When do you teach your children about human reproduction?

[SKL]

My kids are 4. So far they don't know they have a "birth father" as well as a "birth mother." They don't know about kids looking like their daddies and all that good stuff. I just haven't felt it was time to "go there" yet.

 

So when do you all do that? I know I was 7 when we learned certain mechanics from a schoolbook and I put 1 and 1 together, if you get my drift. But I don't think I can wait until the girls are 7 to tell them they have a birth father.

 

Thoughts?

[moonlight]

3 1/2 when my first child asked about the baby growing in my tummy

 

and now 5 when my second child asks about baby #3 growing in my tummy!

 

and i'm sure baby #3 will be enlightened at some stage, but i'm not planning on any more babies to teach him! :lol::lol::lol:

 

seema

[regentrude]

I told them when they asked.

DD was 2 when her brother was born, so she knew about babies growing in mom's tummy, but not about how that happens.

She was 5 when she asked and in one conversation comprehensively inquired about reproduction (Why to kids have a dad?,), menstrual cycle (can a woman always become pregnant?), puberty (why can't children have children?) , twins (why are some kids twins?), incest (why can a person not marry her brother?).

DS was maybe 8. He did not quite ask that much.

If he had not asked, I would have brought up the subject soon thereafter because at the latest at 10 I want them in possession of the basic correct facts - before they hear incorrect stuff from their friends.

[Wabi Sabi]

My kids are 3 y/o and 7 y/o. They both already know the basics of human reproduction. It's something we've always been very open and matter of fact about so they don't think it's anything embarrassing or too taboo to ever ask us about.

 

FWIW, we have triplets in our extended family who were carried by a surrogate. We have a same-sex couple in our family who have used donor sperm to have their children. My kids have good friends who are identical twins. I myself have had homebirths and my oldest was present was the youngest was born. I've also done doula work and my kids have thumbed through all of my various books on childbirth and pregnancy. They've had four brand-new baby cousins born just this summer. So,really, pregnancy, babies, and the various ways that families are formed are just a part of our everyday lives. I can't imagine them NOT already knowing and understanding the very basic fundamentals of how they got here.

[FaithManor]

We don't have an age per se when we start this. We talk about it when it comes up and we are open. So, by the age of ten they know the basics and the older they get the more we talk about the emotional end of things.

 

Now, I will tell you that having two mating pairs of ducks on the property during the spring, really helps jumpstart interesting conversations.

 

Gotta love animal husbandry!!! :lol:

 

Faith

[Ginevra]

My dh told my son the Facts of Life when he was 6 months old. He strutted away, saying, "I don't know what is so hard about that. It went really well. The boy took it like a man."

 

Bwahaha.

 

Seriously, I don't think there is an "age." I know kids who "got it" really young and others who were 13 before they were even interested in knowing. I think you do these conversations in small pieces and over and over...it's really 200 small conversations.

 

:lol::lol::lol: If only we really could do that, eh?

[Sevilla]

I started teaching bits and pieces in preschool, adding more each year.

 

First piece is how a baby grows in a mommy's uterus and is pushed out her vagina which is hard work (alternate explanation of a csection and why that is done). Watch some birth videos on youtube - my kids found them fascinating and were young enough not to feel weird about seeing a woman pushing a baby out and instead thought it was amazing that's how they were born.

 

Next is that the baby grows from a sperm + egg. Boys make sperm when they grow up (DS calls it 'the great sperm race where only one of them can win!") and girls make an egg and have blood each month, they also get cervical fluid in their underwear sometimes (this becomes obvious if your kids watch you go to the bathroom).

 

After that is the 'how does the sperm get to the egg?' question where you talk about TeA.

[SKL]

I should have noted that my girls know that babies grow in the mom's uterus and how they get out around the 9th month. I've told them they started as a tiny egg inside their birth moms. What they don't know is what triggers the whole business, i.e., that males have a role.

 

I guess I'm a little afraid that they will take this information to school and (a) blab it to the other kids or (b) try to do some hands-on learning. It's bad enough that my youngest is already planning marriage with a KG boy.;)

[WeeBeaks]

As questions come up, we answer them.

 

My 9yo is pretty clear on the whole process. He started asking and then asked for some more books and such, on and on, until he determined he had learned what he wanted. He is an avid reader like that. He used a lot of science books.

 

My 6yo asked a few general questions but nothing further and doesn't seem much interested past that.

[NanceXToo]

When they ask, we have conversations about it and read age-appropriate books. This usually happens around age 4-5 with my kids, and then comes up again periodically from time to time.

[Sevilla]

I should have noted that my girls know that babies grow in the mom's uterus and how they get out around the 9th month. I've told them they started as a tiny egg inside their birth moms. What they don't know is what triggers the whole business, i.e., that males have a role.

