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    The Sex Talk

    So...what are your stories about "The Talk"? And what are your own plans with your children? Is their an age that you thing it *should* be brought up? Or do you think it should wait until *they* bring it up? Are their subjects that you think are taboo? How would/did you broach topics like homosexuality, masturbation, birth control? How do you handle nudity in your home? And (because I totally overhead this at the grocery store today), how do you handle taking your teen age daughter wanting a vibrator--or son wanting the equivelent...or either wanting porn (personally, I thought it was pretty impressive to see that sort of honest and comfortable relationship between a parent and kid at that age)?

    This is sort of an ongoing discussion in our household--about how we plan to handle teaching about the body in general, when its appropriate to talk about sex and what sort of detail to go into, etc. I grew up in a household where my mother was a nurse and had a quite a few books about anatomy and where babies come from (I notably remember this one)...so I don't remember ever really *not* knowing in a scholarly sense what sex was, what human bodies looked like, etc...while my hubby was raised by his mom since his dad died as a child in a super-Catholic (and repressed) family.

    We are still hammering out the details (as I suspect we will be for the next 15 or so years), but we've found the book Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They'd Ask): The Secrets to Surviving Your Child's Sexual Development from Birth to the Teens by Justin Richardson and Mark Schuster to be pretty damn helpful in anticipating some of the issues/questions that we can expect (while we have yet to have and real curiosity from being "interrupted", we have had children intrude a bit in other ways...notably the discovery that we need to hide the grown-up toys better).
    Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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    #2
    Re: The Sex Talk

    I don't have kids, but I just wanted to point out that I think it depends quite much on the school your children are going and what kind of friends they make there when it's time to talk about these things. For example I've had health/sex education (first about the differencies of females and males, menstruation, that it's okay to feel lust and it's normal to masturbate etc. Then later more about sex, STD's and birth control) in school since I was 10 I guess. I don't think I needed that before it because I've always been slow one when it comes to development.

    BUT I think I've known about how babies are made since I was a kid, but I don't think it has affected negatively on me or anything like that. I don't remember ever learning that from anywhere, but I'd guess it's been told by my mom when I've first started to talk about storks bringing babies. She thought there's no need to postpone telling the truth - though I think it was just that she said something like "daddy put a little seed inside mommy's belly and then you started growing there and became a baby". Also I remember my little brother asking my dad how the seed is placed there, but i can't remember the answer..

    But because of school's and school's health nurses contribution, I didn't feel the need to have the same talk from my parents. I think my mom always asked if there's something we want to discuss more or ask about, and she also tried to give the sex talk about birth control when I and my little brother were something like 16 and 15, but we just said that there's no need for it 'coz we've been listening the same stories over and over again in the school (we had at least one public lecture and one private conversation per year about the topic).

    And on the other hand if kids make friends who are - for some reason - more knowledged about things I think there's more need for parents to give the talk. Just to avoid kids getting wrong ideas and prejudices etc. from their friends... But how to know when they start hearing things from others..? Well, i have no idea...

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      #3
      Re: The Sex Talk

      you know.. I never had "the talk" from a parent.. It was just left to my school to talk to me *shrugs* and as it had never been spoken to me by my mum or dad I was kind of too embarrassed to talk to them or ask them about anything.. actually I'd started my period and been on it for about 8 months before mum finally found out. I've been a very self teaching self learning kiddy
      I think some kids are smart enough to be able to handle learning stuff for themselves.. where as others aren't the brightest bulb in the shop and well.. left to their own devices would end up in a pretty awful place :-\
      It would have been nice to have my mum be able to answer my questions.. but from what I've seen on the telly most kids hate it when their parents have "the talk" :P

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        #4
        Re: The Sex Talk

        I've never gotten the talk. So while I figured out what a "BJ" was at the age of six, I didn't know (on my own body) that there was a place separate from where you pee that things go into until I was past 15.

        My DOCTOR gave me the talk at 16, but I never listened, as I didn't have an interest in anything even remotely sexual until I was 20. My highschool tried to teach me, but I'd skip all the classes. I preferred to remain ignorant, because I couldn't understand how something that caused harm could be a good thing.

        I don't know that I would tell my children, to be honest.


        Mostly art.

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          #5
          Re: The Sex Talk

          Yeah tbh.. I find that most of my friends here haven't had the talk as such.. the talk is something I kind of hear about on american tv :P
          probably why the teenage pregnancy rate is higher in england than anywhere else in europe xD

          I think its hard to have "the talk" with your kids if you havent received one yourself when you were little.

