My eleven-year-old mind was going through its usual chatter one afternoon in July 1997 when my dad sat me down on the front steps of our small-town Minnesota home. I remember it distinctly: the heat of the concrete steps, the buzz of the cicadas. I remember my dad’s kind face, and how I could smell summertime and Old Spice as I sat next to him. I even remember that he was wearing a red T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, most likely because he was planning to do some work in the garage after he took care of this piece of business. I remember thinking, Remember when Mom fell down these steps and cut her arm to the bone? And decided to give us an anatomy lesson before heading to the ER? (True story—it’s on page 66.)

I’m not certain how my parents came to the conclusion that my dad needed to have The Talk with me that afternoon—it’s not like they’d been stingy with scientific information during my childhood. They had always held the belief that if a child was old enough to ask the question, they were old enough to be given an answer, and scientific resources were abundant at my house (as you’ll discover on page 35). But for whatever reason, there I was, waiting and wondering what my dad wanted to talk to me about.

It’s funny to me that I remember this particular moment, because I actually have very few distinct memories of childhood—one of the frustrating bugs of being a human with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Anyway, you know that moment in a movie where the protagonist just got a momentous piece of life-changing news, and instead of continuing to hear the information they’re receiving, the audio cuts to their inner monologue? As if their brain has kicked up the volume on the voice in their head as a defense mechanism so they don’t have to hear anything else? You follow? Okay, that EXACT THING happened to me when it became clear what my dad was trying to talk to me about. When he decided it was time to make sure he could check “sex ed” off the Parenting To-Do List, my brain stepped in, and instead of hearing anything he was trying to tell me, it said, “ABSOLUTELY NOT. YOU ARE GOING TO SING THE ENTIRE SPICE GIRLS ALBUM IN YOUR HEAD INSTEAD.”

So I guess Adult Me can thank my dad and my tendency for escapism for my flawless bar karaoke execution of “Wannabe,” but when it comes to my understanding of all the ins and outs of sex (pardon the euphemism), I can’t exactly thank The Talk.

I approached my own parenting journey with that memory firmly at the forefront of my mind. I knew that I entered adulthood with much more information than many of my peers, and yet I still felt flat-footed about a lot of things. Clearly having The Talk wasn’t an effective method for my young brain, so how had I gotten the information I did? How did I know about sperm and egg, about the forty-week gestation period, about how people in relationships should treat each other? And how could I improve upon the foundation my parents gave me? How could I help my own children feel empowered and generally safe (both feelings I had as a young adult) while also helping them avoid some of the pitfalls I experienced in my early sexual years?

It was in attempting to answer these questions for myself that I decided to approach “the birds and the bees” the way I have—a firm set of requirements for my foundations and delineating the conversations into “mechanics” and “specifics.” This strategy worked well for me as my kids were growing, and in the spring of 2021, on a whim, I decided to share the result of a “mechanics” conversation on TikTok. In a 60-second video, my then six-year-old (whom I call Turkey on social media to protect her privacy) described menstruation to me. With my daughter off camera, I asked, “What happens every month in a uterus?”

“It says ‘I’m going to have a baby … I’m going to DECORATE!” she replied enthusiastically.

“ ‘I’m gonna decorate,’ and how does it do that?”

“It decorates itself and puts some tissues on, like blood!”

“Tissues on the walls, mm-hmm! And are they nutrient-rich? Are they the perfect place for a baby to grow?” I asked. Off camera, she nodded sagely.

This kid loves to share knowledge, so I encouraged some follow-up: “And then what happens?”

“And then when it finds out we’re not, it says ‘UGH, FINE,’ ” she says with all the attitude, “and it RIPS IT ALL DOWN!”

“And it comes out as …?”

“Blood,” she answers, matter-of-factly.

“And what happens if a baby goes in there? It …?”

“GROWS!”

“It grows!” I proudly confirm.

I put her to bed, added some captions to the video, and posted it to my fledgling TikTok page. I had less than a hundred followers and didn’t expect the video to go to anyone other than the friends and family who had given me pity follows when I started my page. It was my fourth or fifth video, and the ones I’d posted previously had gotten a couple hundred views at most.

In the next 24 hours, that video demonstrating how to unabashedly and unashamedly address the elephant in the room amassed over one million views.

