What do you think is the "best age" to tell children about sex?

When they’re one year old. Those wide eyes and cute giggles would just crack me up.

when they start asking.

When they ask.

I don’t have children (yet), but lets say I will have in some years…, it will be around my 47th.

There’s telling them about sex and then there’s talking to them about sex. They need to know some things at the age of four or five. They need to know about bad touch. Later, they need to know about how it works—maybe age seven or eight. Then at ten or eleven for boys and maybe 9 or 10 for girls, there should be a more serious talk about love, feelings, relationships and the role that sex plays in these things.

They should also be reminded that sex carries dangers and requires protection. Sex can result in babies. There can be pressure for sex. Etc., etc. It can also, of course, be an expression of love and it feels good and all that other good stuff.

11 years 4 months and 6 days.

When they start asking about how they came to be. Which is usually pretty young, usually around 1 or younger. You start it in stages and build on it as time goes on so there isn’t just 1 unakward talk it is always a known fact. They don’t even know when or how they learned of it but they know how you feel about things and they are well prepared when things come to pass as they get older and your not with them to protect them.

I agree that you should answer honestly when they ask but for those kids who don’t ask (and some don’t) you really need to have small talks from about 5 on.

I’ve talked to my kids since they were really young and the net result has been that they come to me about everything that is happening in their lives. It is sometimes slightly uncomfortable for me but it makes me happy that we have that kind of relationship.

Any age when they start asking questions and start getting “curious”. Just be honest. Knowing the facts won’t make young kids sexually promiscuous. They’re not physically able or yearning for that yet.

When they want to know and as it comes up naturally – pun intended.

I agree with all of you…except @mazingerz88, who said, “When they’re one year old. Those wide eyes and cute giggles would just crack me up.” I understand that you were making a joke because a one year old would have no clue what you’re talking about. But even if they did a one year old hasn’t been indoctrinated into the ridiculous concept that discussing sex is “embarrassing,” and something to giggle about.

Yeah, if you start casually talking when they start asking, it’s not going to be the uncomfortable embarrassment that it would be when they’re older. I don’t think any age is too young to discuss any aspect of it. Not the physical and not the emotional.

I don’t think there is a ‘best age’. My kids just picked it up gradually from an early age and in a form suitable for that age. There will never be a rule book for raising kids. If you are well balance and sensible you will always be the best judge of what is best for your children.

About 6–7 yrs old or when they ask, whichever comes first.

I learned about sex and basic sexual reproduction when I was about 7yrs old. It was clinical and I enjoyed to shock adults now and then with what I knew but all said and done, I think it was best. No mystery, just another piece of knowledge. For awhile anyhow.~

When they ask. Tell them about it in an age-appropriate response.

I was kind of hoping someone who won’t talk about sex with the children would post, and tell us why they think it’s wrong.

Please, please do not choose to broach the subject in their junior year of high school in front of their boyfriend of three months! Because the boyfriend will never let them live it down. And, they will have learned all they need to know first from Romance novels and then from the Wonderfully Wicked Web.

For those of you who think you should wait until they ask you might want to reconsider. When I was a little kid, I would have never dreamed of asking about anything like that (that seemed sort of naughty or taboo). Thank goodness my folks gave me little bits of age appropriate information from the time I was old enough to even remember anything, so probably around 3 or so. Then as I got older, we had a pretty good system at school, for teaching about sex. But that was before the days when it would have ever turned out that any kid below the age of about 16 would have even considered having sex.

There were a lot of my friends, who I suspect, had never even thought about sex, in any way shape or form, until they got that first sex ed (or rather the your body is changing class in early 6th grade, age 11 and 12). That’s because their parents simply would not talk about “dirty” subjects like that to their kids. Subsequently, those kids were pretty shocked to find out where babies came from at that late of an age. Nowadays, 11 or 12 is way to late to start talking about sex and birth control and STD’s. Many kids are actually sexually active, especially girls, at that age (which is really frightening and slightly disgusting) but they do not even know the basics about how sex works, how emotions tie in, how to avoid pregnancy, how to avoid domestic violence, how to avoid disease, and even how to know if you are pregnant.

That’s why even Fluther gets so many (in my opinion) questions about whether or not I could be pregnant?

Some parents do not want to discuss the sex stuff with their kids, because they think that by explaining it to them, their kids will want to run out and have sex. But the opposite seems to be true. Kids end up having sex, without even realizing what sex is or the ramifications of having sex. Usually because some other kid talks them into doing it, or they want to appear to be cool or sophisticated, or they get raped because they had no idea what sex and/or rape even is. And some kids, mostly girls, end up having sex because they think having a baby is glamorous or that a baby will love them.

