A Former Sex Ed Teacher Shares 3 Things You Should Start Now With Your Kindergartener
It can be hard to know when and how to start “the talk.” Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be hard.
I’ve always firmly believed that from a child’s earliest days, there are age-appropriate ways you can and should talk to them about complicated issues, including sex. Bodily autonomy and consent, proper anatomy and more are fundamentals... but where and when do we start? How do we know what’s age appropriate? TikTok creator Kathleen Hema (@thekathleenhema), a former sex educator who now offers sex ed advice to parents, has some advice for parents of 5-year olds that might be useful to get you started.
Start Knocking First
“I would be making it a habit and showing them that I am setting and maintaining a boundary because, honestly, I want them to learn to knock on my door when it is shut,” she explains and, truly, amen to that. (Any advice on getting a 10 year old to remember to knock? Asking for a me...)
Teach Them To Clean Their Private Parts
Hema knows this one might ruffle feathers — trusting a preschooler or kindergartener to be thorough with cleaning their intimate areas might be a big ask — but there’s a good reason for this.
“Start teaching them to clean their own genitals,” she says. “Starting this shift in language around 5 years old is helping to develop their bodily autonomy ... You want them to develop the self-efficacy that they can take care of their own body and this includes cleaning their own genitals.”
“Phone-free at five”
Hema says she wishes she’d started this even earlier because it’s been a game-changer in her family.
“Basically what it is is I put my phone away for one hour when my kids are home starting at five and I focus on home life. Just like you, I’m on my phone a lot and I need to start modeling appropriate phone usage and behaviors if I want to have any leg to stand on with my kids as they get older and start asking for their own phone.”
A lot of this advice may not seem related to sex education necessarily. But beginning conversations about the real deal will go better if they have a good grasp of the basics, like boundaries, privacy, knowledge of their own body, and having a sense of something being appropriate depending on time and place. So it may not be immediately intuitive but, honestly, it’s sort of a relief to know that we can ease our way into the hard stuff in a way that will make it less big, scary, and difficult once they get old enough to get into detail.
