If
you have contact with nature in common with your children the occasions
will be many for telling them about flower and animal life. And this
will naturally lead on to instruction about human beings. Even if such
contact with nature should be impossible, life in any place and in any
guise will assuredly present you with opportunities for your teaching.
And in any case try to get in _first_. Before the slime of schoolboy
talk or the follies of schoolgirl talk have defiled the
subject tell your children about it, as about something sacred and
beautiful--much too sacred and beautiful for the chatter of idle hours
in playgrounds, etc. You will be surprised, if you have forgotten your
own childhood, how early it is necessary to do all this if you are to
get in first. No general rules about the right age can be laid down.
Children differ enormously in regard to the ages at which they pass
from stage to stage in their development. You will need to watch and to
understand. Above all do not let your telling take the form of mere
prohibitions.
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