Talking About The Birds & The Bees

A few days ago I was asked by parent with a 7 year old what age I planned to be talking about The Birds & The Bees and how was I planning to go about it, so I thought I’d write a post about it.

I know lots of people find this sort of thing really straight forward but then again others don’t and can’t think of anything worse.  We all have our different approaches but one thing is for sure – just when you least expect it and when you’re in the quietest and yet most public and populated place, your kids will suddenly shout ‘Mum, where do babies come from?’ and the world.will.stop.  You’ll hear the air whoosh as everyone spins round to look at you and there will be a wall of eyes waiting to see how you respond…

Apparently I did this to my Mum in church.  Sorry Mum…

Now ideally I’d try and pre-empt THAT situation and go and find some obliging snails in the garden to talk about…

I’m a firm believer in ‘if the kids are old enough to ask a question, then they’re old enough to hear the answer’.  I think as long as the language and concepts we use are age appropriate and let their questions be our guide on how much or how little to say, it’s ok.  So we told ours as soon as they asked – I think the eldest was about 5 years old.  The main advantage for this is that 5 year olds are very matter of fact, which really helps with this kind of chat.  The last thing anyone wants is to be feeling embarrassed or awkward. 

So, being a practical biological kind of person I went straight for the practical biological approach but using the kids’ vocabulary as they were so young.  Our daughter had decided very early on that girls have front bottoms (gah!) and boys have curlies (!).  So, we explained that a man’s curly (sorry chaps) go into a woman’s front bottom and his seed goes into her, joins up with her egg and then a baby grows.

Bingo job done.

Not quite.  They still quite like to ask you about it at least twice more in quiet public places. So me being the grown up, I asked them if they could remember what happens and tell me about it instead.

‘Where do you and daddy do this? Do you do it on the floor, in the bathroom, on a table, in a shop?’  Now admittedly that threw me a bit but being very quick off the mark I honed in on the shop bit and talked about privacy.

‘How does the baby come out then?’

Now luckily I studied anatomy extensively at university and I managed to come up with a great explanation: there’s a hole for wee, a hole for babies and a hole for poo.

‘Is there really? Where is it?’

So I drew a diagram in the air with my finger, to which they responded with ‘that’s disgusting.  I’m NEVER having babies. Is it tea time yet?’

The subject does naturally crop up again from time to time and as they get older you just adapt how and what you say.  The subject of hydraulics caused quite a few giggles…!

Try to answer their questions when they ask so it doesn’t become a big ‘thing’ in your head.  I haven’t quite managed to get my head around how to answer the ‘is it you delivering presents instead of Father Christmas?’ question yet.  We had this one this week (in MAY????) from the middle one, not that I’m stressed about it or anything. Aargh!  All ideas welcome so please do leave a comment at the bottom if you advise on that one.  I said ‘people believe what they want to believe’ but that’s probably a bit of a cop out on my part.

I hope you’ve found Handling ‘Talking About The Birds & The Bees’ helpful in some way and do head over to read Martyn’s fantastic post Let’s Talk About Sex Baby on the fabulous blog ‘Inside Martyn’s Thoughts’ for his wise approach on the subject.  If you have any other tips or thoughts then please do leave a comment, we’d love to hear them.

To receive our posts straight to your inbox do sign up at the right hand side of this page. Do also have a browse through our other posts and come and join us on Facebook!

Don’t forget Elfie’s Birthday Letters are now available in the shop.