But what can you tell to a child of four or five? For that is the age at which the question is likely first to present itself. Remember that the child is not asking a sex question, but one about the direct source of himself, or about some particular baby that he has seen. You can say that the baby grew from a tiny egg, which is in a little chamber that grows as the baby grows, until the baby is big enough to come out. This will satisfy most children for a considerable time, but some children will immediately ask, "Where is that little room?" To which you may reply, "The growing baby must be kept in the most protected place possible, so it is kept under the mother's heart." Or, you may say that the baby grew from a seed implanted in the mother's body, that it was nourished by her blood until it grew large enough, when it came out at the cost of much suffering. Of course, you will tell the story as personally as you can, about your particular child, and in as simple a way as you can. If you tell the little girl or boy this much you have told him all that he probably cares to know at this time; you have told the truth so that you have nothing to fear about his being disillusioned either as to the story or as to your own trustworthiness; and you have avoided arousing the suspicion that certain subjects are unworthy of understanding. And then you will find that this new conception of his relation to you, as truly a part of your being, will deepen and strengthen his natural feeling of affection and sympathy. It is also well with the first telling to impress the child--in so many words, if necessary--with the idea that he must always come to you for anything he wants to know, and that you are always glad to tell him. As the child grows older his knowledge of life must grow also. In the country and in small towns the child becomes familiar with many important facts about life without any special effort being required to inform him. He learns that chickies hatch out of eggs and that the eggs have been laid by the mother hen. He learns that the field and garden plants grow from seeds and that the seeds were borne by the mother plants. He learns about the coming of the calf and the colt; and even city children can learn that kittens and puppies come from mother animals. It is a comparatively simple matter for a child with such knowledge to get the further information that the baby brother developed from an egg that mother kept near her heart during the hatching time. Much of this knowledge that the country child acquires incidentally must be brought to the city child through special efforts and devices, in the school as well as in the home, that he may acquire the fundamental facts of bearing and rearing young, in plants as well as in animals, and that he may look upon these facts not as strange or disconcerting marvels, but as natural happenings.