How Did Your Parents First Tell You About Sex?

I never did. Growing up in India in a semi-conservative family meant that they expected me to find out when the time came. Friends, even in college, were shy and equally clueless. I figured out when I fell in love with my now husband. It’s ridiculous that I had no idea until at least 21. :)

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I rememeber when I was six or seven my mum was a midwife and had all these books about sex and so on and so forth. I remember picking a book of the shelf that had the title ‘An Introduction to Sex’ so I started reading. When I got to a part about sperm a cracked up laughing because the pictures of sperm looked like tadpoles! I went and showed my mum and asked if I was a tadpole and my mum looked at me weirdly. I went and got the book to show her and she had to lie down for the rest of the night. LOL!¡!¡!¡

We had a pair of cats – a boy and a girl – and I really wanted them to have kittens, but my mom told me they couldn’t because they were brother and sister. Then she explained why that would be so gross, and I promptly agreed. I do remember one of my silliest questions: “If they do it for twice as long, does that mean they’ll have twins?” Ha!

My dad actually forced my sister and I to watch “The Miracle of Life” videotape. Yep. I’m serious. And yep. It was as traumatic as it sounds.

This conversation is too good not to add to!

The only part of the “talk” I remember was feeling shocked and asking in disbelief “You and dad did this?” And then I felt the need to make sure all my friends at school knew the facts, too.
One aspect of my education that was severely lacking though, was female anatomy. I assumed that the clitoris was in the vagina somewhere, and it wasn’t until honors biology in high school that I revealed my ignorance on the topic by asking a very naive question. All the boys in the class teased me endlessly, and my brother (3 years younger than me) heard about the event and said to me in disgust “I heard you asked where the clit is in biology.” Good grief.

I remember knowing about sex before my mom came to talk to me about it, and when she did, I was so freaked out that I covered my ears, shouted gibberish and ran away! haha.

Another funny thing is I went to a small, Christian private school, and our band teacher was a hunter who made “Christian inspiring videos” about nature, which they would show in chapels sometimes. Needless to say I saw enough animals having sex to know just how things work. :)

I think the American Girls book “YOU” helped mostly, and then I learned more in health classes later.
such a funny thing to remember!

Yes, that book is the answer for parents around the world, because my mom gave me the same book, portuguese version, here in Brazil when the questions started.
Funny thing, my little sister didn’t have questions, while my mom was avid, waiting the questions to give THE BOOK to my sister, but my sister took some time…

So my mom is a doctor – and ob-gyn too – and that made for interesting sex conversations.

I was the only 8 year old kid who knew about spermatogenesis and ovulating and etc. because I used to read her medical books (okay, more like stare at the photos) but I had no idea how the ovules and sperm got together. My mom then told me how a fetus is made and develops after two people really love each other.

When I was a teenager my mom was so scared after seeing a lot of 13yo with pregnancies and STDs that she went into crazy mode, aka “You have sex, you get an STD, you DIE!”. Luckily, I did not pay her any attention and brushed up on my reading of Cosmo.

So yeah, sex lessons from a doctor – just as interesting and funny as one might think :))

I learnt it quite by accident from a dictionary. Prior to that, I’d thought sex just involved kissing and nakedness. The dictionary definition of ‘sexual intercourse’ told me it was more than that.

I now know the many ways sex can be sex, but the first horror at finding out that when I have sex with a man, his penis will be inside me will never be forgotten. Not a happy thought for 10 year old me.

My dad sat me down along with my older sister to give us “the talk”. I guess he didn’t want to explain it twice. I remember how he told us, but what I remember more was that he interupted an episode of The Bionic Woman that I very much wanted to watch. I was a bit put out about that!

All these stories are hilarious! I actually can’t remember asking my parents questions like that, must be so funny as parent!

http://hellyeaimalive.wordpress.com/

What a great topic!!! I think its very important that children understand their own bodies, and then can take ownership of their private parts as “theirs”. If they are comfortable with them, it is easier to talk about OTHER very important things like molestation and other issues that unfortunately our children might be confronted with! What a great topic to get out in the open! I also like this book, “I said No!” about what happens if you’re confronted with molestation.