Not only did it amass views, it amassed comments—people were blown away by Turkey’s knowledge. Some folks were against her knowing about her own body—commenting things like “Why does this baby know this stuff? Who would do that?” But the majority of people were curious about how she had developed that level of understanding, and asked questions about what else she knew or how they could help their kids develop the same education and autonomy. Over the next several months, I continued to create and post content—sometimes about body talk, sometimes parenting, and sometimes just moments with my kids or fun trends.

A few things have become clear as my page has grown. First, parents are still feeling confused about and intimidated by how to approach talking about sex and bodies with their kids. Second, parents and nonparents alike are actively seeking information on how to prepare themselves for these conversations. And third, they are doing this because they feel their own education in the subject was not what it could have been.

The following stories, chapters, and sample scripts are my attempt to meet this need in a tangible, easy-to-reference way. The book is organized in a chronological but also stand-alone way, meaning that you can read it front to back, but also use it for in-the-moment reference. The first chapters of the book are Foundations—pieces that are necessary in order to have successful conversations with your kids at all ages. Foundations are meant to address the Trust Conundrum—or, as my sister puts it, “If I can’t ask you about my penis when I’m young, I can’t ask you about where to put it when I’m older.” Foundations also address both the overarching concept of Consent and what I call Consent for Knowledge—which means recognizing that body talk and sex education need to be conversations, not lectures. Kids need to know about their bodies and about sex, but they also deserve to only know what they’re ready to know. The middle chapters are what I’ve deemed Mechanics—the earliest conversations you’ll have with your kids about How It All Works. These are the nuts and bolts (again with the euphemisms!) of how bodies function—from self-exploration to periods to the dreaded “where do babies come from?” The final chapters are Specifics—the conversations we have as children grow up, realizing the interpersonal aspects of our bodies and the human experience. This section dives further into consent and how we navigate budding romantic relationships and new feelings of attraction to others, and, probably most importantly, how to keep yourself safe as you wade into the wider world. These conversations can be some of the most difficult to have, but (as we know) they’re the most critical for giving children their best chances at being happy, protecting their health, and staying safe.

Each chapter includes not only information for you as a parent, but also at least one sample script that you can use to help plan out how to talk with your child. The scripts generally utilize the same inclusive language that the rest of the text uses, and acknowledge trans and nonbinary identities as valid and important. Through this text, unless it’s specified otherwise, “men” means all men, and “women” means all women. And while no conversation with your child is going to exactly mirror the scripts in the book, the general ideas are likely to be similar.

This book is designed as a guide for you as a parent, but also as a road map for you and your kids to use together. Sometimes even the best parent-child relationships arrive at a point where one party (or both!) feels like they just can’t say/ask/express what they need to. In those moments, I hope you feel confident reaching for this book. Though a lot of us find ourselves dreading these talks, I hope this book can help you find the humor, relax in the humanity, and ultimately enjoy the comfort of knowing you’ve armed your kids with information—something that can never be taken away from them.

PART 1 FOUNDATIONS

I know it’s tempting to jump ahead to the chapters that you think might answer all you and your children’s pressing questions, but I want you to Pump. The. Brakes. I want you to know that I’m proud of you for starting at the beginning, and if you’re someone who is coming back here to read after having skipped ahead, it’s okay—I’m proud of you, too. It’s possible you picked up this book well in advance of your kiddo asking you anything you’re not sure how to answer, but it’s equally possible that you grabbed this book off the shelf in hopes that it can help you tackle something your kid asked you at bedtime just last night.

You have to remember that in most forms of parenting, we’re playing the long game. We’re investing in little things now that turn into much bigger things later. That’s what this first section is about—the small daily foundational values that we instill in our relationships with our children that shape how the Big Things happen later. Think of it like watching Bob Ross create a masterpiece on The Joy of Painting. He starts with a canvas prepped with Liquid White and then he builds. With thoughtful, well-planned layers, considerate brushstrokes, and a few “happy accidents,” he manages to create something amazing. The same thing applies to the Foundations contained in this book.

The Foundation of Unconditional Positive Regard asks us to consider how our words and actions convey our feelings to our child daily—especially when things get difficult. The Foundation of Curiosity encourages us as parents to foster a sense of curiosity about life—from small daily interactions to the big mysteries of the universe—to increase our children’s sense of safety in asking questions. And the Foundations of Consent and Consent for Knowledge provide us guidance on how to raise children who feel confident setting and respecting boundaries for their minds, bodies, and hearts.