 

I guess I'm a little afraid that they will take this information to school and (a) blab it to the other kids or (b) try to do some hands-on learning. It's bad enough that my youngest is already planning marriage with a KG boy.;)

They're not going to connect "dad makes sperm, mom makes egg and a baby comes from two pepole" with "I want to have sex and get a boy's sperm" b/c they don't connect reproduction facts with sexuality (yet). I really wouldn't be concerned - at their age I would expect all children to be familiar wtih the terms 'sperm' and 'egg' in the context of baby-growing.

[GTJo1996]

Last year DD had just turned 7 and we were eating ice cream alone at the beach. it was a mother-daughter weekend away and it struck me what a nice moment we were enjoying. and then she looked at me and said "How DO babies get in the mom's tummy anyway?" Uh, hello, left field, where did that come from? so I told her. And she said "GROSS!" and that was the end of the conversation. I know, one day I will have to get into more detail.

[ElizaG]

My kids are 4. So far they don't know they have a "birth father" as well as a "birth mother." They don't know about kids looking like their daddies and all that good stuff. I just haven't felt it was time to "go there" yet.

 

So when do you all do that? I know I was 7 when we learned certain mechanics from a schoolbook and I put 1 and 1 together, if you get my drift. But I don't think I can wait until the girls are 7 to tell them they have a birth father.

Well, my children know that animals don't "get married" like we do, but that they do choose a mate and then have babies. They also know that every cell in our bodies contains a set of instructions that affect what we look like (among other things), and babies inherit half these instructions from their father and half from their mother. They also know that babies grow inside their mommy's tummy, and they come out in a special way when they're ready. And they know that a cesarean is an operation that's done if it's necessary to take the baby out sooner or faster.

 

They haven't asked about anything else yet. Though I think DD7, who reads a lot of science and nature books, has probably got some ideas.

 

So I don't think it's necessary to give any information that you'd rather hold off on.

[amo_mea_filiis.]

Ds was very young because I was answering dd's question about sperm and eggs. Ds comes into the room with his undies down looking at his bits and says "I hab (have) eggs!" I had to reword everything so he would understand. Dd figured out a few months later how the sperm gets to the egg, and shared it with ds. They thought it was so gross.

[Tigger]

Given my DH's career and his habit of saying "time to make the babies" (a la 'time to make the donuts' commercials from long ago)on his way out in the morning, we've clued DS7 in a bit so he doesn't think all babies come from retrievals, cultures in media and semen samples! He definitely doesn't know the mechanics yet though.

[Dolphin]

 

This is the book I am reading to my 4 year old. I have a friend who works with kids who come into dhs through the medical route. This is the series she reads to HER kids. It is gentle, age appropriate, and gives the right names to everything. There are one or 2 sections some people might want to skip over, but it is easy to do.

[Impish]

Honestly, I don't remember an age. Tazzie is 6, Princess is 5 this wk, and its just been an ongoing conversation. Diva has a lot more info, obviously :lol:

 

We've also discussed adoption, birth parents, etc b/c Wolf is adopted, and is Metis, MIL is Caucasian, so there were questions as to why Daddy didn't look anything like Grandma, but did look like Uncle ____ (his b uncle).

[LucyStoner]

We started when he was 3-4 and had questions. When he was 5, I was pregnant and he read most of a Child is Born.

[kalanamak]

My dh told my son the Facts of Life when he was 6 months old. He strutted away, saying, "I don't know what is so hard about that. It went really well. The boy took it like a man."

 

Bwahaha.

 

Seriously, I don't think there is an "age." I know kids who "got it" really young and others who were 13 before they were even interested in knowing. I think you do these conversations in small pieces and over and over...it's really 200 small conversations.

 

I started very young. David Attenborough helped along the way. The slugs mating is quite a show.

[Rivka]

FWIW, we have triplets in our extended family who were carried by a surrogate. We have a same-sex couple in our family who have used donor sperm to have their children. My kids have good friends who are identical twins. I myself have had homebirths and my oldest was present was the youngest was born. I've also done doula work and my kids have thumbed through all of my various books on childbirth and pregnancy. They've had four brand-new baby cousins born just this summer. So,really, pregnancy, babies, and the various ways that families are formed are just a part of our everyday lives. I can't imagine them NOT already knowing and understanding the very basic fundamentals of how they got here.

 

:lol: I took my daughter to the Maryland statehouse on the day they planned to vote about marriage equality. We were listening to the delegates give their speeches, and at one point she turned to me and said, out loud, in her very clear six-year-old voice, "Mom, that man said that only a man and a woman can make a baby, but can't a doctor...?"

 

She got a book when she was three, and I was pregnant with her little brother. To kids of that age, the interesting part of reproduction is its architectural aspects. She was fascinated by the egg and the sperm and how they grow into a fetus, and what it's like inside the uterus as the baby develops, and her book had lots of information and pictures about that. She was not particularly interested in how the sperm gets there in the first place, so we mostly skimmed over that page.