I sort of always knew. Is that weird? The only think I asked my mom (according to her) at age 5 was “whats a Fallopian tube?” She explained EVERYTHING haha

haha I, too, was 5, and was also given that SAME book! And maybe I got in trouble for reading it to my classmates…

I think my mom bought a similar book for me, but she addressed it first when I came home from kindergarten one day and asked about it. She was always very open and honest with me, so I always felt I could ask her about anything and never felt terribly shocked because of her frankness. At the end of her explanation, she asked if I had any questions. I apparently wasn’t terribly impressed with the whole thing because my question was “are we having corn with dinner?”- the priorities of a five-year-old! Having corn with dinner remains a joke in my family to this day.

I was all ready stunned by what my friends told me. My sister told my mother. Mother asks me if there’s anything I want to know. No. Conversation over. I figured at nine years, I had time to deal with it when I got older.

I was VERY young when I figured it all out about penises being introduced into vaginas…my parents had the old hippie version Joy of Sex book in their second drawer of their dresser, and my older sister and I would sneak into their room and peek through a few pages at a time. I was only 5 — I can’t imagine my little 5 year-old, (or 8 year-old!) seeing those pictures and figuring it all out that way. I would be mortified for them! At that same age, I also had a friend who took her parents magazines (one was Club — I remember that one with great detail!) and showed them to us when we came over. I was VERY confused about the lesbian pictures. Again, I would be mortified if my children ever saw anything like I did at that young of an age, but I know the internet will be in their future, and they will be seeing a lot more than what I saw. I hope to be able to protect them as long as possible.

Funny thing is, I never knew about the actual mechanics of sex, what it actually looked like in real life (ok, the pumping part! lol) until I was MUCH older. Like 22. I found my younger brother’s porno tape he accidentally left in the family VCR, and THEN the light bulb finally came on. Om…OH.

I actually told my mum knew about sex and how it was ‘done’! I don’t remember her ever telling me anything! Now need to approach the subject with my son (aged 9 this weekend) who has never asked about sex at all (far more interested in Lego and Star Wars), but who did once when he was 3 asked if he his balls had potatoes in them! Its gonna be fun!

My parents never truly had “the talk” with me. By the time my mom tried to talk about it I was a freshman in high school and already knew enough about the topic. We were in the car driving home from some sporting event, where she saw a girl there about my age that was pregnant. She went one a teenage pregnancy spill for quite some time (I was toning out a majority of it) when she then turned to me and said, “You know you can talk to me about anything right, but I wish you will wait until you are in love and find the right man. Me and your fath-” I cut her off and told her I did not need the sex talk, especially if it involved her and dad. She then snapped back, “At least I didn’t say something about your grandparents!” I died that day. I was never quite the same.

My best friend gave me the Book in 1982 when I was pregnant with daughter #2 so I could read it to my oldest daughter in preparation for the birth of her sister. I told my husband to skip the intercourse description when he read it to her and only read the part about the baby growing inside the mommy’s belly. I didn’t think a three year old needed to know about sex yet! Of course daddy didn’t listen to me. A few days later at the grocery store I drove my shopping cart in front of a cut out of the “milk looks good on you” lady wearing a tight white bathing suit and a white mustache! my daughter’s eyes zoomed in to her lower part…I could just see the wheels turning..and then came the question:”the penis goes into the vagina right mom?” A couple of shoppers around me gasped and I made a quick exit out of that isle!

Believe it or not, I never got “the talk”. I learned about sex from movies (Legends of the Fall was one I remember quite fondly), or my mom’s Ladies Home Journal magazines. Sex was basically something I learned either from hearing people at school, curious reading in magazines, or through TV/movies. And I very much prefer this method. I don’t know how I will broach this subject with my future children.

