In the last year or two, the most common subject I am asked about is talking with our kids about gender fluidity and being transgender. This question comes from churches, schools, parenting groups, and individual parents on my website’s contact form. It’s clear we know we should talk about it, and it’s clear we don’t quite know how.

The core of what I do with Beyond Birds and Bees is help parents think about their values, so they can help teach their kids those values, rather than simply focus on behavioral expectations. So I was really struck by what Glennon wrote about boundaries and beliefs. For most of us, values and sex are intertwined, and cannot be separated. The problem is many of us don’t even know what our value about sex is! We have a behavioral expectation that we’ve been told, or that we want to tell our kids, and it’s a rooted in some belief that was programmed into us by our culture, community, religion or family. But what is the value?

Manufacturers want to know how things work. They are no longer satisfied with Geographer–level answers, they want to know more. For example, if your child is starting to question how the Tooth Fairy knows when to visit, or why some kids get more money from the Tooth Fairy than others, this is a sign that they are wondering how things work and they are a Manufacturer.

This is Part 1 of our At-Home Sex Ed Series. We're starting with our littles, but even if your kids are older this is an important way of helping us, as parent, understand how our kids' process information. The goal is to help you learn more about how you can answer their questions, when you should initiate conversations, and to provide a few ideas for how to take advantage of our time together at-home.