Chrissy Teigen is ready to have the birds and the bees talk with her nine-year-old daughter, Luna.
On her Audible podcast, Self Conscious with Chrissy Teigen, , the cookbook author brought in Dr. Becky Kennedy, author of Good Inside, to discuss how to approach the subject. Teigen explained that this year, sex education will be part of Luna’s school curriculum, so she wants to prepare her at home.
“So, I bought all the books, I got everything for it. And leading up to it, we try to deal with so many things in the family with humor and openness, because it is such an uncomfortable thing to talk about,” Teigen said.
Dr. Becky recommended that Teigen should start the conversation by actually leaning into the awkwardness of the situation.
“Naming your own awkwardness is really important.”
“I never had a talk,” Teigen reveals. “I had the internet.”
Dr. Becky, emphasized during the conversation that the talk “is not just one talk,” she added that “kids become initially curious [about sex] at the exact same age they become curious about death. Which is early, because it makes sense. It’s the two bookends of life. It’s usually around age 3.”
She continued, “There’s no reason why [kids] shouldn’t know the words ‘penis’ and ‘vagina.’ They know so many complicated things. We live in New York City, we see a million things all the time. Why shouldn’t they know anatomy and how humans are made? It’s actually biology. It’s not even sexual for the kid. But we all have so many of our own hangups that completely color things. To me, the age that kids can learn about this stuff is so much earlier than we think.”
“Big picture, none of this is sexual, all of this is basic information. If you’ve already talked to your kids about death, probably that means they are curious about birth,” Dr. Becky concluded.
If you are in the same boat as Teigen and are not sure how to have the talk, get some help. Dr. Becky offers a “How to Talk About Sex” workshop with practical tools for parents of kids ages 0–12, including inclusive scripts and language that actually make sense to kids.
Chrissy Teigen shares her daughter Luna and three other children: Miles, 7, Esti, 2, Wren, 1.
Photo Credit: Chrissy Teigen Instagram
