One of the team was fortunate to attend a talk arranged by their school with the authors of ‘Brilliant Questions About Growing Up: Simple Answers about Bodies and Boundaries’. This book is written by two experts who have delivered sex and relationships lessons in over 200 schools and have collected the best questions asked by the children that they’ve met.
They’ve created a big book of answers to help support conversations about growing up, sex, birth, sexuality, pregnancy, gender, relationships, consent, emotions, friendship, being online, puberty and more!
The key takeaways from the discussion were to:
- Keep up a dialogue at home, make sure the kids feel they can speak to you even if it’s something they’ve done (for eg they’ve clicked on a link to porn or started talking to stranger via online)
- Talk about puberty before it hits, do not reference your experiences – make it general or even refer to a film/character where an issue arises.
- Normalise talking about intimate body parts using correct terminology.
- Let them know there are various adults that can help from parents, teachers, aunts, uncles, godparents, friends’ parents.
- Consent is mutual (neither party has the power)
- Be open and honest.
- Don’t scare them with horror stories around STDs or teen pregnancy.
You can buy the book from Amazon if you’re looking for further support. Suitable for kids age 7-12. We highly recommend!
