it) should not initially be something separate. Not "talk about IT", not "it's time for you to find out," but part of a gradual knowledge of the world. Just as children learn, for example, about the danger of fire (from simple "it is fire, it is impossible to touch, it will be painful" to "a set of hot gases and plasma"), they should learn about everything else. At first, they are interested in why there is a hole in the pope ("MOM !! TAM HIT !!!!"), then why the boys or girls don't have the same and so on. It is very important not to miss the moment of transition from simple and child to more complex, adult, and not to overdo it. A lot has been written on this topic, there are a lot of books for children of different ages - you need to use all of this and avoid dashed lines. I looked at how to feed a child in a certain age range, what he should be able to and understand how much to sleep, and immediately - what he is currently able to perceive in terms of sex education. And, very importantly, he looked at his child: was he interested, was he ready, what exactly was he puzzling about? And both parents can do this up to a certain point, and then one person. Not because of gender roles, but because it is more convenient to explain. We have such a plan for our daughters (3.5 years and 5 months). Ideally, this leads to complete trust and openness, and the child really appeals to you on any issue, behaves adequately and can put inadequate peers in place. Well, and I also very much hope that the education system will be built on the same principle. I have a younger sister, 16 years between us. Now she is 11, and I try to help my parents with the questions that they missed with me. She had a rather abrupt transition to "adult" knowledge. Probably, at the suggestion of yard friends or school, or in general, some songs began to google "sex." I had to google and parents, how to talk to a child of that age about sex, well, in general, to liberate themselves minimally. Perhaps, I repeat, but it is really very important to choose the right vocabulary and the information itself for the age and characteristics of your child. There is a story, for example, about an impressionable boy who was never told to touch the “cockerel”, and then his mother had to wash the restroom from urine: the boy was not only impressionable, but also obedient. As for gender issues, getting rid of phrases like "you're a girl!" / "Like a girl" for many will be a big step and a success.
I am not one of those mothers who study dozens of books devoted to each stage of a child’s growing up, and I think that if there are no out of the ordinary problems, you can cope with common sense. The sacred question of the origin of life in our communication with our daughter at her preschool age was solved on the example of bugs. "Look, mom, one bug is lucky with another!" - "No, no luck, they multiply so. After that, they have kids." The visual image of reproduction was subsequently extrapolated on occasion to other individuals: birds, dogs, - it was understood that humans reproduce in a similar way. Even though the child appears in the mother’s stomach and crawls out, I apologize, “writing,” it was also spoken at preschool age; As a rule, for this purpose it is necessary for mom and dad to be and they get married, although life has shown that it can be different. Alina started going to school, but the cherished moment, when I could tell the child about the vagina and the penis, did not come, and the daughter seemed not to be interested in this topic at all (although I was sure in my past that Already in school, jokes about joking about everything are joking, I myself learned exactly there, how, actually, although very roughly, sex happens). By 10 years of Alinin, I panicked that I would miss the moment, and went the same way as my mother - and which I consider to be the most comfortable by the results. I bought books — this one and this one — and presented them to Alina with a statement that it was very interesting there! Well, also a small preamble that many parents are embarrassed to talk about periods, about where children come from, and about sex, but in general there is nothing to be ashamed of, as it happens to everyone in life, which means you can safely talk about it , and that if Alina will be something incomprehensible, you can ask about it. Then Alina read the book of Linda Madaras just about everywhere - including the children's clinic and other public places, only in the camp I did not allow her to take it. There were no questions - perhaps because this book tells as much as possible about everything related to physiology, and very delicately and honestly touches on all topics related to sociology and sexual behavior - from masturbation to violence and incest. In some cases, even more boldly than my view of the question suggests, but still with important remarks: if you don’t like something, you shouldn’t do it. The only important topic, which for some reason has hardly been touched on in both books at all, is contraception, so it’s better to update the manual. But now, when the girls hormonal reorganization of the body with might and main has been going on for 10-11 years, Alina really became clear about her body, and she doesn’t even tell me about some nuances, because she doesn’t see anything strange in them and frightening. As for gender topics, I decided to tell Alina before the direct question — I don’t remember how this conversation started, but it happened at that time when Billboard, where I worked, a gay number came out, there were materials in the "BG", it was all lying around the house, well, in general the topic, like protest rallies, was actively exaggerated - and it was strange not to devote it. But here I just didn’t see any difficulties: there are boys who like other boys instead of girls, and girls who like girls, yes, this is strange, such people have a hard time living, they cannot have children, but this is not a reason to offend them. Alina then said that they were sorry. I do not think that the themes of the struggle for the rights of sexual minorities and women against sexism should be specially pedaled in upbringing, if the child as a whole grows up in a healthy environment and does not encounter negative manifestations from the mentioned areas.
