Birds and Bees

My daughter Natasha is only six years and three months. In her rather hectic life filled to the brim with homework, fights with the brother, riding her bike, attending birthday parties, blackmailing and arm-twisting me for new shoes, a movie, satellite TV renewal for the holidays and generally being a resident nuisance, she does have an occasional minute here or there when she makes rather deep and reflective statements which momentarily gives me a glimpse of her psyche. The other day we were talking in one such moment when serious stuff finds a way of popping up. So there we were all alone in the sitting room. Father on the sofa and daughter on the floor with back leaning on my sofa, when she goes, “Dad, sometimes I wish I had a sister”, and I go like “Why baby? You have your brother Gregory”. Does she want us to buy her a sister, I ask keeping with my usual line? “Babies come from the stomach” she retorts. “Who told you that? I ask. She goes on like she didn’t hear me. “But anyway, mum says she won’t carry another baby in her stomach. As if she is on cue, she moves on. “Dad, do you know that you cannot get a baby if you are not married”? Phew I mutter in my mind grateful that rules reign in her world. This is getting interesting and I need to keep her talking just to understand how much she knows and for me to find out if I am too late for the birds and bees story. This is not a subject you plan and diarize, that at age seven in 2010, I will have the “talk” with my baby. During my time, we learnt such stuff during the biology class and that too only in second form. Today the kids are learning so much from a barrage of media channels and peers. But what is the right age to start? Anyways, I wanted Natasha to talk some more and in a very evenly toned voice I pick her cue hoping that she will be encouraged to unleash more six-year-old wisdom. “Baby, is that so?” “Yes” she responds taking my hook. Seeming hell-bent on getting over her did-you-know-script, she comes back with one that almost gets me to sit up from the sofa. “Did you know that in a wedding if you kiss for too long, you could get a curse?” I am almost tempted to take a diversion and ask if she knows what a curse is, but wishing to stay with the theme and for lack of anything wiser to say, I retort “who told you that now? She responds with no hesitation that, “another girl told me”. The parent-ish thing to do would be to ask her “which girl” with a view to finding fault in her friend’s world-view or that of her parent’s, but again I want to keep this going on. So I use the only line that seems to work and ask “baby, is that so?” And ignoring me once again, she digs from her list of must-share-this-tidbits-with-dad and seeming to be addressing no one in particular she says, “To get babies you must sleep in the same bed with someone…gross!” Her list exhausted, she says nothing more and before I can compose myself and determine what to say next, Natasha has bolted into another room.

What should kids know about sex and at what age?