It’s best to start talking about where babies come from when the kids are actually babies themselves, and just keep adding more explicit details and information that is age appropriate. But if your kid doesn’t know what sex is, or where babies come from and why sex is not a good option for young people (under age) by the time they’re in about 3rd grade, then the parents are most likely in for a rude awakening when their kids hit their tweens.

I agree with @athenasgriffin that sex should be discussed discreetly in the home, but the discussions should be open and honest and straightforward and correct terminology should be used (and I think a really good sex education system should be brought back into the schools) But don’t bring up the subject of sex with your child in front of other kids or other non-immediate family members. It would be embarrassing and your kid would likely lie and pretend like he/she knew everything about it already, even if he/she did not.

I agree with everytime they ask, or anytime there’s an easy opportunity.

When my daughter was a pre teen and started asking a lot of questions, I got her the book What’s Happening to my Body.
Although she could ask me anything she wore that book out! She still to this day brags about how she corrected the teachers in sex ed classes because she knew so much.

I say start giving them little nuggets from two years up.

@Kardamom I think most people here meant when a child starts asking where babies come from. That opens the opportunity to tell them about sex. I think all kids ask that question, they have no idea about sex when they ask it.

@JLeslie I completely disagree with you. I never would have even considered the idea of asking where babies came from. I was the youngest child, so there were no other “babies” to spark that question, and the idea of anything that had anything to do with sex was completely taboo for kids in my generation (and for most kids today). I had an inkling about such things, because of rumblings from other little kids (that were completely wrong) but I would have died of embarrasment to have asked such questions.

You simply cannot wait until kids start asking questions. You have to let them know, starting at a very early age. Just like all the questions that I read on Fluther about people being shy and or having no knowlege of how pregnancy occurs. If parents and teachers don’t tell children what sex is all about at an early, really early age, even if they don’t ask you first, the kids will end up with a distorted idea about what sex is and where babies come from and everything else concerning sex.

And just to reiterate, me and my brother never asked where babies came from and neither did any of my cousins, that I know of, and neither did any of our little friends. It just wasn’t something that was of any interest, as most of us kids were in 2 kid or less families. So there were no babies or naked bodies (because that was frowned upon) to even put the idea in our heads. Thankfully my parents let us know, in baby steps what the deal was, and then our schools took over and really gave us a top notch education. No one that I knew ever turned up pregnant, unmarried or pregnant in their teenage years except one girl who one of our teacher’s was found out to be sleeping with. It was a huge scandal.

Unfortunately that kind of thing is de rigeur now. Because parents don’t explain to their young children what sex is all about, and if you’re lucky, the only info you will get in school is abstinence only and if you look at Sarah Palin’s kid, that don’t work!

It just doesn’t occur to kids to ask questions about subjects that they have never, ever heard of.

@Kardamom So there were no babies or naked bodies (because that was frowned upon) to even put the idea in our heads. I guess you grew up in an era where sex was not the litmus test to prove how cool, attractive, and accepted you were. To go past your 15th b-day and had not been groped, boinked, or sext has to mean you were such a dweeb no one wanted to go near you intimately with a 15ft pole.

Sorry, they say sarcasm is the dish best served dry, and that was pretty dry. It was just to make a point

@Kardamom How old are you? I only ask because you say your generation, and I don’t think of you as being much older than me. I guess I really did not explain my thoughts well. I think of children at age 4,5,6, and 7 asking about babies. I have no idea what being the youngest has to do with it, were you in a rural place in a community with a very small population and did not see any pregnant women? No friends of your mom’s had babies? None of your girlfriends had a new sister or brother? If the children have not asked by 10 (moreor less, dependimg on the child) then yes the parents should start the conversation, at minimum letting the kids know the basics about puberty. Hopefully the school is doing something about it also, because parents who are so repressed about sex and nudity might really suck at talking about sex and changes during puberty.

I have to agree that I am sure there are some children who never think to ask where babies come from, or why does mommy have hair in various places, or breasts for that matter, or why married people kiss on the lips (well, I guess some families kiss everyone on the lips) but it seems like there are many circumstances where sex talk can be had. Back innthe day my girlfriends who went to Catholic school say everything regarding sex and sex organs was left as a mystery. But, even their daughters now, who go to Catholic school get some info from the school at minimum about puberty.

About Palin and her kids. Abstinence may not be very effective, but at least it is something. A total void of sex ed would be worse in my opinion. I competely disagree with abstinence only, but I find it shocking when teens are so very clueless about sex, pregnancy, girls about their menstruation cycle. It should be taught in the same way we learn about our digestive and cirulatory system in science class. Too many adults are really very stupid about their bodies, anatomy, in general.

