How to share personal stories as a way to teach sex education

Story telling has always been a great way to share knowledge. And it is how knowledge has been passed down for generations.

Story telling is also a useful strategy for teaching sex education in the family home.

Stories help to strengthen your connection with your child, are a great way to share your values and help place meaning around facts. They also help to normalise love, sex, relationships and growing up (puberty) for your child.

Plus sharing them lets your child know that they’re not alone. And that you remember what it was like to be a child growing up.

In this blog post, I’m going to share examples of how to use stories to teach sex education.

You’ll find more information about sex education in my Sex Education 101 page. And you can find more strategies for starting sex education conversations (like this) in my list of ideas on how to teach sex education in the family home.

Let’s get started!

Examples of stories

Here are some examples of personal stories to share. These could be used to start a conversation (if your child responds). Or they could be a teachable statement i.e. a casual statement that your child may (or may not) respond to, but it still teaches them something.

I used to play with these dolls as a child. I had a baby doll, and I used to make the Ken doll bounce on top of Barbie to make the baby. I don’t know if I really knew why I did that, as my parents never talked to me about sex.

I remember watching this tv show as a child. We used to get up early on a Saturday morning just so we wouldn’t miss it. They always stereotyped genders back then. Girls were weak, and boys were strong.

My parents didn’t have a lot of spare cash when I grew up. Having 7 kids was pretty expensive, so Nanny used to sew clothes for me. I hated it and found it so embarrassing. I wanted to dress and look like all the other kids, and to fit in. And I thought that wearing the same clothes meant that.

We never had the internet when I was a kid. We had to look things up in the encyclopedia. I remember looking up words like sex, penis, and vagina. I am so glad that you don’t have to grow up as ignorant as I was.

I hope you find this helpful for teaching sex education to your child.

Happy talking!
❤️ Cath

More sex education resources