Life
My daughter has always been curious. If she doesn't know something, she asks, and I always answer her questions in an age-appropriate way. I love it. Well, at least most of the the time. The other day she asked, "Alexa, where do babies come from?" and it made me pause. Alexa said that eggs and sperm joined, which she already knew, but wouldn't respond to her follow up question of, "How does sperm get into mommy?" So I asked her, "What do you think?" and was delighted by her hilarious and endearing explanations of sex.
According to my 8-year-old, sex is something that "daddies do to mommies in the bedroom, to put sperm in mommy's egg." She wasn't quite sure about the logistics or body parts involved, though. I confirmed her suspicions, but added that lots of people who can't have babies or don't want to have babies have sex, too, and that some people have sex with other people who are the same gender. She looked at me as if I had grown horns and asked why, so I responded by saying, "Because, it feels good" and had officially reached my limit for talking about sex with my third grade (at least until she's ready to learn more).
I asked some other parents I know to tell me what their kids think sex is, and their responses were funny, sweet, and occasionally confusing. I've learned that when kids don't know the right answer to something, they figure things out the best they can by filling in the blanks. Or they simply ask you, which can totally catch you by surprise, which (at least for me) usually catches you by surprise.
Read on for their kids' answers, which are sure to make you smile, laugh, (and maybe blush a little).
Pete, 5
"Once while we were driving down the road Pete called out to me from the back of the car, 'When we have another baby, can we have another boy baby?'
I said that we weren't having any more babies.
He replied, 'Oh, yes we are Momma! If you keep hanging around with Papa we are going to have another baby, you can't control that!'"
Elijah, 9
"You put your tongue in Baba's mouth. You should never do that again."
Selma, 5
"She knew that babies developed from baby seeds (sperm and egg, from the parents or from the doctor) and got curious about the how.
Specifically, she asked, 'mum, but how does the sperm get inside a mummy belly?'
I explained. She thought it was strange and a little disturbing, but vaguely funny. Cue a few minutes of little gears turning, and she pipes up with, 'But couldn't daddy just put his penis in your mouth for that?'"
Scott, 5
"My oldest was so excited to tell me that he knew what sex was, thanks to hearing high school kids on the bus. In his sweet 5-year-old kindergarten voice, 'When a boy puts his penis in a girl's butt!'"
Brody, 11
"My son was playing some fighting/ninja/sword game in the hall, I heard him yell, "I should have worn a condom!" I asked him if he knew what that meant, and he said he didn't. So, we had a long talk about what condoms were and that he wasn't wrong that they are kind of like body armor."
Alessandra, 4
"She thought bananas got me pregnant, because I got sick around bananas."
Aidan, 7
"When I graduated nursing school and was hired into labor and delivery, I told my kids that mommy got the best job, where I would get to deliver babies full-time.
My son Aidan, 7.5 at the time, said, 'You get to drive the truck? That is so cool!'
I was confused and said, 'What truck?'
He said, "The truck that takes the babies to their mommies and daddies.' We had had very basic birds and bees conversations before but obviously nothing stuck, LOL."
Tommy, 5
"A few months after I explained that it takes two tiny cells to make a baby — an egg and a sperm, I heard [my son] telling his friends babies grow inside eggs in their mothers, and then the egg breaks when it's time to be born."
Liam, 4
"My youngest son was begging us to have another baby, so he'd have a baby brother. My husband explained to him that if we had another baby, it might be a baby sister. He started asking a lot of questions, and we gave a lot of answers. Somewhere, it seems, he got a bit mixed up. A few days later, he was putting on his jacket and boots to go outside. When I asked what he was doing, he let me know that he was going to find the 'magic egg.'
'What magic egg is that?' I asked.
He then explained, 'The magic egg that dad can put in his penis to put in your vagina that will make my baby brother.' I laughed so hard. We still joke about the magic egg."
Caroline, 7
"What do you call a saxophone you play during sex? A SEX-ophone!"
Ben, 4
"We've been talking about how body parts work and answering any questions with anatomical terms since forever. [My son] got a little confused and was convinced that babies hatched from eggs. 'First, the dad would give sperm to the egg inside the mom, then the mom would push it out when it was hatching.'
Callum, 5
"After I explained how the new baby got into and was going to get out of my body, [my son] said, 'OK? But for real, mom, how'd he get in there?"
Ethan, 3
"My best friend was pregnant. [My son] asked me if it would hurt her when her stomach cracked open like an egg to let the baby out. I explained to him that usually babies come out of their mother's vagina. He understood my answer, but his speech wasn't quite up to his cognition. For the next year or so he would proudly tell anyone who would listen that he knows that babies come from China."
Derek, 8
"My son and husband and I were talking about sex, and he said, "I know, I know, I have to wear a condom! Then he paused and asked, 'What's a condom?'"
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