I think @Kardamom has the right of it. Parents need to take a very proactive role in this. Socially speaking, things start happening very early now compared to when I was growing up (in the 60s and 70s). I remember being shocked when I was age 13 and I saw classmates openly making out while waiting for buses to take us home.

That kind of stuff seems to happen when kids are 10 or 11 fairly often now. Girls are much more aggressive these days—in some cases, more aggressive than boys, socially speaking. Maybe sexually speaking, as well.

If your child doesn’t go to a school where they have good sex education (in my kids’ school, they call it “decisions”), then you need to be even more proactive. “Decisions” first happens in 6th grade.

Both my wife and I were very slow developers sexually speaking. Perhaps our children will take after us. I know my daughter, who is 15, has decided she wants nothing to do with sex until maybe college. We did not ask her to do this. She just decided what her priorities were. She may not even date. We’ll see.

My son is a popular boy in his class among the girls. But he’s refused what might or might not have been a date because he was uncomfortable and was sure the boys would all make fun of him. I think he, too, wants to wait until he feels comfortable about these things. Even so, we need to be certain he knows what he needs to know.

This is a topic that easily makes people uncomfortable because of what we learned in our families and because of the shame put on it in our society. It is a matter to be hidden, not talked about openly. That makes it very difficult for us to talk about it. Waiting until they ask about it could easily be waiting too long. What if they never ask about it? I believe there is a time table for these discussion, regardless of what the kids talk to us about.

How can we expect our children to ask about sex and emotions and relationships when they know how uncomfortable it makes us? Make no mistake. They know. They know by the time they are 5 or 6 what topics to avoid in general conversation.

I grew up in the late 60’s and 70’s. Me and most of the kids that were my age, were the youngest child in the family. Most families in our neighborhood only had 2 kids. So none of my neighbors, or any of my parent’s friends, and none of my female teachers was ever pregnant during that time. The first pregnant lady I ever encountered was at about aged 8, when one of my aunt’s had a baby. But by that time, I already knew where babies came from, because my parents had told me. But I never, ever would have even thought to ask about it on my own. Most of my friends parents were affectionate with each other and we occasionally saw them kissing, but it never would have occurred to most of us kids that kissing had anything to do with babies (turns out we were right, it doesn’t). All we knew was that kissing was gross and something we didn’t want to talk about or think about.

When I was in junior and senior high, it was extremely rare for any of the students to be having sex, although lots of kids had boyfriends and girlfriends. There were a few kids, around 16 or 17 who were sexually involved, plus the one girl that got knocked up by the 8th grade teacher. There was also one student couple, in which the girl ended up pregnant and it was a huge scandal. They were forced to leave school and they got married and had the child. We also had very good sex education classes starting in the 6th grade, then again in 8th and again in 10th. All of the birth control methods were discussed and my 10th grade health teacher even demonstrated how to properly put a condom on a banana. I’m pretty sure that there are lots of young people, as well as adults, who still don’t know how to properly put on or take off a condom so that a pregnancy will be averted.

By the time I was in about 12th grade, there started to be more pressure for girls to have sex, especially if she had a boyfriend who was older. For those of us who’d had the great sex education, it was easier to resist having sex in the first place, simply because not everyone was doing it like they are today, and/or use proper birth control. Because of the abstinence only stuff going on today, most young people and plenty of adults have no idea what kinds of birth control are available, and even if they’ve heard of them, they have no idea how to use them properly. And again, I’ll point out that there have been a rash of questions on Fluther asking if they might be pregnant. Because young people simply don’t realize what it takes to get pregnant. There are still people who believe that “pulling out” will prevent pregnancy, even though there is sperm present before a man ejaculates.

Having good and comprehensive sex education classes never made anyone have sex. They just made us better equipped to make choices regarding it, when the time came. Plenty of kids have lots of unprotected sex today, without ever hearing one word about where babies come from or how sex is even related to babies coming or how to prevent babies from coming.

@Kardamom Do you think it is more important for schools to teach about sex than to rely on parents to do it?

By the way, nikipedia provided a link on a recent Q that showed there is little to no sperm in pre ejaculate. I had not known the statistics previously. I know plenty of people who used withdrawal combined with avoiding the most likely days to get pregnant effectively actually. The problem is sometimes the guy does not pull out, and teens cannot be relied upon to figure out their fertile days because as you say they are pretty ignorant on the matter. Better for us to tell people you have to assume you can get pregnant every day of the month. And, I certainly do not recommend withdrawal if getting pregnant will be a travesty.

I grew up about the same time as you, I was born in 68, graduated high school in 85, so not much behind. I think my knowledge level had more to do with the openess in my community in general about sex, and comfort with our bodies in my family. When I lived in NY when I was very young, dating was for the older teens in high school. When I moved to MD in 5th grade kids talked about being boyfriend and girlfriend in elementary school. It was shocking to me. Same era, just different location in America.

