This post was meant for my Mothering Times blog but blogger is in read only mode. It is down for maintenance. The good thing about having several blogs is when one is down the other is up. 😉 Anyway, back to the post.
Girl: “Mummy, what is that thing you told me about, you know the blood on the backside?”
Mum: “Period”.
Girl: “Yah. yah. In this book I read, the girl has her period and then she asked her cousin brother to buy the thing for her to use.”
Oh. What storybook is she reading? It looks innocent enough on the cover illustrating a little girl with a bowl of two goldfish. I had no idea what the contents are because it is in Mandarin which I can’t read well with no pictures of illustration inside. Is the subject matter of the story appropriate for my 9 year old?
Well, it doesn’t really matter because I have already spoken to her about menstruation and pregnancy and sex before. I find it easier to talk about these things to children when they are very young. Keeping things very simple but to the point using actual words instead of a nicknames to describe is easy and not embarrassing at all. It also opens up the doors of communication for later on.
I remember reading about menstruation and how to talk about it to your daughter one day in the papers. I read the entire article to her, explained and asked her if she had any questions. Done.
When the kids were younger and they asked me how babies were made, I took out my Dr.Miriam Stoppard’s Conception, Pregnancy and Birth book and showed them pictures and explained to them about how Mr Sperm meets Ms Egg. Done.
They didn’t giggle or turned red-faced. They just accepted the explanation matter of factly (though naturally they had 1001 questions which I tried my best to answer)Â but the important thing is the doors of communication has been open for the teen years when they should know about such things. I think talking about sex should not be taboo at home. On the contrary, I think parents should teach their children to be responsible and to respect their own bodies and others. Sex Education should not be left to the school, to be whispered in corridors among teenagers and learned from reading novels and worse still porn sites and magazines.
Hopefully, now that the seed of communication has been sown, both kids will not be shy to come to talk to me when they have questions later on.
Not long ago, there’s a YouTube circulation about a so called sex educator going around Chinese school in Malaysia sending all the wrong information about sex to young children. This speaker was seen asking the children to call anyone with who has premarital sex, homosexual, extra marital affair couples as bit** and all sorts of names.
It is important that we as parents must expose the children to the right information about sex
enjoyed reading this post. What you said is very true. We should talk to our kids these things, before they learn things the wrong way.
That is so true. Being open with them about the topic. The more you suppress and treat it as a taboo, the more they’d go and experiment things themselves. Right?
Another thing we should be open about is internet safety. 🙂
err..MG, can share with me how to explain on how the sperm meets the egg? qiqi was asking me about the story we watched where the mother was being raped and how come the child’s father is another person but not the husband. any tips to explain something like this?