How to have “The Talk” with children: the streamlined version

Children of the 21st century are undoubtedly three steps ahead of their parents no matter how one looks at it. A gadget-toting ten-year-old can walk and talk like any grown up, but that's only skin deep. The Internet fuelled information pollution can end up leaving a stain of wrong facts in the young minds, especially regarding human anatomy and sexual health. It's no longer enough to leave the “birds and bees” issue as a topic only for puberty-hit teenagers.

Inquisitiveness is good

Starting from “Where do babies come from?”, moving to “Can the dads have the babies?” to even “Can AIDS spread through mosquito bites?” parents should encourage questions. Children under seven (or even lower) these days are past the “Where do…” questions, but parents often dread them.

Rather than treating the questions as challenges, parents should tackle them with confidence. Having an inquisitive child can ensure a quick brush-up for the parents as well.

As long as parents can picture themselves when they were at that age, no question can get them frazzled.

What not to talk about in public

As much as inquisitiveness is good, the questions are best left being asked in the privacy of your own home. Children tend to have “moments” out in parties or in stores where they might loudly ask about private things.

Typically, this sort of public Q&As are signs that the child wants attention or wants to be seen as knowledgeable as an adult. One good way for parents to address this is to calmly say that it will be answered once they are all at home. Also, to discourage repetition of this behaviour, parents can simply point out that no one else is talking about such things in public.

Text books and apps are excellent resources

Text books for fifth graders are already addressing puberty as an “everybody passes through it” issue, by eighth grade the general science text book as well as the home science and physical education text books very much cover all aspects of the human reproduction system. Even advanced topics like autism, DNA related birth defects are covered before college.

If we think digital, there are tons of apps out there for android and iOS to teach children about human anatomy as well as websites dedicated in addressing the conservative aspects in a child friendly manner.  With valid sources, self-teaching goes a long way.

Keeping tab on the browsers

Explicit materials on the Internet are very hard to filter out even with the best blocking software. Even seemingly harmless sites can host absurd age-inappropriate erotica and graphic depictions of sexual activities. Often peer pressure causes children to seek out such things. The worst part of these graphic materials is the lasting impression and wrong ideas that subconsciously affect grown up years as well.

Although children can grow out of this, there is a fine line between curiosity and obsession leading to delusion. Applying full-on Internet restriction is not the way to handle this, parents can casually have a conversation that not even adults see these as good things.

Parents may be taken aback and somewhat shocked if they hear their tween-age son/daughter shrugging talks regarding sex by saying they know about it already. If modern parents can allot Internet time for learning mathematics and history, they can also make time for human anatomy. Ultimately, the target is to help a child not only in learning about sex and other reproductive aspects, the child must also grow up to respect other people's privacy as well.

As a conservative society going through the motions of rapid information dumping, the young minds are the first ones that get exposed to the good as well as the bad side of things. Even cartoons and children's shows jokingly include adult innuendo which were taboo topics just ten years ago.

The days of being blissfully unaware are long gone, but that does not mean submerging one's childhood with age inappropriate material. Proper functional knowledge about the human body does not desensitise young minds.

Thinking long-term, if parents can ensure a safe conversation space for their children, there may be no need to have the talk.