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Talking to our Children
About Sexuality
How to
answer those questions and avoid the awkwardness
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Family Matters Archive
Easy!!
How can talking about sex with your child possibly be easy? At first it
may not be but with continued discussion and use of proper language it
will get easier, especially if your child is still young enough that the
usual social taboos surrounding sexuality have not yet affected him/her.
But how to start? In this article and more to follow we will
relate some of our "Tips to Talk" to your children.
Picture this:
Your child poses the question: "Where does a baby come from?" The general
method of answering all your child's questions follows the acronym LAST.
First, Listen. This means active listening. Stop whatever you are doing.
Bring the child up to your level or go down to his/hers so that
eye contact can be made. Use a serious facial expression that shows
interest. Your child will get the message that he/she is worth listening
to and that the question is important. Then Ask.
Make sure your
understanding of the question matches what the child means. If this is not
clarified, a parent may launch into a full discussion of sexual
intercourse, pregnancy and birth with some blushes and discomfort while
the child only wanted to know where he/she was born.
If a parent
answers a question that the child is not asking, all those words of wisdom
will probably go to waste. The child may not pay attention to the answer
because it did not relate to what he/she was ready to hear. Clarifying the
question prior to answering would solve the problem. This could be done in
two ways. The child's response to your question, "What do you think the
answer is?" is an excellent way to figure out exactly what the question is
and also get a grasp of the childOs level of understanding and
misunderstanding.
You can answer the question asked, add to what
the child already knows and clear up misinformation. A second approach
would be to ask, "Do you mean how is a baby made?" This gets straight to
the point of what question is being asked.
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