But How'd I Get in There in the First Place?: Talking to Your Young Child about Sex »

Deborah M. Roffman, M.S., a nationally certified Sexuality and Family Life Educator, is an associate editor of the Journal of Sex Education and Therapy and the author of Sex and Sensibility. She has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

For parents of three to six year olds, a wise and charming guide to talking about sex, conception, and birth

Library Journal

The "Go Parents!" series (e.g., Teaching Your Children Good Manners) is designed to infuse the task of carrying out parental responsibilities with humor and enjoyment. The latest entry tackles sexuality issues. Berkenkamp, a mother of four, and Atkins, a child psychologist, offer basic advice and information on what to expect for each age group, toddler to age 12, with a short sample question-and-answer section at the end. In a useful twist, they recommend asking children what they think is the answer to a question before beginning an explanation. Each chapter contains a games-and-activities section, a nice feature. This book is accessible, easy to read, and free of intellectual leanings. Recommended for public libraries with the caveat that it does not address teenagers. Roffman is a certified sexuality educator and author of Sex and Sensibility: The Thinking Parent's Guide to Talking Sense About Sex. Like her first book, this one takes a highly intellectual approach while conveying information through an excellent "five universal needs" structure (i.e., affirmation, information giving, values clarification, limit setting, and anticipatory guidance). But there are few sample dialogs, questions raised in one section may be answered unexpectedly much later or sometimes not at all, and the author assumes upper- to middle-class intellectual/cultural background and knowledge. An optional purchase; better buys are Sol and Judith Gordon's Raising a Child Responsibly in a Sexually Permissive World, which also addresses disabled youth, and Mary Calderone and James Ramey's Talking with Your Child About Sex, still valuable for its copious sample questions and answers. Martha Cornog, Philadelphia Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.