According to Osho, children deserve truthful, simple sex education because truth never harms, untruth does. Lying about sex betrays their trust, breeds suspicion, and later cripples their ability to trust parents, lovers, and spiritual guides. Since life is sexual and children are perceptive, tell them plainly “as it is,” normalizing sexuality and preventing shame, rebellion, and lifelong distrust.
Tell kids the truth about sex in clear, kind words so they trust you and don’t grow up confused or ashamed.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What do you say about sex education for small children?
Truth is truth, and nobody should be debarred from it. Just because children are small, do they have to be fed on lies? Is truth only for grown-ups? Does that mean truth is dangerous for the delicate consciousness of the child? Truth is never dangerous, untruth is dangerous. And if you tell an untruth to the grown-up he may be able to defend himself; it can be forgiven. But never tell an untruth to the child, because he is so helpless, so indefensible. He depends so much on you, he trusts so much in you -- don't betray him. This is betraying! Telling any lie means you have betrayed the child. And finally you will be in trouble. Sooner or later, the child will discover that you have been telling lies. That very day, all trust in you will disappear. If young people start rebelling against the parents, the responsibility…
Osho, do you feel that a child should be given the freedom to inquire about the facts of his birth and about sex?
The ignorance of our society and the traditional foolishness of parents is what spoils children. It is not obvious to us on the surface, because when children create such messes we want to make our old rules even stricter: “Look, everything is going wrong—tighten the old rules.” And we do not see that it is because of those very rules that the mess is happening. Make them stricter and the disorder will only increase. I want to give unconditional freedom to the whole of life. No one has the right to stop anyone. But freedom is not license. And the curious thing is: a free person is never licentious; only the dependent person becomes licentious. Dependence unnerves so much that dependence is one extreme. When the dependent man gets a chance, the other extreme is his licentiousness. He never pauses in the middle, where freedom is. If you lock a…
This feeling of betrayal has come about because sex has been wrongly represented by their elders. It should be openly explained to them that sex is part and parcel of life, that we are all born out of sex, and that sex is also part of their lives. This will help them to understand their parents' behavior in its proper perspective, and when they grow and experience life for themselves they will be filled with reverence for the honesty of their parents. The beginning, in a child, of this faith and reverence will lay the foundation for a religious life. Children today suspect that their parents are hypocrites; hence the present ideological clash between the younger and the older generations. The suppression of sex has separated husband from wife and has set children against their parents.
Beloved Osho, what is the right way to help a child grow without interfering in his natural potentiality?
The right way is not to help the child at all. If you have real courage then please don't help the child. Love him, nourish him. Let him do what he wants to do. Let him go where he wants to go. Your mind will be tempted again and again to interfere, and with good excuses. The mind is very clever in rationalizing: "If you don't interfere there may be danger; the child may fall into the well if you don't stop him." But I say to you, it is better to let him fall into the well than to help him and destroy him. It is a very rare possibility that the child falls into the well -- and then too, it does not mean death; he can be taken out of the well. And if you are really so concerned, the well can be covered; but don't help…
Children should remain nude and should play in the nude for a long time, so no seed of madness remains to plague them the rest of their lives. But the disease is already there, and it is on the increase. The existence of the disease can be observed in the bulk of obscene literature now being published. People read it, hiding it between the covers of the GITA and the BIBLE. We shout that obscene books should be banned, but we never pause to think where the men who read them are coming from; we protest the displaying of nude pictures but never stop to ask why they are exhibited in the first place. Sex is natural, but sexuality is the product of anti-sex teachings. If these teachings are followed, if the advice given in these unscientific sermons is taken, the soul of man will be totally filled with sexuality.