Parenting: Answer your child’s questions with confidence

Recent conversations have brought to the forefront of my mind the necessity and importance of considering children’s perspectives in matters sexuality.

Before you get up in arms about the idea of children and sex in the same conversation, I want to be clear; children DO NOT belong in conversations or actions that involve sexual behaviour. On this we can agree.

The challenge becomes the fact that children often come to us with their own questions; questions that they already sense are loaded and uncomfortable, and yet they still come to us because they want to know. They come to us because they trust us. We - as adults - always have the chance to honour their trust and respond in age-appropriate ways, or we can do the opposite, which is panic, scold, scare or ignore them which is hardly helpful.

As we approach the end-of-year holidays, a season characterised by children spending more time with each other in different contexts, I thought it would be prudent to dedicate the month of November to learning some tools and ideas on how we can handle those awkward questions that our children entrust us with. Nervous or not, let’s get started.

What do you do when asked any sex questions?

Breathe

This really goes without saying but you would not believe the number of parents, aunties and uncles who completely panic, speak in shrill voices, become tongue tied, begin to sweat, abruptly leave the room, awkwardly force a snack on the child and more. If such a question finds you, take a moment and breathe, swallow, get a glass of water and try to calm yourself. The last thing you want is for your child to think that they have done nothing wrong.

Buy some time

Depending on how panicked or overwhelmed you feel, you can even buy yourself some time to answer e.g. that’s a great question; can we talk about it in a few minutes/tonight/tomorrow after school? The point is to acknowledge that you have heard the question and that you will respond to it at the agreed-upon time. Please do honour the arrangement otherwise your child may come to distrust you.

Ask before you tell

It’s important to remember that children experience ideas such as love and sex in very different ways from adults. A child who asks “what is sex?” is unlikely to be asking about sexual intercourse as an adult knows it to be, so resist the temptation to assume that you know. Instead, ask them. You could, for example, ask “that’s an interesting question sweetie. What made you ask it?” You might learn that they saw or heard it somewhere and observed a reaction that they found interesting or bizarre, so their question is really tied to the reaction rather than to the knowledge of sex. They could even be referring to something they heard where the word ‘sex’ was used in the context of gender. You must clarify before you respond.

If they ask “where did I come from?”, for example, take a breath, ask them the source of their curiosity and then respond honestly. First of all, you may discover that they are asking because they found out that their best friend is from a particular tribe which made me realise that they didn’t know which tribe they came from. If you don’t ask, you may end up giving a biological answer to a geographical question!

Another advantage to asking is that you will be able to determine whether there is any sexually inappropriate behaviour that requires your interruption and intervention, a whole different conversation that we will have as part of this series.

Be honest

I’m not sure what it is about adults that makes us think that ‘honesty’ automatically equals ‘vulgar’ or ‘over-information’. It does not. The thing to remember with children is that they really just want the information that they asked for and have nary an ulterior motive.

Even if they are asking about the biology of their conception, you can use simple honest language e.g. “Well, sweetie, daddies put a special seed inside mummy and then God grows it into a baby. That’s how we got you!” This might work for very young children whose concept of seeds and growth is limited to plants.

Older children can get a little more information but, again, talk about the biology of it instead of the graphic details of sexual intercourse, for example, “A child is formed when a sperm and an egg meet and fertilise; men carry the sperm and women carry the egg. Once fertilisation happens, a baby is formed and grows in the woman’s body for nine months before being born.”

I know it is easier said than done. My hope is that if you can narrow down your response ‘protocol’ into three manageable steps - breathe, ask, be honest - then you can have a guideline to get you through it with grace. I hope this helps, and I hope that you will write in to us here at Eve with your questions to help you feel more confident. I wish you and us all a happy, less-panicked, confident, connected November.

Maggie Gitu holds an MA in Marriage & Family Therapy. She practices as a Marriage, Family & Sex

Therapist. Reach her at

[email protected] or via her Facebook page: Maggie Gitu