Altogether, this section asks you to reflect on how you relate to each Foundation both with your children and in the rest of your life. All the information you will read going forward is made more useful and personalized by having reflected on your own core values and how they interact with the Foundations here. You get to decide how you can be truthful, factual, supportive, and comfortable discussing complex topics within the framework of your own morals, values, and communication style, and always reminding your child that at the end of the day, you’ll be there for them. As you’ll soon read, “I will always love you” sounds simple, and it is … but it also isn’t.

CHAPTER 1 Unconditional Positive Regard

“I KNOOOOOOW,” my daughter groans in the kind of exasperated sigh only an eight-year-old can muster (the groans and sighs I get from my sixteen- and five-year-olds are distinctly different). “There’s nothing I can do to make you stop loving me, I KNOW … But what if I MURDER SOMEONE?”

“Well, I’ll definitely need to know WHY you murdered them—maybe it was necessary! But I’ll still love you.” I answered.

“What if I murder SANTA?!”

“Did he come down the chimney and you thought he was a robber? Or was it just like … because you could? Regardless, I’ll still love you. I just need to plan whether I’m visiting you in prison or learning about stand-your-ground law.”

It’s at this point that I’ve completely lost the plot with this kid, and she’s gotten exactly what she wanted—confirmation that I’ll never stop loving her, and attention in the form of an absolutely ludicrous conversation.

This particular example of unconditional positive regard is emblematic of how conversations with my kids regarding my feelings for them typically go. First, I remind them at some perfectly mundane time that there’s nothing they can do to get me to stop loving them. Then they roll their eyes at having to hear this exact phrase for the 50/100/1,000th time and follow up their giant sigh with some highly unlikely scenario to test the theory. We banter back and forth a bit about exactly how this ridiculous turn of events might have come to pass, but ultimately, they land right back where they started—with a mother who will never, not ever, stop loving them. Regardless of what they do, regardless of who they love, regardless of the bad choices they might make or questions they might feel uncomfortable asking me—there is nothing in the whole wide world that will make me stop loving them.

The concept of unconditional positive regard was made popular by humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers in the 1950s. Though the idea is generally used in psychology to describe the way a clinician should treat their client—providing unconditional support by recognizing their innate ability to grow and change—it’s easy to apply to caregivers and their children. Think of it this way: You, as their primary, most loving grown-up, can see both the tiny child before you and the awesomely cool grown-up they’re going to be … at the same time. That feeling—knowing your child is an unbelievably amazing future grown-up—is the beginning of unconditional positive regard.

Unconditional positive regard is not the same as unconditional love, which is the bare minimum. It’s the idea that in addition to loving your child, you also respect your child and their personhood. You recognize that they are a whole person, separate from you, who deserves your care, attention, and esteem. It does not mean that you have no boundaries for your child; it does not mean that you cannot help your child learn morality; it is not unconditional “yes” or “they’ll grow out of it” without guidance. It means specifically that you love your child enough to provide them with the safest and healthiest way to grow up that you can.

I believe that the unconditional positive regard of a primary caregiver is the first, most important foundational understanding to foster in children. This is rooted in both my experience as a parent, and also as a counselor. As a trained mental health practitioner, I’ve worked with children from early childhood all the way into early adulthood, and one of the most common themes I’ve recognized is that many children felt the most comfortable talking about hard things and asking me difficult questions when they feel sure I wouldn’t be mad at them for talking or asking. I came to the conclusion that children acted this way in part because they viewed question asking the same way they viewed any other behavior—as something that would result in a response somewhere on the spectrum between praise and punishment—and asking a “bad” question the same way they viewed making a mistake. And for many of these kids, mistakes meant shame and punishment. To me, the connection was clear: The best way for me to help my children feel comfortable and confident asking me the hard questions was to show them that asking would never be a mistake—and that mistakes don’t always mean punishment. Research shows that recognition for positive behavior not only helps reinforce positive behavior, it also aids in identity development, moral reasoning, and social thinking. So our job, then, as parents or caregivers, is to encourage the behavior we most want to see: open communication, trust, and, when the going gets tough, what my kids and I call “going toward love.” This encouragement starts by figuring out how to prove to our kids that we are worthy. We start by expressing our unconditional love and showing them our unconditional positive regard.

