I think you are doing exactly the right thing. Not that you need my approval - but you have it anyway.

Here in Italy we have the first sex ed lesson in school at 10 y.o. so it's not too soon.

I don’t know who is down voting you but I don’t think 11 is too soon. Girls start periods around 11, I was 12, and I knew nothing! I am lucky nothing bad happened to me. But I would have had healthier relationships mentally and physically if it wasn’t so taboo to know about the difference between our bodies.

Dippin Dot, your mom did you a solid, that's for sure! My mother got me a kit from one of the feminine hygiene companies with a booklet that explained a lot of things. She gave me the kit when I had a "period" at age 10.5. It wasn't a real period, but she was prepared. My mother was such a prude about sex and taught me that sex was dirty and was not a subject that polite women talked about. My stepmother was quite open about the birds and the bees, so I got a mixed education at home. On the subject of the right age to start teaching comprehensive and frank sex education is dropping into the single digits. Girls are starting their monthly cycles much earlier. It's not as uncommon as it used to be for girls to have their first period at age 9. A friend who worked at a middle school office had a student who was pregnant for the *3rd* time at age 11. She told my friend that she was keeping this one. This was 20 years ago.

My mom was similar to yours. She actually gave me age-appropriate books that were from age 6-9, explaining about puberty, periods and where babies comes from and the other was I think 11-13 where they explained in more details about sex, STDs and contraception. Well, I was curios, so I actually read the second one earlier, so I knew the facts way before I needed them. I didn't think about having sex before 16 and when I did I knew that "I'll keep you safe" isn't good enough, so if you want to have sex, you better go buy condoms.

@Dippin Dot..and that's what makes you a good mother. People are always overly-protective of their kids. I'm here to tell you, the earlier the better when telling them the birds and the bees. Why? Because the last time my sister-in-law was a counselor for a camp full of 11 year olds, her biggest problem was breaking up kids that had attempted to sneak off in the woods to have sex...some of them she caught in various stages of undress. Girls are getting pregnant at 12 and 13 now. You can't wait until you think they're old enough. It's not a conversation that you can avoid and you don't want to live with the consequences of delivering that message too late.

You made sure that he’s vaccinated against HPV, right?

You, are a great mom!!❤️❤️❤️❤️

I was 14 and found a copy of Dr Ruth's Guide to Good sex and knew more about sex than my dad ever thought I knew. It talked about sex before and during menstruation, but not what menstruation was.

Last week, when I picked up my little boy in kindergarden, a mother was upset because her elder daughter (14yo) "learnt sex" at school, she had to memorize anatomical names from pictures (in fact drawings). She was even more upset that parents around didn't see any problem with this, because school was " putting ideas in kids head" and they shouldn't talk about menstruations because this is dirty... I'm really glad for this girl ( likely to soon menstruate) had the chance to get informations on that point at school. Of course, in a perfect world, her parents would have do the job, but as we're not living in a perfect world...

The trouble is that there are parents who don't teach their children or teach them wrong or misleading things. Schools need to do this so that parents can't get away with teaching their children utter c**p. I was lucky - my parents were good in that regard but I heard a lot of playground chatter from children who weren't being given good education. The school aspect is VITAL. Parents should not have the right to overule this either. Ignorance leads to some terrible things happening.

I set a lot of children straight on the playground, but I was lucky--my mom told me everything, and kids were asking questions way before sex ed caught up with what they wanted to know--it's worse now.

You've been down voted by trolls--your experience says everything, and why we need sex ed for our children

Chocolate and Midol, actually

Don't forget the heating pad or hot water bottle

Correction...Godiva and Midol...with lots and lots of wine.....lol

He is love, you must not have been watching the news during the second Bush administration when gag rules were put in place that countries who wanted US foreign aid had to push abstinence only sex education and were expressly prohibited from talking about abortion. Abstinence-only education laws were passed in a number of conservative states. What passes for sex education in some states is appalling. No amount of facts mean anything to the conservative "if you educate them, they will have more sex and much earlier" believers. Facts about teenage pregnancies and abortion rates dropping when factual and comprehensive sex education is taught as a regular part of secondary education.

So much downvoting going on... what is up with that?

Ask religious people. They fear knowledge cause they are stupid. The american bible belt is a big joke. Less sex ed had led there to more teen pregnancies but they just ignore it.

That is true everywhere that has good sex education. The highest rates of teen pregnancy and STDs are in places that either have no sex ed or use an "abstinence only" variety.