Знание о том, что такое базовые гендерные различия, мой ребенок принес спустя неделю после поступления в детсад вместе с заявлением, что "у Айдина пиписька длинная, как палочка, и вообще мальчики писают стоя, а девочки - сидя, но какают все одинаково". Полина уже знает, что пол младенцев, например, различают именно по гениталиям.
Тему половых различий я не считаю особенно скользкой - правда, про непосредственно секс планирую рассказать дочке, только когда у нее возникнут вопросы по теме - но рассказать не только про непосредственную механику и биологические отверстия и жидкости, но и про внутреннее устройство процесса: про сопутствующие гормоны и реакцию на них мозга. She is very interested in such information (so far, at least) - she listens to stories about the biology and anatomy of people and animals and various "cells and substances" much more than tales. I do not want to repeat the experience of my parents, people of the notorious Soviet generation. I remember how all my childhood wondered why the father with the sanctimonious snort "fu, what a muck" switches even scenes with kisses to me, and my mother reddens silently. The question of my sex education was then resolved at 11-12 years old when a friend brought me the legendary yellow Encyclopedia of Sexuality for Children, which turned out to be very informative, though I remember that I hid it from my parents - because Judging by their behavior, I concluded that this topic is forbidden and they do not want me to know something about it. Perhaps I will buy this book and my child.
The issue of orientation worries me quite strongly, and it is important for me that my daughter understand that a woman can love both a man and a woman, and this is normal. We live together with Polina's grandmother, a rather conservative woman in these matters, and sometimes a child from the next room brings different ideas about, for example, “men who paint lips and put on dresses are terrible”. Such moments strain me, but I try to explain to the child in an accessible way that love is good anyway, and hostility without an objective reason — if no one harms anyone or endangers it — is bad. The “decent-indecent” category of my five-year plan is not very clear yet, but it is clear to her exactly what “like-dislike”, “convenient-inconvenient” and “home-in-people” are - so my husband and I operate with these concepts when we try explain to your daughter, for example, why running around the street with a bare bottom is not worth it.
It seems to me that the easiest way to talk about these topics is to start with physiology: children are extremely curious and will be happy to receive a detailed atlas of the human body (for example, "Uncover the secrets of man"), with which you can accurately explain everything you need. If we add to this a certain number of English-language children's books, where same-sex relationships are present and gender is discussed, it will be quite easy to explain that all love is important and beautiful, because, unlike adults, children calmly and properly perceive all the diversity of the world. The task is complicated because of the specifics of our society, and even if I succeed in making sure that they do not know about the existence of the deputy Milonov, they still have to face everyday homophobia and sexism. I have two girls growing up, so the fear of gender stereotypes that can hurt them needs, I think, to solve in a complex way: to talk, to give them the right books to read (there is an excellent series in Russia “This is a book!” By the Pink Giraffe publishing house) , to retell Igor Kona, to restrain himself from “you're a girl” and nurture in them a sense of self-worth, which, I hope, will work both for self-defense and for respect for others.
