By Kate Stewart

The annual trip to the doctor’s office for their yearly physicals with my daughters is a time I look back and take a few moments to think about how they have grown. You receive the instant reminders as the nurse tells you their weight and height. You look around the waiting room and see the anxious parents holding newborns and think how that seemed like just yesterday – and then you smile at the couple and think to yourself  thank god my daughters sleep through the night (mostly) and diapers are a thing of the past.

Well this year my oldest turned nine and we went to her annual visit thinking about the normal things – how much she had grown, did she need any shots, how long will we have to wait to see the doctor, will we get the nice nurse who likes to chat or the one that scares everyone – including parents.  The visit started off just like all the others over the years. The doctor asked the usual questions – How much milk do you drink? Do you eat your vegetables? What time do you go to bed at night? And, then it came time for the shots. “Let’s see,” the doctor started to say as he looked at her chart. “We need to do a tetanus booster and oh yes it is time for her to get the HPV vaccine.”

By Kate Stewart

When our children learned to walk they started by crawling then pulling themselves up and finally taking those first wobbly steps. When they learned to talk they started with simple sounds that eventually formed into words. Reading was the same – recognizing letters and sounds and moving up to simple books.

Our babies did not go to sleep one night and the next day wake up able to run down the street or recite the Gettysburg Address – even though sometimes it feels like these things happen in a blink of an eye.

It is a process -- learning to walk, talk, read, ride a bike – learning how to do just about anything is a process. So it dawned on me that for us to think about one day sitting down and having “the talk” with our kids misses this point completely and also has us missing many opportunities.

It takes baby steps and laying the foundation for a child’s healthy sexual growth begins on day one. I know it sounds strange to think about your tiny baby and how she is already beginning the process of developing sexually. When I first heard someone say that infants, children, teens are all sexual beings, it made me uncomfortable. My first reaction was a mixture of fear and apprehension. But the problem was I was jumping in the deep end without first learning how to do the doggy paddle. Think about it, when you hear the phrase “sexual development” what do you think of? Sex, intercourse, all the things you don’t want your kids doing until they’re 30 and out of the house. But as I said that is jumping in at the deep end.

By Kate Stewart

Soon after my second daughter was born I started thinking about all those things I would need to teach my children. First, you have the basics – walking, talking, etc. As they get older you teach them to read, to cross the street, to tie their shoe laces and – about sex.

Sex. As most of my friends know we have made it a priority in our house to make sure we talk openly with our daughters about sex. But that doesn’t mean it is always easy or comes naturally. As with most things they don’t tell you when you have children, some days it is easy and you have all the answers and then there are days you just wish you could go to the bathroom by yourself.

Back to sex. My own upbringing fell pretty short in talking about sex. I remember my first period in 7th grade. I was at a Saturday matinee of The Outsiders. As Ponyboy and the other young stars struggled to make sense of their lives, I got horrible cramps and suddenly realized I had a stain on my pants. Thank god for the older sister of a friend who promptly gave me a tutorial on menstruation and how to use a tampon – that was a bit of shocker. When I told my mom the only response was that she would buy more maxi pads.  Whenever I had my period my grandmother would refer to it as “the girlfriend.”