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            #6
            Re: The Sex Talk

            [quote author=Sin link=topic=686.msg10182#msg10182 date=1288970091]
            Yeah tbh.. I find that most of my friends here haven't had the talk as such.. the talk is something I kind of hear about on american tv :P
            probably why the teenage pregnancy rate is higher in england than anywhere else in europe xD

            I think its hard to have "the talk" with your kids if you havent received one yourself when you were little.
            [/quote]

            Yeah, what do you say to them? Mommy and Daddy fit together like a puzzle piece, and then mommy grows a baby in her tummy? I mean, I thought about the whole "it's a special act that mommy and daddy do to show love for each other" which is true, but I don't know how to say that to a child without them getting the idea that they want to do it to show love for someone. I'm rather disgusted by the idea of someone having sex under 20, let alone my own children. (waits to be told off for that last statement)


            Mostly art.

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              #7
              Re: The Sex Talk

              I learned to read when I was about three or four years old, thanks to an amazing effort by my grandmother. So when I was a little older than that, maybe 5 or so, and with my mother at the video store, I found a cartoon called, "Where Do Babies Come From?" I thought, "...Where DO babies come from?" and asked Mom if I could get it. She watched it by herself first to verify whether it would be okay for me to watch it.

              All I remember from it was a scene wherein two cats rub their necks together more and more vigorously until they exploded in hearts.

              I didn't have a clue what that was supposed to mean. So while I did learn that men and women have different bodies, I had no idea what those differences were for.

              However, at about the age of ten or eleven, I found a porn stash. That was REAL sex, and that taught me everything I could ever want to know. At twelve, I knew all the slang, I knew all the toys, I knew all the positions. While I went through a few years of incredible guilt - when I was finally caught and punished, and couldn't quite reason why it was okay for THEM, and not okay for ME, and that somehow it was good but at the same time shameful - it didn't take long for me to realize that I had just learned about all the things I wasn't SUPPOSED to find out about for a long time, and that I was punished mostly for the embarrassment that my parents felt for my invading their privacy. Put another way, the shame I was feeling wasn't so much about being exposed to actual sex, but the shame my parents felt for me having seen their personal things.

              I have never had any hangups about sex in my life. I'm completely comfortable talking about it. I have an very open mind about sex.

              Oh, and I found this book in my brother's room after he moved out and I moved upstairs. My mother didn't bother telling me what a period was. I had no idea menstruation existed until this book casually reads, "Your first period could happen at the movie theater or in school," and that not only blew my mind but terrified me because I had absolutely no idea what to expect. I found everything else on my own, and my mother never told me a thing (other than mentioning it the first time I had cramps). When I finally did get my first period, at twelve, I didn't tell her for nearly a whole day. She mortified me by telling everyone. She called my grandfather to tell him I was a woman now. It was beyond embarrassing.

              I think what Dark and I will end up doing when Jack asks us about babies is just explaining it as best we can at whatever age he happens to be. If he's very young, though, I'll probably just see if I can't get him to forget about it for a while, until he's old enough to at least understand the basics. I've seen a couple of books that manage to get the point across without mentioning genitals whatsoever, so depending on his age, it's not necessary to be really descriptive.


              [quote author=volcaniclastic link=topic=686.msg10190#msg10190 date=1288971144]
              I'm rather disgusted by the idea of someone having sex under 20, let alone my own children. (waits to be told off for that last statement)
              [/quote]

              I'll go first

              I was fifteen.

              But I think a lot of that has to do with what you just said (which I would have guessed from your posts in the past that have anything to do with sex) - that it's just not something you felt comfortable with until you were a couple of years into adulthood. From what you've mentioned above, it sounds like you were taught at a young age that sex was perverse and dangerous. When I was a kid, I had no such concept of sex.

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                #8
                Re: The Sex Talk

                [quote author=Raphaeline link=topic=686.msg10193#msg10193 date=1288971728]

                I'll go first

                I was fifteen.

                But I think a lot of that has to do with what you just said (which I would have guessed from your posts in the past that have anything to do with sex) - that it's just not something you felt comfortable with until you were a couple of years into adulthood. From what you've mentioned above, it sounds like you were taught at a young age that sex was perverse and dangerous. When I was a kid, I had no such concept of sex.
                [/quote]

                I completely expected you to be first. ...and yeah, you basically hit the nail on the head.


                Mostly art.