@Kardamom I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. For whatever reason, my mom had no qualms about telling me where babies come from or what sex was. I was 7.

When she was about 6 my oldest daughter asked where her baby sister came from. I explained the deal….and she was simply HORRIFIED!!! She embarrassed me!

I had a book called “Mysteries of the Human Body…” after the kids moved out I realized it was dog eared and tattered!

@JLeslie I would love to think that most parents would do a good job teaching their kids everything they need to know about where babies come from and about what sex is, and what types of birth control methods are available and how to use them. Unfortunately, I don’t think most parents are equipped to give full, reliable, accurate information about these subjects.

I learned where babies come from, from my parents when I was very little (but I didn’t dare ask any questions about it, I would have been mortified), but I learned much more about the realities and facts, in much more scientific and useful detail in school sex education classes.

Today, kids don’t learn much from their parents about sex and birth control and they get nothing from school. It’s really horrifiying because nowadays sex is everywhere. It’s in the movies and all over TV and on T-shirts and in music. They didn’t allow much to do with sex on TV when I was growing up. Sure, you heard the word, but you didn’t see simulated sex on TV and on most of the shows that we watched like The Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family, kids just kind of turned up, they were never shown being born, nor were the mothers ever pregnant. Many TV families had only one parent, usually a male (like Nanny and the Professor and Gidget). No one ever talked about how those kids got there. And even when I was under 18, they simply didn’t allow you to go into and R rated movie (today no one cares to check ID) and now parents can and do rent sex filled movies at home, but they still don’t tell their kids what sex is all about. Most kids see sex as this awsome, sweaty, passionate, choreographed dance between two beautiful hard bodies. And no one shows up to high school one day in a panic, because they’re “late.” And shows like 16 and Pregnant (although it’s supposed to do the opposite) show young girls how cool it is to get pregant and have a baby, because babies love you and you’ll get to go on TV and have your picture plastered all over People magazine.

@Kardamom I know many people who like you would never have asked their parents about sex, they would have been mordified also as you put it. I can’t imagine feeling like that, especially as a little girl. As a little girl I asked my parents everything, and I did not know sex connected to babies being born.

Teens I get it, because for many there is a dance to not let your parents know you might be thinking of doing it, although I told my mom after my first time, so bringing up sex can start a bunchof questions the teen does not want to answer, or information they don’t want to hear.

I would never want to rely on parents only to teach sex, anatomy, etc. Especially after reading your answer it is more clear than ever.

It almost makes the original question moot. But, of course I think the ideal is parents having open communication with their children.

@Kardamom Why would you have been “mortified” to ask certain questions as a child? Where did you learn (the crazy idea) that “certain questions” just shouldn’t be asked?

@Dutchess_III When I was a kid in the 60’s no one talked about subjects that were considered “dirty” or “taboo” and it was made extremely clear to us kids what those subjects were. My own parents would have probably been perfectly fine with me asking them questions, but because of the reactions of my peers and their parents to these “off limits subjects” I would never had dared to talk about them. Even after my parents told me where babies came from, at around age 3 or so, I remember being rather horrified and disgusted and from that point on, I would have never dreamed of asking a question about such a topic. Even when we got our first sex education cass in 6th grade (and I already knew where babies came from) not one kid asked one question in this class. For 2 reasons, we all knew that those “dirty” subjects were not to be spoken of in public and it would have been humiliating for any of us to ask a question about it, because then it would have been known by the other kids how stupid and naive you were for not knowing. Plus, back then, because there was no public discussion of such things, and we were not bombarded with sex on TV, and children of our age were not engaged in sexual activity, it would never even have occurred to us what questions to ask, even if we weren’t too mortified to ask. Later on, in 8th grade, no kid ever asked a question either. By that time, we were in a class of both boys and girls and no one wanted to look ignorant in front of the opposite sex, that would have been your death knell. Then later on in 10th grade, no one asked a question out loud for the same reason, plus you would have been looked upon as a super-ignorant geek if you didn’t know about sex at that point. In the world of children, it is made crystal clear to you at an early age what kinds of topics should not be discussed unless you want to have the finger of shame pointed at you.

Hopefully it’s different today. Unfortunately, most kids don’t get any kind of sex education in school, kids start having sex much earlier (without having much or any knowlege about it) and their parents still don’t tell them about it. The only thing that’s changed is that people openly talk about sex day in and day out, but they still don’t know how people get pregnant or how to properly use birth control, or how to say no to a partner.

I’m saying there were exceptions in that age, @Kardamom. The Barbie incident I referred to in my details happened in ‘65.