Good Afternoon Ladies, Another post sparked my thought process...
I've posted about my bright little girl before. She's very inquisitive, and when she becomes curious about something, she doesn't stop until she knows everything there is to know about that subject! Her current obsession is the weather and she swears she's going to be a meteorologist when she grows up. She wakes up and immediately turns on the news to report to us what the weather will be like that day! She has always been a bit mature for her age intellectually because of her love of learning. Emotionally, she's your average 7-year-old sweety pie!
I am very open and honest with my daughters about our bodies, private parts, etc. I answer all of her questions honestly, quelling her curiosity with enough information, but not so much as to cause further curiosity. She has asked me before, "What is sex?" I'm assuming she heard the word from TV. I answered her, "It's something that married people do to show each other that they love each other." She was completely fine with that answer. Good, because I think she was only five when she asked. Yikes!
If the question arises again, is this a good age to tell her the honest-to-gosh truth about sex? I hope that I can continue to shelter her adventurous curiosity by monitoring what blares on the television, but inevitably my baby girl will want to know where babies come from. And I will tell her. I'm not nervous to tell her, we have a wonderfully honest and trusting household. But I don't want to divulge too much too soon either. What does your seven-year-old know? How old was your child when you told them the truth about sex? How did they react to it?
I recommend the book 'Where Did i Come From'. Great gentle but matter-of-fact information. My parents bought it when we were children, so i was never shocked or naieve about sex. I have bought it for when my kids are interested.
My oldest is only eight, and we do it similar to you. We've told her similar answers about that question too. I don't think 7-8 is too young, but I do think it might be more than what she is really wanting. If she wants to know more, she'll ask what that means to show love and will pry for more info. Then I think that is your cue to slowly explain more.
There are several books that are wonderful in my opinion. The first one is called "The Story of Me (God's design for Sex)" by Brenna Jones and Stan Jones. These books have a suggested age range. I love them. You can search for them on Amazon. We read the first one to our 3 year old now.
when my boys asked about it very young, I did not want to tell them either. I told them sex was a girl or boy thing - a boys's sex was male and a girl's sex was female. They bought it for awhile.
Well, one of my daughters was about 5 or 6 when she point-blank asked me "why do grown ups have to mate before they have babies?" Since I knew this was part of her curiosity about science and nature and because she already was fascinated with bees, I told her it was sort of like how fruit trees need to be pollinated in order to bear fruit, and that was the kind of answer that she was looking for at the time. My tactic is to answer as much as they want to know (fortunately, so far they're mostly just interested in the biology end of it LOL) - so you could tell your daughter there's a lot to know about it and what part is she asking about, so you could tell as much as she wants to know.
Definitely get an age-appropriate book to help guide your discussion. I had "the talk" with my 9 yr old daughter a couple of months ago. I had been putting off talking about the nitty gritty until then. When I was pregnant two years ago, she had a lot of questions and wanted to know how the baby got in my tummy. My first reaction was to tell her that God put it there. She was ok with that, but now that she's nine, it wasn't a clear enough answer. I had a book by a Christian publisher that I showed her. It really stresses that a couple can only do these things if they're married, and it's a special kind of love for married people. It does show everything that happens while stressing morals and values. If you're looking for a more secular approach, there is a book called "It's Not the Stork" or something like that. I also showed her portions of that book. Go on Amazon.com and look up the topic. I found it very useful to have pictures and diagrams to help me explain everything to her.
I would tell her a bit more - that it has to do with the private parts and that it is very special, but important (because it is so special) to wait until marriage (since that sounds like what you want to teach anyway). But I wouldn't go into too many details yet.
My daughter was 9 or 10, I think, before we went into any more detail, and it went along with the maturation stuff from school (this is why your body is going through changes ... school said nothing about sex but it was a good starter).
I came from an open communication family and my mom actually started menstruating at 9yrs old. So she was very adamant about making sure we had all the information that we needed. As well as the birds and the bees talk, she gave me a book that was all questions written to a doctor about women issues...physical, sexual and emotional. It was a great supplement because I could read it privately without being embarrassed and several of my friends read it too.
I agree with the other posts, stick with the facts. My kids know that you can have a kid without being married (unmarried extended family with kids), but we stress how hard it is and how much more fulfilling it is to have a spouse for help.
Yep, I would definitely tell her, she's probably already hearing it at school.
