girls
stand side by side and gaze with rapt but natural wonder and delight at a
bureau drawer or chest full of the beautiful little garments waiting and
ready for an expected child can never doubt the wisdom of a child's
knowing from the start some better version of the story than any of the
evasive temporizings of the conventional parent.

What shall the parent do who has never spoken of these things to his child
until now the child is ten, eleven, or twelve years of age, and especially
if the parent has given the child one of these evasive answers in reply to
its innocent questions? It may be said in passing that if the parent has
thus evasively answered the child's first questions, he will never be
bothered in all probability with any more questions. For the best way to
set up the barrier is to answer questions falsely; and one way to
establish confidence and to facilitate further communication is to answer
truthfully.

The child may know more or less than you think it knows. The parent does
not know what a ten- or twelve-year-old child knows or does not know.
Again, a parent does not know at what time or in what way or to what
extent the child's sexual life and impulse have already awakened. And the
parent does not know to what extent the child may know "what ain't so." It
is a mistake in most cases for the parent to try to find answers to these
questions by questioning the child. For just as a parent may start wrong
by deceiving the child, so the child may start wrong by deceiving the
parent, and even a pretty good child, especially after it has been
deceived by the parent, is likely to follow the same cue when it is
questioned by the parent. The parent should not tempt the child to such a
misstep.

Again, the parent, whether mother or father, should never try to open the
conversation or resume it at a time when the boy or girl is likely to be
interrupted or distracted or is eager at the moment to be somewhere else
and doing something else. The mother and daughter quietly sewing together,
or the father and son off for a walk, or sitting on a log, or lying on the
grass, are ready for a confidential talk.

If the boy or girl was deceived in response to its first questions, the
father or mother may retract in some such way as this: "Do you remember,
Molly, that when you asked me where your baby brother came from, I told
you the doctor made us a present? Well, that's the way fathers and mothers
answer little child