When is an Appropriate Time to Talk to Children About Body Changes?

When is the appropriate time to speak about their body changes and how do we go about that? Oh, I love the question because as children go through puberty, as they start experiencing their body changing, uh, many times they're there, they themselves are surprised. Now we have to understand averages, right? So the average age of a female going through puberty is a little bit earlier than a male going through puberty. And so we are looking at, uh, it's interesting, over the last few decades we've seen a decrease in age. In other words, it's gone lower over time. So the average age for a girl going through puberty, what may have used to be 12 to 13, may at times now be average 11 to 12. And some girls even earlier than that, but just on average, right? So we're looking at averages, and again, we're talking 11, 12, some 13, but, but we look at this in general, and that means that we wanna start before then because a, a girl who's going through puberty who doesn't understand her body can be very surprised, those first experiences. So we have to do it earlier. My suggestion is as early as eight or nine, we start having conversations about the bo our bodies. And, and not in a way that is, uh, too information, but it too much. But it's a gradual increase in information about the body over time. So we might have conversations about how our bodies change as we get older. You can notice that as mommy and daddy have gotten older, our, our bodies are different than yours. But as you get older, your body will become more like moms and dads. And let's talk about this. And we talk about body parts, we talk about, and again, this is, in my opinion, the more comfortable we are talking about sexual matters, the better it off our children will be. They're gonna learn somewhere. It's better if it's coming from us. So as our children are starting to develop, talking with them about body hair, talking with them about the importance of hygiene and taking care of their body, these are just social skills. I say social because when you're taking care of your body, it is a part of your social competence. So teaching our children to maintain hygiene is a very big deal. So everything from when we shower and taking care of, uh, you know, again, shaving, all of these things that we want them to learn the importance of. So my suggestion in a situation like this is I would start pre puberty by probably a year or two because we want them not to be shocked by their experience. The other part of it is we don't necessarily know when our child's gonna start the process. So we wanna start in advance. My suggestion is, is be about a year or two before the average is. And that means that we need to be comfortable ourselves with this conversation. And I'm telling you, the more comfortable you are, more comfortable your child will be. I remember going through a class when I was in graduate school. Our professor said, if you're not comfortable talking about sexual terms, I want you to stand in front of the mirror and I want you to say these sexual terms out loud. Listen to yourself to the point where it flows off your tongue and you're not going about, uh, um, right? So we're doing it with clarity. We're doing it with confidence and normal conversation, because the more comfortable we are with it, the more comfortable our children will be with it.