 

In the case of an absent and irrelevant father, I might say something like, "All babies start from a tiny speck from a man and a tiny speck from a woman. The pieces come together and grow in a special place inside the mother called her uterus, and they grow into a baby. Your birth mother took care of you by herself after you were born, but before you started growing she got the little speck from a man she used to know."

[Rivka]

This is the book I am reading to my 4 year old. I have a friend who works with kids who come into dhs through the medical route. This is the series she reads to HER kids. It is gentle, age appropriate, and gives the right names to everything. There are one or 2 sections some people might want to skip over, but it is easy to do.

 

That's an awesome book! I love it.

[teachermom2834]

Tonight...though we hadn't planned on it.

 

My 8yo son said "Mom, I know Dad fertilized your eggs and it is sooo romantic."

 

He'd checked out a bunch of human body books at the library and this is what he took from it. His details were both amusing and mortifying so we set him straight on the facts.

 

My other boys were 10. We never meant to wait that long. I always planned to answer questions and talk about it along the way as it came up but mine never asked. I kept waiting and they just didn't ask. By 10 we felt like it was too late and they really had to know.

[SKL]

His details were both amusing and mortifying . . . .

 

:lol:

 

When my kid sister was little, she came up with her own ideas about how babies are made. She told me all about it. After a woman is married, God decides she is to have a baby and so the food she eats starts coming together in her belly until it makes a baby.

 

Then the neighbor teen got pregnant. Her little sister was my sister's best friend.

 

My sister, then 6, went to the neighbor mom and demanded to know how the teen got pregnant without first being married. So neighbor mom told her.

 

She came home and gave me a clear and accurate description of how pregnancy occurs. :001_huh: Awesome. At least our family didn't have to worry about the "talk" any more.

[Mommy22alyns]

The girls have some of the story. They know that Daddy gives Mommy a "special seed" to make a baby. They're aware of the two ways a baby can be born (I had one of each). They know why women have a period. That's pretty much it for right now.

[annandatje]

Taught as they ask in appropriate content and detail for the age and context. Little by little piece by piece.

[Spy Car]

Ask the boy's mother :D

 

I have explained DNA. I'm sticking with that.

 

Bill

[Diana B]

My ds is 8 and he still has pretty much no clue. I'm waiting for him to show interest, otherwise he won't really care. I also try not to throw to much at him when he's not really asking for it. Just tonight he asked "Where do babies come from?", I gave him my normal quick answer of "From inside their moms." If he really cared, he would have asked how they get there. Instead he asked "Where do kids come from?" Followed by adults, and teenagers, and "Old ladies like you?" He wasn't really wanting to know where babies come from. :lol:

 

He does know that it takes a Mom & a Dad, but he doesn't know details beyond that. I know the question will come up one day, but I figure he'll get it much better when he's ready.

[8circles]

Whenever they ask. We had the "full explanation" a year ago - it's hard to remember. All 3 boys were present so they were 7, 6, & 4-ish. Obviously we'll talk about it again since they were so young. They haven't mentioned it since.

[IsabelC]

Seriously, I don't think there is an "age." I know kids who "got it" really young and others who were 13 before they were even interested in knowing. I think you do these conversations in small pieces and over and over...it's really 200 small conversations.

^^^That!^^^

It's incremental. There is no one optimum age for all kids. Oh, and they will forget half of what you told them and ask again a couple of years later!

 

My 8yo learned about babies growing in my uterus at age 1. At age 3 he learned about menstruation. At 4 he learned about sperm and ovum and how they get together. Then he lost interest for a few years and forgot about most of it. This year he learnt about puberty and sex. He figured out on his own that same sex couples need somebody of the opposite sex to have babies. He learnt that grownups have sex for reasons other than baby making, and that there are ways to prevent pregnancy. He still does not know about abortion, rape, and a host of other more complex / confronting topics.

[Friederike in Persia]

Having a degree in Human Biology it's my favourite subject in our school and all 3 have heard about reproduction from a very young age.

Having said that, it gets tricky with our neighbours and friends, since we live in a very conservative, Islamic society. Babies are bought at the bazaar,..... a lot of girls don't know what's coming when they get married at 16 or 17.

So my dd playing having babies with her neighbour friend and them showing her mum how the dolls popped out of their dresses knocked that lady fair and square :001_huh::D.

The topic gets always accompanied with "YOU DO NOT SHARE THIS WITH ANY OF YOUR LOCAL FRIENDS" since then!!

[Snickerdoodle]

At 4 he learned about sperm and ovum and how they get together.

 

My younger knew about the sperm and the ovum for a very long time. Finally, when he was 7 he wanted to know how they got together. He was simply shocked and very disgusted by the facts.

 

It was the funniest conversation I've EVER had. :lol: