Chrissy Teigen Reveals She's Ready to Have the 'Sex Talk' With 9-Year-Old Daughter Luna

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5 hours ago

When is the right time to explain the birds and the bees to your kids? Chrissy Teigen and John Legend are preparing to have 'the sex talk' with their eldest daughter Luna, 9, and she reached out to Good Inside author Dr. Becky Kennedy (known simply as Dr. Becky) for some advice.
In a new interview on her Audible original podcast, Self Conscious with Chrissy Teigen, the mom of four shared that she is preparing for the sex talk with Luna 'because it's happening at their school soon, and I don't want them to go into it blindly.'
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'So, I bought all the books, I got everything for it. And leading up to it, we try to deal with so many things in the family with humor and openness, because it is such an uncomfortable thing to talk about.'
Dr. Becky says you should start by leaning into the awkwardness of the situation. 'Naming your own awkwardness is really important.'
'I never had a talk,' Teigen reveals. 'I had the internet.'
Dr. Becky, who emphasized that the sex talk 'is not just one talk,' added that 'kids become initially curious [about sex] at the exact same age they become curious about death. Which is early, because it makes sense. It's the two bookends of life. It's usually around age 3.'
She added, 'There's no reason why [kids] shouldn't know the words 'penis' and 'vagina.' They know so many complicated things. We live in New York City, we see a million things all the time. Why shouldn't they know anatomy and how humans are made? It's actually biology. It's not even sexual for the kid. But we all have so many of our own hangups that completely color things. To me, the age that kids can learn about this stuff is so much earlier than we think.'
By asking these questions, Dr. Becky says kids are 'testing the waters.' 'Is it safe to be curious with you or is it not?' their questions are asking. 'And if it's not, the curiosity still lives. They're like, where can I go get this [information from]?'
She summarized: 'Big picture, none of this is sexual, all of this is basic information. If you've already talked to your kids about death, probably that means they are curious about birth.'
As someone with kids ages 7 and 6, I thought I would have much more time to get into these topics, but as they've already asked about death and had question about babies, I realize now that it's time to prepare them. This podcast episode is really good and also dives into content about good kids acting out, lying, and reparenting yourself through childhood trauma.
Jill Whitney, licensed marriage and family therapist, previously told SheKnows to keep it simple when talking to your kids and explain things depending on their age. 'Any time is the right time because it should be a series of conversations, which ideally happen more or less naturally,' she told us. 'So when kids are toddlers, teach them correct names for body parts. When sex comes up in a movie or TV show, look for an opportunity to explain or clarify. Use real-life examples to talk about healthy and unhealthy relationships.'
She suggests using clear language to describe sex. For example, you could say when describing a heterosexual relationship that the two people ''may get naked and hug each other. The man's penis goes into the woman's vagina. The man's semen joins with an ovum inside the woman, and a baby grows in a special place inside the mother called the uterus.' For adults, this sounds like an awful lot to say, but for kids, it's just another fact about nature.'
Whitney suggested bringing it up with your child if you still haven't talked about it when they are 8 or 9. 'It's essential that they get accurate information from you before they get misinformation from friends,' she explained. 'You want to show that they can come to you whenever they have questions. Establish yourself as a trusted resource before their hormones kick in during the middle school years.'
For more help, Dr. Becky has a 'how to talk about sex workshop' for parents of kids ages 0-12. 'We want our kids to learn about their bodies, private parts, and how babies are made in a safe, loving environment—not from peers or the internet,' she described this workshop. You'll get age-appropriate scripts and strategies for sharing information that's accurate and inclusive for kids. There's no shame in getting a little help for tricky topics like this!Best of SheKnows
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