If she is asking, then you should answer. One of the best ways to have these talks is to let your child lead. At 10 she is likely hearing about it from peers and TV. You should definitely be the one who she can come to with questions about this stuff.

I think what you say about it, and how, matters with really young children, of course, but I think bringing up different aspects of human sexuality, maturation, privacy, and sex at a young age should be done. And second graders are what, 7 or 8? Crazy isn’t it?

Luckily we’d already had the “what to do if you see naked people on the computer” talk and they knew to turn off the monitor and come tell me about it.

Oooh no about #2! I am so sorry. I had to tell my daughter the other day that she could not scroll through images (we did an image search for Princess Nausicaa toys, and there can be some weird images/people in the Anime realm) without me! And I do think #1 is also true to help your child develop correct views of their bodies.

1) before they hit puberty, they haven’t absorbed all the cultural messages about sex and don’t yet feel that it’s an awkward topic to be discussing with their parents – so they’re reaction will probably more along the lines of “Huh. That’s weird, but okay” rather than “Oh my gosh, how embarrassing that my mother is talking to me about this!”

2) they get exposed to inappropriate images WAY too early because of the Internet. Back when Frozen came out, my girls wanted to draw Anna but couldn’t remember exactly what her dress looked like, so Googled it, and silly me I didn’t think to tell them to Google “Anna FROM FROZEN.” They did a Google Images search for “Anna” and some ladies came up who were very naked and very NOT cartoon characters.