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                  #9
                  Re: The Sex Talk

                  yeah I'll step up next.. I was 14.. and to be honest I always shrugged off the criticism and said "It's when you feel mature enough and comfortable enough with it that counts!" That statement is true and false.. true because yeah in theory.. it's pretty sound. False because well you always feel mature at any age.. you do things thinking you're old enough.. and then when you're older.. you kind of know you're not. I'm 18 and I rarely have sex as it is.. I have an awful sex drive, non existent and my boyfriend, although he doesn't pressure me.. he does make little comments everynow and then and its like "butt out. I'm not having sex right now" I feel now I'm older.. it's not really something I think I can handle right now. I'd rather wait now and make sure I really love my fella and I mean really love.

                  Yeah I hear about 14 year olds having sex now and that just seems disgusting to me.. I mean you can say hypocrite.. but yeah, I wasn't emotionally mature.. and I'm pretty sure most these young teens I see aren't either :-\

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                    #10
                    Re: The Sex Talk

                    [quote author=Sin link=topic=686.msg10204#msg10204 date=1288972869]
                    yeah I'll step up next.. I was 14.. and to be honest I always shrugged off the criticism and said "It's when you feel mature enough and comfortable enough with it that counts!" That statement is true and false.. true because yeah in theory.. it's pretty sound. False because well you always feel mature at any age.. you do things thinking you're old enough.. and then when you're older.. you kind of know you're not. I'm 18 and I rarely have sex as it is.. I have an awful sex drive, non existent and my boyfriend, although he doesn't pressure me.. he does make little comments everynow and then and its like "butt out. I'm not having sex right now" I feel now I'm older.. it's not really something I think I can handle right now. I'd rather wait now and make sure I really love my fella and I mean really love.

                    Yeah I hear about 14 year olds having sex now and that just seems disgusting to me.. I mean you can say hypocrite.. but yeah, I wasn't emotionally mature.. and I'm pretty sure most these young teens I see aren't either :-\
                    [/quote]

                    This is pretty well said.

                    Sex involves emotions - it's incredibly difficult to avoid that connection even for the savviest of bachelors and the most comfortable swingers, and so it does require a level of maturity, emotionally speaking, in order to handle it. At the same time, I've learned that it's something you learn by doing. I don't mean technique only - I mean learning how to deal with it socially (when peers judge you), dealing with it personally between yourself and your partner and how it can change a relationship and so on.

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                      #11
                      Re: The Sex Talk

                      I was kinda similar to V's experience, except with a slightly creepy twist. I didn't ever get a "talk"...I'd always look up stuff at the library, so when my mom asked me if I wanted to know anything about that, I told her that I'd read a book at the library, and she left it at that. I grew up, though, with my dad coping with being sexually abused and tortured by his maternal grandfather as a child, so there was all sorts of literature in the house about recovery from sexual abuse. I read it all before I was 14, and so I had an idea of just about every horrible thing one person could do to another, but no concept of what was normal. It didn't help that my family considers "same-gender attraction" to be not only deviant behavior, but a symptom of abuse. At that age, I assumed that insertion meant rape, and that there had to be some other explanation for how sperm made the trip in a loving relationship.

                      I was very lucky to get the talk, complete with charts, from my midwife before I got married at the ripe old age of 18. I think she was used to seeing a lot of young Mormon girls go into marriage woefully unprepared, because she was very detailed about what was needed to make the experience most pleasant for us both.

                      Because of that, we've worked really hard to be open with my daughter in ways that she'd understand. She's 4, and she knows that you need a mommy and a daddy to make a baby(even though she has an uncle who's sweety is also a boy--that gets a little confusing!), that the things involved are called a sperm and egg, and that making a baby is private, same goes for the parts used to make said baby. She's also seen video of farm animals giving birth, and we've talked about what happens. More then anything, she tends to ask a lot of questions, and I just try to answer them as honestly as possible.

                      A greater topic of concern for me and her dad right now, is how to handle it if either of us decide that we want to have someone else as a regular sexual partner, and how that relationship could impact our kids.
                      Great Grandmother's Kitchen

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                        #12
                        Re: The Sex Talk

                        yea "the talk" my dad and dad gave me such one sorta relation between me and my dad is well not one of many words and the one of my mom well yea
                        dad:lorenzo did u steal my porn!?
                        me:nope i have internet
                        dadk i trust you
                        mek
                        dad:well since i asked that u know how sex works?
                        me:sure
                        dad: ok then want a beer?
                        me:yea

                        mom: you have condoms in ur room?(little sis had snuck in and showed em to my mom)
                        me:yea i have them problem?
                        mom:what areyou u planning to do with those?
                        me:same thing you and your boyfriend do everytime he is here
                        mom:.......
                        me:.......

