Is it time for the sex chat with Mol yet?
She's only nine. Well, nine, about to be 10 in just under one months time.

I'm trying very hard to put myself back (the brief 15 years) to when I was 10 (have you done your maths yet?) and remember whether or not I had knowledge of sex and the like.

When I was 10 we didn't have things like advertising and we didn't have pre-teen-bra's and we didn't have DS's or instant SMS or morning TV (well, we did have morning TV but my parents fooled us into believing that there wasn't morning TV - which meant that we missed out on legendary programmes such as Saturday Swop Shop and trendy music shows... Instead we were out in the garden playing "Show Jumping" with the dog) and boys and girls played stuck in the mud (if they played together at all) and sometimes, if we were feeling really crazy, kiss chase may have been experimented with tentatively - all very chaste.

When I was 10 I didn't see TV shows with pretty girls sporting long black eyelashes and pink lips and finely quoiffed hair. The girls we saw back in the day barely wore make up and if their clothes came from Top Shop it wasn't a fashion statement it was out of necessity. Top Shop now is a hive of sexy little t-shirts and H&M is, god, well, it's plain scary. I am thankful that I don't have a local H&M and thankful that Mol therefore doesn't see what hangs in their shops for the 10 year olds. I know she'd 'av'em'all if she could.

Having watched a couple of reality TV shows with Mol (Strictly Come Dancing and 'So you think you can dance' and 'Lets Dance'...) she has seen how big people can promote themselves through their bodies, and increasingly she likes to replicate what she sees, (so far mainly at home). Recently the pelvic thrust and hip-gyration and the multiple-lash-bat have become rather popular moves in our kitchen, whilst dancing to The Killers or Kings of Leon or The Beatles... (Which in turn gets Liz out on the dance floor looking like she's swallowed a large tab of acid, jerking her little marshmallow legs around with her eyes rolling - that's funny, really funny to watch. But somehow it's OK for a 6 year old to do this because she really is only copying what she sees and has no idea of what it is saying.)

Mol gyrates herself around the kitchen batting her lashes and asking for my old blusher and mascara, and, 'mum, do you really need this eye shadow?'. Occasionally a leg whips up past her ear when the beat gets just one step too exciting.

The reason I ask about the sex thing, is that I know it's coming and I wonder if I should just pre-empt it? I remember an excrutiating conversation between my parents and me when I was somewhere between the age of 8-11. I was sitting at the piano bored out of my brain ("I hate this its SO unfair ugh it's so cold in this room oh I can't do this stupid piece my teacher is going to kill me why can't I go riding?") when BOTH of my parents suddenly appeared in the room and sat on the sofa, quietly crossing their legs and looking pointedly at me.

Then my mum said "Darling." I turned to them, wondering what I'd done wrong.

I stared at them.
They stared at me.
This is awkward.
"Darling." She continued. "Do you know about the... about the... you know... the..."
I stare some more.
"...the... birds and the bees?"

WHAT?

Well, dear god, thankfully, at this point in my life I must have had some sort of sex-ed at school (like, formal) because I remember, apart from nearly melting from embarrassment, saying, mumbling, coughing, "er, yes, yes yes... school... class... teacher..." turned around and started banging on the piano.

Conversation over. Sex chat closed. Not mentioned again until I was pregnant with Mol.

Mol asked me yesterday what celibacy means. We were watching Mrs Doubtfire. There is a rather understated chat about sex - which I was hoping went above her head, however, just as the scene drew to a close... Celibacy.

I ask you.
Extend the innocence, or get down with it and the quicker the better, no pain no gain?
Answers on postcards. I thank you.