Thursday, March 3, 2011

Having "THE Talk" With a Six Year Old

Gracie has been full of awkward questions lately:

"Mom? What are nibbles for?"

"Nibbles? .......OH! You mean nipples! Um...Well they're used to help mommies feed their babies. That's what the milk comes out of." 

"Then Why do boys have nibbles?" 

The conversations go on with the who, what, when, where, and why's usually for several minutes, until the subject matter either gets too deep or I get too frustrated with the constant barrage of, "WHY?" and try to find a means of distraction.

I'd like to say that I feel lucky that our conversation was relatively short in that respect this evening, but the subject matter is a little more delicate than that of nibbles.

Tonight, my six year old daughter asked me how babies are made. 

"Um.... Isn't this something I can tell you once you're older?" I asked her, hoping she'd let me off the hook.

"NO! I need to figure this out. NOW."

Yeesh.

The one thing I am thankful for is that I already had a few ideas about what to tell her. 

"Well, you see, Gracie, mommies and daddies each carry half of a seed. When a mommy and daddy really love one another and know that they want to start a family together, the daddy gives the mommy his half of the seed and they put the whole seed in the mommy's belly where the mommy grows it into a baby. When the seed has become a whole baby, it is time to come out." 

It looked as if a light bulb went off over the top of Gracie's head as she replied. "OH! Is that all? I thought it was going to be really complicated."