I am not going to educate my children on pestles and stamens. A child perfectly draws information from outside and is able to analyze and assimilate it. The task of parents is to create the environment and system of self-education of the child, in which information through the eyes, ears and pores enters his brain in a pure crystallized form. The child sees perfectly how you kiss, hug, and show tenderness to each other. He knows that you sleep together. He knows that the body is beautiful, he knows what purity of the body is, he knows that the body of each person belongs only to him. He knows that I have the right to privacy when I take a shower or change clothes, and I know that he has the same right to privacy. Or she - we have two children of different sexes. Danya and Asya live in the same room and exist in the natural atmosphere of understanding that we are all different. Nobody goes crazy about the fact that someone has something that’s different than the other, children see each other from birth, and I’m sure they have no curiosity about studying some things on the side. In the house we all walk dressed, we don’t cult from a naked body, but we also do not shyly hide ourselves with a curtain, if suddenly the body is unintentionally exposed. We try to exist in a calm attitude to the body and not cause any tantrums about it. In our house the TV does not turn on, there is no abusive speech. We limit the circle of communication of our children and would never agree that they walk in a swearing environment where aggressive sexual education is practiced. Our children attend kindergarten, and every evening we discuss what happened during the day. When my son brought the word “sex” from the garden at the age of five, in the context of the “Bachelor party” group (“SEX, SEX, oh yeaaah”), I explained to the child that sex is an intimate thing that needs to be discussed only with those you love: mom, dad and future wife, which you will meet and love when you grow up. That this is not what it is cool to shout on the street. The interest in shouting out that word naturally disappeared immediately. Children from childhood should know all the sexual terms they encounter. These are correct, not colloquial names for genitals and actions that are associated with them, such as the administration of the body's natural needs. You should always speak freely with a child in an adequate language, free from any vulgarity. Then you will not be difficult to pronounce in his nine years "erection". All children should be aware of pedophiles to the extent possible at any particular age. No one should play on the sexual curiosity of children, so it is important to explain how the genitals are actually called in medical language and tell what they are for. You can not leave the opportunity to someone else to tell it instead of you. It is important to develop a relationship of trust with the child, so that any hints received, for example, in the school locker room, are brought to your attention on the same day. In other words, you need to communicate with the child as honestly as possible, the way you would like them to communicate with you.
For me, everything related to sex and relationships has been wildly important since childhood. In about three years I, plus or minus, knew which parts of my body were particularly sensitive. All my dreams were about boys. Episode: I am lying in bed, hugging myself and imagine that these are Vasya's hands. By a lucky chance, Vasya and I had their beds in kindergarten close by - I put my hand on his bed, Vasya rolled the typewriter on my arm until he went crazy. When I turned away, he whispered: "My wife is dead!" When turned: "My wife came to life!"
I’m not sure that all the children in our group had a developed libido at an early age, but in any case, gender games are an indication that children know a lot about relationships. Even my small children Makar and Maya are more than three years old and a year old.
In my children, I intuitively maintain a healthy interest in the genitals - let them love them rather than be ashamed. The phrase "do not touch pipisku, and then it will fall off," which the grandmother once told our son, we immediately blacklisted. Why lie, do not fall off the same. And sometimes runs with pips in his hand. But I know for sure that he will not be pulling anything at a matinee in kindergarten or on an airplane, because in children, if they are not disturbed, common sense prevails. Maya Dmitrievna, if a pleasant man comes across on her way, charmingly flirts. At a certain stage of her life, this will be useful to her, let her cultivate. Maniacs and seducers exist, but I would not want to project my fears on children and poison their lives. Although, of course, they must know the safety technique and distinguish healthy people from the sick. The children haven’t asked any questions about sex yet (Maya isn’t talking yet, and Makar is more interested in parts of the body of an excavator), so I’ll wait to tell them everything I know. And even tell you about Vasya.
Photo: 1, 2 via Shutterstock