What Your Child Needs to Know About Sex by Dr. Fred Kaeser

Author:Dr. Fred Kaeser [Kaeser, Dr. Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-58761-264-0
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Published: 2011-09-05T16:00:00+00:00

The list of possible topics or issues that could be addressed with your five- or six-year-old can be quite extensive. Through your teaching, your child is learning vocabulary and functions of the body, various gender roles played out by boys and girls and men and women, safety issues, masturbation, sexual intercourse (depending on the child’s readiness), and your values about many aspects of sexuality. They are learning by watching us as well—how we show love and affection, agree and disagree, solve differences, act as men and women, behave as husbands, wives, and partners. So much of what they will learn about sex and sexuality will really begin to take shape during the kindergarten and first-grade years. The building blocks for your child’s sexual future truly start now.

So now is the time to begin to address some topics that will come up a few years down the road when your child must confront some very important decisions about sex. Learning about sexual intercourse, determining the type of person to be sexual with, and being able to postpone pregnancy until adulthood should not suddenly begin when these issues become relevant in a child’s life. As I have said before, these are decisions of such magnitude that our children need to be learning about these issues long before they are faced with them.

As you scaffold your discussions about how babies are made, you will be discussing the values that you want your child to adopt about sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and the type of person to enter into a relationship with many years down the road. You will have discussions of the big three—love, respect, and trust—and how they should play a major role in all decisions about sexual intercourse. If, for example, you are in the park with your five-year-old and you see a baby with its parent, you might say, in passing, “You know, sweetheart, a person should only think of having a baby when she is an adult. There are too many teenagers who become pregnant.” You might add to this during another teachable moment when you say, “People must be in love before they have a baby. They have to be really sure that they are in love with each other.” You will scaffold that with even more talks: “It takes a long time to know if you love someone. It takes a long time to know if you can trust someone.” You will also be mindful of being authentic in the things you say about all this. When walking by several teenagers outside a middle school, you could say to your five-year-old, “Remember when we spoke about how only adults should have a baby? What then would you say to a teenager who wanted to have a baby?” Or, if you are watching TV and see a parent taking care of a baby you could say, “Do you think a teenager can handle the big responsibility of taking care of a baby and being a mother?”

“YOU CAN’T DO THE

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