You might be thinking expressing unconditional love is achieved with a sentiment like “I love you to the moon and back” or “I love you more than the universe” or any of the myriad of expressions of great love. But we know that children, especially young children, tend to be much more literal than those phrases account for. While we, as adults, have the abstract thinking necessary to understand that these expressions are meant to be interpreted as boundless love, kids don’t understand them that way until they, too, have developed the ability for abstract thought (usually as they enter adolescence). That’s why the phrase we use in our house—“there’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you”—is said the way it is. It is an explicit, unarguable, definable, and finite expression of the truth: that there is no question, thought, or action that my kids can have or do that will change my feelings for them.

As I mentioned, the way I choose to present information to children is primarily based on their cognitive development. Scientists have been interested in cognitive development—the way people learn to think—for a long time, and several theories have been proposed to explain how kids’ brains grow and change over time. One of these, Jean Piaget’s widely known theory of cognitive development, is the basis for many approaches and interventions for children, including the suggestions in this book. This theory states that cognitive development occurs over the course of the entire life span, and it can be broken into distinct stages.

The first stage of cognitive development, from birth to roughly age two, is called the sensorimotor stage. This is the time in a child’s life when they are learning the most by interacting physically with the world around them. It’s the stage of putting everything in their mouths and grabbing fistfuls of anything nearby—including your hair and their own bodies.

The next stage is the preoperational stage of development, from right about when they turn three until roughly age seven. Kids in this stage have usually learned to communicate and have the ability to express themselves, but they have a lot of difficulty understanding other people’s points of view. They struggle to recognize that people may have different feelings about a situation than they do and have to have questions answered in a way that correlates to something they already know. As they grow through this period, kids learn to understand basic concepts like simple cause and effect, and love to know “why.” They may even endeavor to answer their own questions with magical thinking instead of seeking out actual answers.

As kids gain the ability to see other perspectives and engage with ideas using logic, they enter what is called the concrete operational stage. Kids in this stage still love to know the answers to questions, but they can begin to look at evidence and come to conclusions based on the information in front of them. Kids are typically in the concrete operational stage from the age of seven until the age of eleven. While kids this age begin to demonstrate a more adult-like engagement with information, they still struggle to consider abstract or hypothetical ideas and scenarios. They do best when information can be related to a concrete example or demonstration that is familiar to them.

The stage of development that carries children into adult life is called the formal operational stage. Children (and adults) who have developed into this stage are able to mentally manipulate information presented to them and apply several modes of thinking to solve problems and find answers to their questions. At roughly age twelve, kids start engaging with hypothetical thought. They are able to consider the influence of several variables at a time, multiple outcomes, and how their thoughts and actions may influence those outcomes. Kids this age also begin to demonstrate metacognition, or “thinking about thinking”—they can gain introspection and see how their thoughts influence their own feelings, choices, and behaviors.

“There’s nothing you can do to make me stop loving you” became my family’s go-to phrase because it is easily understood starting from the moment they recognize that I have my own thoughts and feelings (right around age four). Now, I’ll grant you—the phrase is a bit cumbersome. It can be a mouthful even at the best of times, so it’s not the only expression of great love we use in our house. “I love you infinity and beyond” is tossed around with ease—so much so that I have it tattooed on my arm in my late husband’s handwriting. My eldest child understands that infinity is limitless, and my youngest children will eventually understand the abstract idea of a number that never ends—so we will keep using the expression. We also indulge in finding things we love each other “more than”: “I love you more than Indian food,” “I love you more than dance,” “I love you more than video games,” “I love you more than this house and money and our car and everything I own.” Depending on the seriousness of the mood, we can range from loving each other more than something barely tolerated—“I love you more than TOENAIL CHIP COOKIES”—to something sacred: “I love you more than my Grandpa Bear.” This phrase is almost miraculous in its utility—I can use it to defuse a tense situation, dry tears, bring giggles, and infuse even a mundane moment with love.

I also love to ambush my children with “I love you.” The game is easy enough in the beginning—the aim is to truly surprise them with an unexpected “I love you.” When the kids are little, it’s cake to win, because they never see it coming:

“Guess what?”

“What?!”