Yes! My aunt sat me and my cousin down when we were ten or so and had us take turns reading this book aloud. I will never forget when we read the part about the actual sex where it says “then, the man gets on top of the woman”, and my aunt jumped in and said “OR, the woman gets on top of the man”. I had no idea of the significance of that distinction at the time, but it still makes me smile now. Thanks Aunt T :)

I haven’t read many of the comments but I hazard a guess that no-one else was told the facts of life by their father while he was fixing the carburetor of his Harley Davidson. Mortifying! I am 38 and it’s ingrained in my memory for all eternity.

I don’t know how it was brought up, but it was after dinner, and we were still at the dinner table. It was a very technical “how-to” discussion. I was really little, and I remember being embarrassed. I was raised Catholic, so my mom never discussed it because it embarrassed her.

My daughter is 4 and at the preschool parent meeting someone mentioned this lady:
http://birdsandbeesandkids.com/
Great resource for parents to take charge of the sex talk!

awe i was like 13 i wasnt told I think the internet and also friends and things. I used some common sense and the kids in my high-school who were having kids. I thought if u made out with someone you could have a baby. lol It was funny , im glad now looking back at it.

hahahaha, my parents…no way!! i grew up catholic and if you wanted to know anything that your parents had not told you yet then you went to bobby mosier. he knew it all…lol. well at least we thought he did. he also told me there was NO santa claus…butthead!!! teeheheee.

anyhoo, i used the book “where did i come from” with both of my daughters and they loved it.

Oh we SO had this book. My Mom said, “Okay now you have to keep this to yourself because other people’s parents might not want them to know about this yet…” 2 days later she finds the book splayed open laying in the front yard. What can I say? I’ve always liked to share:)

amazing! haha My mom read the same book to me and my sisters ..we covered our ears and laughed at the pictures the whole way through.. I could describe half of the pictures in the book from memory..haha thanks for the laugh!! :)

Oh my gosh — same book for me and my sister too. On the bus to kindergarten. . .my gosh. My son is 4; I guess I have to be ready for this sooner than I thought!

My mum used the same book!!!(but the Spanish version) Hi from Spain!!

Ha! I was given the same book. I remember feeling so embarrassed that my parents knew I was reading it and then knew that I knew what sex was!

I did not have that book, and it worries hugely that it says on the cover “illustrated” by. WTAF? i have ridiculous images going through my mind, in fact, i think that may have scarred me for the rest of my life.

my cousin was left to tell me about sex and periods and all those things. my parents did not tell either myself or my brother about it. she used to babysit us on a friday night and she would tell me about things then. also, that was a time friends was on at 9pm on a friday on C4 so I picked up a lot of things then.

Mine is a bit strange, but i was an odd cild so here goes:

I was just barely 5 when my parents told me I was getting another sibling ( already had 1 )and some how I acquired a medical book ( read: NOT meant for children ) about the process of birth. It detailed how a sperm enters an egg to cell division to zygote ( yes, i said zygote at age 5 – wierd, I know ) documenting the changes each week of actual pictures from inside the womb. I was obsessed with this book. Even went as an OBGYN to career day in kindergarten. So naturally i was curious how conception happens ( this was left out of the book ). So at age 5 in the grocery I asked my mother how the ” sperm from the dad gets to the egg in the mom when everyone has panties and clothes and body parts in the way”. My mom tried to dodge the question 1. we were in a grocery store 2. we were with my 3yr old sister.
So I got louder with my questioning until exasberated and embarrassed she told me quickley in a huff. Apparently i just starred at her and was very quiet. She told me much later on that she was worried she had shcked and scared me but I guess later in the car on the way home I piped up and matter-of-factly said:”Ive never seen you and dad do that”
My mom loves this story especially since now at 25 I am studying to be an OB and still question just about everything.
Hope this put a smile on your face- Enjoy

-Alexandrea

Funny and great topic! Never heard of this book, but I’ll definitely use it for my son when the time comes.

My Mom first told my sister and I about sex when I came home from 5th grade asking her why a boy called me gay. I didn’t know what gay meant and it was said to me in a negative context, so I needed to know. That’s what started the whole thing.

Amazingly, my Mom was really cool about it and actually explained heterosexual and homosexual sex. So I grew up knowing both were totally normal. Thanks, Mom!