Let's Be Honest
I didn’t plan on this being sexual health education day, but it seemed only fitting to follow my tomKIT post with this one from PPLM Parent Education Program Manager Amy Cody. Today, Amy shares three favorite resources to help parents discuss sexual health and sexuality issues with kids ages 4 and up:
From Amy:
“Through our Let's Be Honest workshops, we recommend three favorite books to families as invaluable resources for children and teens to find age-appropriate and scientifically accurate information about sex and sexuality topics. (And, as part of our parent education program, we offer complimentary copies of the first two to parent participants in our workshops!)
Kids of all ages have lots of ideas and questions about their bodies. Answering their questions and responding to their concerns reassures them that they are perfectly normal and healthy. These books, written by Robie H. Harris and illustrated by Michael Emberley, can help parents be the primary sexuality educators of their children. We know that parents want to do the best job they can to keep their kids and teens healthy. But information about sexual health, including puberty and other topics, can be complicated.
As part of our program, we recommend these books for parents, teachers, librarians, health professionals, and clergy as trusted and accessible resources to get answers and information about how to talk to youth about sexuality.
It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health
This book, written for youth ages 10 and up, celebrates 15 years in print with a fully updated version, including a brand-new chapter on safe and healthy Internet use - one of parents' key concerns. It offers young people real information they need - now more than ever - to make responsible decisions that can help them stay healthy as they approach and experience puberty and adolescence. It provides accurate, unbiased answers to nearly every conceivable question, from conception and puberty to birth control and AIDS. This book also is available in Spanish and in over twenty-five other languages.
It's So Amazing!: A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families
This nonfiction book for children ages seven and up provides accurate, unbiased answers to nearly every conceivable question - from reproduction to pregnancy and birth - while giving children a healthy understanding of their bodies. Our kids need and have a right to have the most up-to-date and accurate science facts about their bodies and about one of science's most amazing stories - the story of how just one egg and one sperm can grow into a baby. This book is available in Spanish and many other languages.
It's Not the Stork: A Book About Girls, Boys, Babies, Bodies, Families and Friends
This book, written especially for children ages four and up, helps answer those endless and perfectly normal questions that preschool, kindergarten, and early elementary school children ask about how they began and what makes a girl and girl and a boy a boy."