Having only one gender & teaching them about the other gender

I am not officially part of this forum yet, but I have a question for you all. If you have all boys or all girls what are doing or going to do to teach them about the other sex. Reading the "bits and bobs" post made me think about making my boys aware of the differences (at the appropriate age) and to respect that area of girl (ie, no touching and to let someone know if they see someone else touching). I am wondering how you go about this and at what age this should be started. I am going to make a conscience effort to start calling my boys penis and tested by the correct terms, but am unsure when to begin teaching about the opposite sex.

 

My girls are almost two and they're just starting to notice the difference in dad's body as compared to mom's. So I'd say you have a while before your boys might notice. When they do, you're probably the best example of a girl's (woman's) body, so if they see your body on a regular basis they'll already have some understanding that girls and boys are different.

 

I don't know from experience, but my BIL and SIL only have girls and they told their girls simply that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina...I distinctly remember when we got our puppy and Haleigh asked me if the puppy had a penis or a vagina. LOL.

 

Mine are in daycare, so they learn plenty about the opposite sex there. They're more comfortable with sex differences than I am -- I walked in on a little boy on the potty in their school bathroom once, and was like "Yikes! A penis!"

They also see DH and me naked occasionally -- we don't walk around the house that way, but they'll sometimes see us getting out of the shower or getting dressed. Other than that, we don't focus on it much.

 

When my son was young he knew that he had a penis, and that girls did not. In fact, at one point whenever he met someone new he would ask them, "Do you have a penis?" And then respond with either, "So do I" (with a high five mentality) or, "Oh, well I do" and walk off dismissively. This was probably when he was about 2 years old. It probably wasn't until he was about 4.5 or 5 that I told him about girl parts, mainly because they aren't as "visible", he just knew what they did not have. He had seen me naked, etc, and the only question he ever asked me was why I wore something over my boobs...so I explained to him what that was.

I think I'll take a different approach with my girls, but once again, thats probably more because of the "visibility", and the fact that they have a brother.