Confronting Sensitive Questions

“Teacher, teacher, what is a vagina?”  

Science time. That was my seven-year old tutee asking me. I was a first-time tutor then, about four years ago. And that was my first day. I was prepared to answer questions, but not about things like that. To have more time to think about how to answer the question, I casually asked him why he wanted to know. He said his classmates would always say that and would laugh. 

“Hmm, it’s strange that they find it funny”, I said. “All girls have vagina. That is what we have because we don’t have penis.” 

Ok, I was guilty of assuming that he knew what penis was. I still had to explain it using a term which he was familiar with – bird. Having satisfied his curiosity, we got back to his assignment. 

The following night, he had a new question – “What is sex?” I admit it was difficult not to laugh. Just the fact that it was coming from a kid made it seem so…weird. In an effort to get away with it, I just said that I think his Dad knows more about it than I do. He consented to ask his Dad instead. It turned out, however, that his Dad would not answer the question so the following night, I had to face him again. 

You know how little kids are – you have to answer their questions in a convincing way or else they would not drop the topic. If that happens, good luck to your tutoring. S/he might still be wondering about it even if your topic is Math. So answer the question, I did. I told him, “That’s what parents do so that they can have babies like you. As to how they do it, you have to wait until high school Biology to understand. Right now, let’s just do your homework so that we can be sure that you can eventually get to high school.” Whew!

If you are a tutor, I hope this would not happen to you. But you must have noticed how kids nowadays hear about sensitive topics at an age earlier than we first started asking about them. I remember the time during my elementary days when my younger brother asked, over dinner, what sex means. The know-it-all girl that I was, I blurted out before anyone could answer: “Sex is whether you’re a male or a female! Just put ‘Male’”. He was satisfied. Honestly, that was all I knew about sex. I just had an inkling that there must be another meaning to it because my sister and her best friend laughed, saying that they got nervous as to what I would say. 

I am not an expert in Child Psychology, but ever since it happened to me, I began to take interest in how I could answer questions like that without “damaging” a child’s mind. Here’s what I gathered:

1. Do not laugh. If you do, they’ll get even more curious. Or they might think there’s something bad about it. 

2. If you are not confident that you can answer the question, refer them to their parents. Their parents might have foreseen that one of these days, their child would ask them these questions and they might have readied their answers.

3. If the parents would not answer or the child was not satisfied with the answers s/he got and you still are not confident that you can answer the question adequately, say that you’ll find out later and get back to him/her. (Please keep your word. That’s one way of teaching kids about word of honor).

It’s good to be prepared. So now that you have read this, go and find out more and better ways of dealing with instances like this. And please get back to us. Other tutors might also want to learn from what you have gathered. 

Happy tutoring!