Which of the parents should answer the sexual questions of the children? Should mother talk to girls and father to boys? Should we talk about sexuality to young children? Tuesday, in Without appointment, the show Health Europe 1, the psychoanalyst and sexologist Catherine Blanc offers us some tips to discuss sexual issues with her children.
Sophie's question, 44 years old
"Which of the two parents has to answer the children's sexual questions?" I tell my husband that it's up to him to talk to our 11 and 14 year old boys, that it would be unhealthy for me, what do you think ? "
The advice of Catherine Blanc
"There is nothing unhealthy for a mother to talk to her children about sexuality, what is unhealthy is to come up against our children with a subject that does not concern them, that does not happen in their time. .
When asked who is the parent who needs to talk about it, it can be the one who is the quietest, the most comfortable with it. It can be the one that is solicited by the child. It can be the one who feels that with him, we are the safest to talk about it ".
Must we speak of everything? Are there limits?
"We are not teachers, we are humans, with our own sexuality, our own inhibitions, our own delights, our own interests, and all that does not concern our child." It's the difficulty: do not talk about our fears because we have experienced dramatic things, or our pleasures because we have loved such and such a thing.The best is not to talk about your own sexuality, and this is the biggest difficulty. that we have our own references, the question is: what does your child want to know?
What is important is to respect the sometimes refractory attitudes of the child. Sometimes he wants to know without knowing, he asks the question without listening to all the answers. This is all the art of the parent.
What to answer to young children who ask the famous question: "How do we make babies"?
"Stork stories, seeds in the garden ... The child knows very well that it's anything, and often when he asks the question, he even has part of the answer.
But that does not mean that there are no symbolic things in these images that we can use. In the story of the stork, we talk about a beak in the fireplace, we can talk about the seed that will grow vegetables in the garden ... We can talk, if you want, in a pictorial way. But afterwards, we can say: 'It's the same thing between a father and a mother. Daddy's sex will drop a seed into the mommy's sex. At age eight, the child has known for two or three years that he is a boy or a girl and that parents have sex.
We can also help the comics, there are some very good, neither prudish nor trash, with images of vegetation, animals, and then with humans. Children have a great capacity to understand the echo of the real through the image ".