This week’s question is quite adorable. :)

‘Can you over-inform young children - ages 0-4 - about intercourse?

How do you tell them where babies come from, when they ask?’

It can be quite lovely to chat with your child when perhaps a friend or loved one is pregnant and your child has questions.

But is it ok to answer those questions?

Short answer: Yes!

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says !YES! kids ages 0-4 are at a prime age to understand things about how we make new humans.

And YES, it’s ok and really quite helpful to chat about it. We have hacks in this week’s video that will delight and inspire you and help you chat with your kid about this sensitive and wonderful topic in a way that is clear, comfortable and empowering.

But - before we get to that. Let’s chat a bit about comfort levels. Both your kids’ - and yours.

Firstly: it’s great to know that it’s not really possible to ‘over-inform’ our kids (Whew!)

They have inbuilt mechanisms, to protect them.

One of those mechanisms is boredom!

If your kid is zoning out, that’s how we know they have enough info for now.

But if your kid is 100% with you, and asking more questions, then you can explore together some more. 

Lastly, let’s talk about you.

The parent.

It’s worth mentioning that while it’s not possible to ‘go too far’ for our kids at this age, it is definitely possible to go too far for ourselves.

We need to be aware of our own feelings of comfort and honour those feelings.

And we need to learn to tell the difference between:

 

1.forcing ourselves to do something we don’t want to do (unkind and hurtful),

and

2.doing something outside our comfort zone, in a spirit of wanting to learn and grow (motivating and growing).

For more about this rich and lovely topic, including helpful hacks around the exact things you can say, listen to this week's podcast.