Answering questions
Children ask many questions every day. It is to be expected that some of these questions will be about bodies, relationships and sexuality topics. When responding to children’s questions, it is important to be mindful of the message communicated to the child by the response. Parents and carers can show positive body language and an encouraging facial expression to communicate to children that it is ok to talk to trusted adults about all topics.
It is very important to be ‘askable’ and approachable to children to keep communication open. If children can not ask simple questions or talk about bodies, it may be extremely difficult for them to ask for help or disclose harm to trusted adults. By remaining non-judgemental, respecting the question and answering it simply and factually, parents and carers give children the message that they are open to talking with children.
Suggested techniques for responding to children’s questions
Turning the question around
This technique is particularly useful for gauging a child’s current level of knowledge or to understand what they are asking. For example:
Child: “Where did I come from?”
Adult: “That‘s a good question. What do you think?”
Continuum
This technique is a useful response to values based questions. It presents the range of attitudes and values that can be held about an issue. For example:
Child: “Why do Taylah’s mum and dad live in two different houses?”
Adult: “Some families live in the same house and some families live in separate houses.”
I don’t know
It is honest and acceptable to admit a lack of knowledge to children. It presents an opportunity to model to children problem solving and ways to find out information from appropriate and evidence-based sources. For example:
Child: “Can a baby see inside the mummy?”
Adult: “That’s a really interesting question, but I’m not really sure of the answer. How could we find out?” or “Shall we look in one of the books about babies together?”
The straightforward answer
This technique gives a simple, honest and straightforward answer. For example:
Child: “What’s that?” (girl pointing at boy’s penis in the bathroom)
Adult: “That’s a penis. All boys and men have a penis.”
Deferring children’s questions in a positive way
Sometimes parents and carers may feel that they can’t answer a child’s question about bodies or sexuality for various reasons. The following responses can be used to acknowledge a child’s question but defer answering the question in a positive way.
- “That’s a very good question and I’m glad you asked.”
- “That would be a really good thing to talk about together once we are in the car, ok?”
- “That’s a very interesting question, what made you think of that?”
- “That’s a very interesting question. I’m not sure how to answer it. I’ll find out and tell you at (specify time).”
- “I don’t know the answer, shall we find out together?”
- “That is a private question. I would be happy to talk to you more about it when we get home.”