No Reason Not To and Every Reason To

I'm not sure why people get excited about open letters to someone else's children detailing what they all need to know and hope they understand about sexuality.  I don't get how 'liking' a letter such as that has any affect on your child's understanding and idea of a healthy sexual perspective and relationship.  You feeling like a letter says it all doesn't do anything for your kid.  Even you writing a letter to your kid doesn't do much for your kid.  It's got to be part of life and learning and conversation regularly and over time.  Like everything else we teach them is.

If I wouldn't wait for one awkward sit-down conversation to teach my kids about other important things, why this one?  If I wouldn't dread and avoid teaching my kids other stuff, why this?  If I wouldn't shy away from their questions that lead to anything else, why sex?

I'm willing to share knowledge and information and truth - in kid-sized words and portions, of course,- about everything else, so I need to do it here too.  And in fact, many times, as parents, we volunteer this information when the kids are not even asking for it (hygiene, manners, discipline, faith, etc).

There is nothing wrong with sex.  There is much significance and responsibility surrounding sex.  So no real reason not to talk about it.  And every reason to talk about it.

I will tell my kids simple true things about sex very early and all the time because:
- I don't want it to be a vague thing they piece together from other kids, adults, media, and innuendo.
- I don't want them to first hear about it somewhere other than home.
- I want to have the biggest say in how they are hearing and processing the information.
- They are surrounded by people having babies and naturally ask questions.  It seems unfair and completely pointless to deny them the answer.
- I want it to be a natural conversation like any other topic they ask or wonder about, as opposed to this thing I talked about one time while reading a carefully chosen book.
- They learn and process best by hearing things slowly and naturally over and over, as opposed to one or two critical conversations.
- It's important for them to know their body and what it is for.
- I want to be able to talk to them about it during the years when it will really matter.
- God made sex and it is good.

I don't know how to achieve all those ideals without making sex a part of honest and commonplace conversations in our normal life.  So even in the moments when it feels a bit awkward to me to talk about it, I'm taking a deep breath and faking that I'm okay with it all.  Because I want to be talking about it openly.  Because it's important to be talking about it openly.  So that they will be talking about it openly.