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Show Your Baby Answer Child's Questions on Sex Honestly 1 By MYSTLZ MEYER ELDBED Our free leaflet "What to Tell Children About Babies," carries some helpful suggestions of literature liter-ature desirable for the parent to read. It may be had by sending a 3-cent stamped, self-addressed envelope with your letter to Mrs. Eldred of the Your Baby and Mine -department in care of The Salt Lake Telegram. . Seemingly, It ought to be easier for a parent to talk to an adolescent adoles-cent about sex than to an Innocent, 5-year-old. But now the parent is self-conscious and fearful of revealing re-vealing herself to the clear, questioning ques-tioning eyes of her child. Sex Information In-formation can no longer be reduced to a simple formula any parent can memorize, but necessitates that the parent herself know what she thinks of a number of social problems, prob-lems, arising from sex, which are far beyond the limits of any books she might offer the child to read. Likewise, parents lack a vocabulary vocabu-lary suitable for a discussion of sex. They want to express themselves In a genteel manner and the words they possess are associated hi Their minds with the secretive manner or the illicit place In which they themselves them-selves learned them. Yet a parent has not fulfilled her duty when she merely gives a child books to read. Those help, of course, to erase the child's most abysmal Ignorance, but they may leave him with other impressions as confusing. Why should a parent par-ent plant a book In his room and then sneak away while he reads It? Is he to be blamed if he gets the Idea that these are things he should know about but that his mother cannot bring herself to speak of? Even though a parent lacks the artistry of expression employed by books or leaflets, she Is living her children a more wholesome Idea of sex when she herself does the reading and offers them her own convictions and Interpretations. Interpreta-tions. Sex education Is a day by day matter. Everything a parent says or refuses to say, her own reactions reac-tions to her physical disabilities, her expressions of endearment to her husband, her gestures of disapproval dis-approval toward stage nudity or sex jokes, her attitude toward new babies in the neighborhood, or about Illegitimacy or babies who arrive In over-crowded families these are sex education quite as truly as the Information she may dispense, by word or book. Since children are certain to acquire vivid impressions of sex during the process of living with their parents, these latter cannot avoid the responsibility to clarify their own minds as to the right Impressions. Now, as In youth, It is imperative that children make parents their first port of call and that parents meet the difficult subject of sex honestly and frankly. frank-ly. Admit IU difficulty and then go on from there. |