do you tell?

How much do you explain their own growing-up changes?

How do you keep them from talking to others?

Does telling lead to trying out things with each other?

My little girl doesn't ask questions--how make her healthily curious?

My little boy has a bad habit--how deal with it?

These are representative questions, and they strike deep into the heart
of education as we see it today, for sex education is no longer merely a
matter of biological instruction. Knowledge of human reproduction is an
essential in every instance, of course. It is the basic science back of
the whole sexual life. But just as the physical aspects of marriage are
for men and women today subordinate to the psychic and intellectual
aspects, so in a sex-education program, especially one in the home,
biological information is far from being the element of greatest
importance. More significant is the guidance and nurture of the
emotional life of your children--their emotional natures as a whole, and
especially those aspects of their emotional natures which have their
roots in the sexual impulse. Frustrations of childhood, failures, hurts,
jealousies, misinterpretations of childish love affairs, play episodes
for which society has such swift punishment, clandestine sex
knowledge--these are the experiences which leave their blight on the
later love responses. Life as a whole with its conventions and social
codes does not present an open highway to the goal of sexual maturity.
But forward-looking parents can, by granting knowledge, understanding,
and a sympathetic interpretation of the various phenomena of the sexual
life, prevent many of the hazards of the past and provide a better
assurance of happiness for their children.

Because the biological aspects of sex teaching are concrete, something
one can lay hold of in a tangible way, we shall consider them first.

There is no set age to begin sex education. There is no set place to
stop. There is a time to begin, and that time is indicated by any
expressed interest on the part of your young son or daughter--a
question, a comment, an observation, a wish. The time to stop is when
his interest stops. Don't run on ahead of him. Usually interest is
stimulated by some incident in the neighborhood or at school--a tank of
young guppies, a nest of baby mice in someone's cellar, a new baby home
from the hospital, a word in the newspaper. With many very young
children, concern about their own orig