What Do I Do If My Child Asks Me About Dildo?

Cathy: What do you do if your kid ask you what a dildo is and ….how do you answer them?
This is J.D…J.aka Jen Devine from http://superstarhealtheducation.com/ and I’m Cathy Vartuli from https://theintimacydojo.com/ and you said you actually gotten this question a number of times.

Jen: Oh, yeah. In the anonymous question box. It’s not uncommon to get any type of question so for like fourth or fifth grade I’d say “it’s an object that resembles a penis shaped thing but it’s not always and it’s designed for doing sexual things with one’s own body or someone else’s. Next question?”

Cathy: That’s…. you just you don’t and they’re okay with that?

Jen: Yeah. For little for like fourth or fifth grade that’s usually all you need and then if they have more questions they might ask but I don’t go into super amounts of detail for like that age group. For older kids I might give more detail when….especially if they’re at the age where they are about to have the ability to buy them themselves legally.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: They might need to know more information about them.

Cathy: How would it…..what age is that in California?

Jen: Eighteen.

Cathy: Eighteen so

Jen: Yeah. Right. What are the products made out of? Are they safe materials? What are things one might look for?

Cathy: How do they clean them?

Jen: How to make sure that the objects are safe to put in the body or on the outside of the body? How do you clean them and protect them, caring for them? I got a great……I work on a hotline called the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline and we take anonymous calls from all over the world from people who have questions about sex and gender and bodies and I got a great call from a parent who had discovered that their offspring their son had gotten some kind of sex sleeve, some kind of toy that was probably a masturbatory toy and they had left it underneath the counter in the bathroom sort of amongst a pile of you know things and her concern was less about the like object itself and like but more about like this person obviously had no idea how to take care of this object

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: and she was like “how do I even answer that question for my kid?” So we talked about how to not stigmatize the person for finding a tool that could be super cool and helpful

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: for helping them learn but there are some things about hygiene and cleanliness and there’s some things about privacy that might like have needed to be addressed

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: too like where would be a good place to keep that and also that like you know legally I covered that too you know like technically you’re not supposed to be buying these things on the internet when you’re fourteen or fifteen. So what….what values did this person have for her family around whether or not some things you do want your kid to have access

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: to or not right and that’s then only she could decide

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: but yeah.

Cathy: Go

Jen: For little kids a dildo it’s just an object that shaped like a penis people could decide what they want to do with it.

Cathy: That’s great. I love it. You’re again you’re not answering all the questions people fear might come you’re answering the question they actually asked.

Jen: Right and try to be short and sweet.

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: Always my challenge.

Cathy: Thanks very much Jen.

Jen: Hey, maybe we should do bunch of my like funny questions from that

Cathy: Yes. Let’s do some of those.

Jen: that box.

Cathy: So come back if you’d like to hear funny questions from the box.

Jen: And I’ll even answer them so you can know what to say when somebody asks you one of these questions. It’s probably not funny to them. It’s probably actually a serious question.

Cathy: Yeah. Leave comments below. Do you think that children should have more information about this about sex toys and in general?

Jen: Yeah.