Age for sex talk and drug talk?

[Anonymous]

What ages do you think are good for the sex talk and the drug talk?

Does that depend on how mature your kid is?
Gender?
Societal norms?
Probability your kid might repeat an overly mature/adult/inapprorpriate word and make people think that something is weird about your family?
Ability to understand?
Anything else?

Do you think explain it all or explain in stages?
Only truth? Or some white lies?

Do you honestly talk about your own experiences?



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[Anonymous]

The description for this board is discussion of newborns to age 4'ish. You might get a better response on another board. (Teens & teens, maybe?)

[Anonymous]

No start early. I started talking to my children around 4 or 5 about smoking cigarettes and body parts and then build from there. Leave books lying around about how the body works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No start early. I started talking to my children around 4 or 5 about smoking cigarettes and body parts and then build from there. Leave books lying around about how the body works.

+1
Why wait? Introduce concepts slowly, without embarrassment.

[Anonymous]

The sex talk starts with proper names for their body parts. Then proper names for body parts for the opposite gender. Sooner or later they'll ask where babies come from or some variation of that and you can explain honestly. If you lived on a farm you'd be explaining things early enough. Knowledge never hurt anyone.

Drugs can start with the good things go into our body and bad things stay out talk. It gets lumped into healthy eating talks for us. At some point they'll have to take medicine and that's a good time to talk about only taking medicine a doctor tells you to take, and you only take it from Mommy or Daddy or whomever you approve. You can talk about how too much medicine is bad for you. Then when they're able to understand that you can talk about how one of the ways medicine or drugs can be bad for you is that it makes your body or your mind think you need it to survive, and people make bad choices when they become addicted. Then you can talk about addictions to drugs, sugar, tv, video games, whatever.

I lead a Girl Scout troop and the girls all knew about the evils of smoking during kindergarten. They were very anti tobacco. They loved doing service projects related to helping people stop smoking. When cvs stopped selling tobacco products it was announced on a meeting day. They came to the meeting so excited, and wrote a letter to Walgreens asking them to do the same. I think this kind of awareness and activism comes from parents being open and honest early instead of waiting until kids are "old enough" to be faced with these topics in their own lives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No start early. I started talking to my children around 4 or 5 about smoking cigarettes and body parts and then build from there. Leave books lying around about how the body works.

+1
Why wait? Introduce concepts slowly, without embarrassment.

Same here. There are lots of opportunities in every day life to discuss these topics in an age appropriate way. And, as PPs have noted, it starts with the proper names for body parts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The description for this board is discussion of newborns to age 4'ish. You might get a better response on another board. (Teens & teens, maybe?)

Absolutely not! Description of this board is elementary age (unless this was moved). IMO it should start around age 6-7.

[Anonymous]

There are many, MANY talks about these things. From about age two, up. Yesterday we met a friend who had a baby through IVF and we talked about reproduction when IVF is involved.

We used to talk about drugs in very black and white ways. Now we talk more about peer pressure, and what to DO if she sees someone at a party with alcohol poisoning, getting roofied, when to call 911, etc.

Yes, the talks evolve based on maturity and what her social life is like. I don't care if she repeats anything. I don't talk about my romances with the kids.