                        so yea if u feel the need to have "the talk" either dont or do it properly?the one with my dad turned out quite ugly cause he said he beleived me my stephmom eventually got him to change his mind big fight havent talked to him in about a year now except in court so yea
                        and the one with my mom didnt change much
                        yaay for school and sex education class
                        Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.
                        Napoleon Bonaparte

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                          #13
                          Re: The Sex Talk

                          My mother never gave me 'the talk'. But my mom was mentally ill. So yeah. I learned about my period. But that was about it. And that was really just from watching my mom. I do remember looking at Playboy mags when I was a wee thing. Maybe five years old. Sadly...I didn't get a sex talk. I just got the sex at an early age. So I sort of had to re-learn that sex was good and consensual.
                          Satan is my spirit animal

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                            #14
                            Re: The Sex Talk

                            [quote author=atler link=topic=686.msg10409#msg10409 date=1289022044]

                            so yea if u feel the need to have "the talk" either dont or do it properly?
                            [/quote]

                            lol...

                            I think (both from personal experience, and from reading research and professional opinion and experience on the subject) that its probably better if its not the sex talk...and instead part of an ongoing and evolving family dialog.

                            I can speak from experience that while I would never *dream* of talking about sex with my dad (infact, at my wedding--after having lived with Scott for about six months--my dad (jokingly) said "so........you're still a virgin, right?" to which I replied "dad, even when I pop out a grandkid, I'll still be a virgin just so you don't have to think about it" and his response was "thank god, because I'd have no idea what to tell you if you were" and then (after an awkward pauese) "You are on birth control, right? You will have a better relationship if you wait a couple years&quot, with my mom it was the complete opposite.

                            Not only did I grow up with (kid/age appropriate as well as medical texts of my mom's) books on anatomy and such lying around like it was a Better Homes and Gardens, but my mom (being a nurse) talked about the body like it wasn't a big deal either. When I was in the sixth or seventh grade I found her crying because they had lost a patient my age that had gotten pregnant, had a tubal pregnancy rupture and developed sepsis before she was brought to the hospital (this wasn't the first pregnancy gone wrong patient this age she'd had, but it was the worst), and we had a whole chat about different kinds of birth control and the next week she brought home a box of condoms and a cucumber. Nudity wasn't flaunted, but it certainly wasn't hidden in my home either. I don't remember ever walking in on my parents...but according to my mom, I did a few times as a young child and apparently it wasn't treated like it was a big deal.

                            But in the same breath, the sex was really only discussed in clinical terms in my house (probably because, being a nurse, that was the easiest way for her to do so that didn't make her uncomfortable)... When it came to *everything else*, I was just as lost as the next kid, depending on eavesdropped bathroom conversations about (ironically named) Chastity, the first girl in the seventh grade to "go all the way".

                            I'm sorry...but I don't think that Melrose Place (or whatever show takes its place in 10 years), Cosmo Teen and the Chastity's of the world are where my children should get their initial exposure and first understanding of sex from
                            Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of HistoryPagan Devotionals, because the wind and the rain is our Bible
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                              #15
                              Re: The Sex Talk

                              Well, both of my parents were VERY closed-up about sex. My Mam told me about my period just before she died, and that was about it. I was just told the stork dropped the baby down the chimney, and when I pointed out that we didn't have a chimney, it was 'we have a flue attached to the fireplace Lauren.' 'But how did the baby get through the fireplace-' 'It just did, now go and play with your teddies.'

                              My Dad still tries to convince himself that I'm as pure as the virgin snow (errrr....). He actually sat me down when I was about 15 and gave me The Talk, which had to be one of the most mortifying experiences of my entire life, and basically consisted of him saying 'If you have sex with your boyfriend you will MAKE him wear a condom, o btw me and your mam had a great sex life and so do me and my current gf'. TMI MAN. JUST TMI.

                              The ironic thing was that the guy I was with at the time was unable to perform and we only ever did foreplay. We attempted sex three times and it always failed horribly due to us both being nervous (his parents were never open about it either, though he did have an older brother to advise him). Also, no-one told me how much it FUCKING HURTS when your hymen breaks. On opne of attmepts that happened and I burst into tears, which didn't really help matters.

                              Basically, even now there are some nthings I'm unsure about, and the amount I've learned from my current boyfriend is astounding (I'm nearly 20 now. Also his parents were always very open and explained things fully to him). I really think if my parents had been more open and honest about sex, I would have benefited from it instead of having to learn from crappy videos at school.
                              "The Germans do not think it in keeping with the divine majesty to confine gods within walls or to portray them in the likeness of any human countenance. Their holy places are woods and groves, and they apply the names of deities to that hidden presence which is seen only by the eye of reverence." (Tacitus, `Germania', 9)

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