Q My seven-year-old daughter kissed me and put her tongue in my mouth after she’d been staying with friends. I’m worried that she’s growing up too fast

DR THOMAS STUTTAFORD

A This girl’s behaviour is nothing for her parents to worry about. The most important lesson is that on no account should our reader show any sign of alarm, revulsion or squeamishness.

Children, to the embarrassment of friends and family, will often mimic any sexual behaviour that they have witnessed either on television, on the beach, street, or when in the company of adolescent friends. An observant six-year-old will have seen many instances of French kissing and will have thought, mistakenly, that it was an appropriate way to express filial as well as romantic love. Even so, it would also be as well for the girl’s parents to make a few discreet inquiries to make certain that no older child had been involved with her.

Overreaction from parents about a child’s interest in sexual organs, breasts, bottoms and sexual behaviour may give the child serious worries. It may also enhance the child’s interest and encourage those very impulses that the parents might wish would remain hidden for years.

Above all, parents shouldn’t make mock of, or repeat in the child’s hearing an account of this behaviour in a jocular way, as any action that belittles a physical display of affection, however misapplied, may have lasting ill-effects. The maxim that any levity about someone’s sexual actions can have a devastating effect applies at the age of 6, 16 or even 66.

Even babies while still in the cot will experiment with sexual play that one day will be destined to ensure the survival of the family and the species. At 6, a child, in the opinion of some psychologists, is still in the primary sexual stage when sexual gestures, behaviour and even advances are still overt. These psychologists believe that soon children will reach the stage of sexual latency when they will either learn to conceal these instinctive reactions or they will lose the desire to experiment with them. The latent sexual period lasts until puberty.

Once adults become aware of how normal the expression of sexuality is in young children, they will pay no more regard to it than the unwelcome action of a friend’s randy dog.

Young children’s sexual range extends from genital manipulation in the crib to quasi-sexual advances in five to six-year-olds. Once adults are alert to this type of childhood behaviour they are likely to notice it in every household with a young family they visit. Most adults have been mildly embarrassed by apparently sexual passes made to them by young children. But, it is to be hoped, they hid this embarrassment and reacted in a friendly but detached way.

Who hasn’t been greeted before supper at a friend’s by their four or five-year-old daughter, naked, and whose actions are as provocative as their lack of clothes, when they drape themselves around some favoured guest’s neck?

These passes can be so obvious that they would cause terrible problems if they were repeated 15 years later. I remember one small guest coming down to the breakfast table and being questioned by her parents as to where she had been. She unselfconsciously explained that she had sneaked into the still warm bed of an adolescent staying in the house whom she had obviously fancied. The poor fellow could hardly butter his toast after this revelation.

Dr Thomas Stuttaford, The Times doctor, spent many years working in a genitourinary clinic

SUZI GODSON

A High-profile stories about child abuse have created unprecedented paranoia in our society, and small children who manifest any kind of sexual behaviour tend to set off alarm bells. But be wary of ascribing sexual intent to behaviour that is more likely to be born of natural curiosity.

I say this because, when I was 6, I did the same thing to my favourite uncle. One day, while he was stooping down to give me a kiss goodbye, I put my arms around his neck, put my lips to his and poked my tongue straight into his mouth. I’d seen people doing “that kind of kissing” on the TV and I thought it was a way of showing someone that you really liked them.

Needless to say, my uncle recoiled in horror and told me that I should never, ever, do that again. He didn’t bother to explain his reaction to me. He didn’t have to. His manner and tone were so uncharacteristically serious that I realised I had done something very wrong straight away. Nor did he tell my parents.

I was glad at the time but, with hindsight, I can see that if he had, it would have provided them with the perfect opportunity to give me some age-appropriate information about the birds and the bees. I was clearly running a lot of that stuff through my head at the time, but I didn’t have any idea of context and a few carefully judged words would probably have been hugely beneficial.

Lots of people have reservations about discussing anything sexual with children as young as 6 because they feel that it robs them of their innocence. But as someone whose innocence was “protected” to the point of ignorance on account of being sent to a Roman Catholic convent boarding school at 8, I would argue that it is healthier for parents to demystify the subject of sex while children are very young.

Here in the UK, the school curriculum begins providing basic sex education in primary school but, since you know your little girl better than anyone, you are absolutely the best person in the world to tell her why “that kind of kissing” is only for mummies and daddies.

When children are little they have a natural curiosity about the world they live in. That inquisitiveness inevitably encompasses the human body and big, potentially awkward questions about where babies come from. Children who grow up on farms have the advantage of being able to see the realities of the cycle-of-life firsthand, but relatively few children these days enjoy that easy relationship with Mother Nature.

Sex, birth and death are big scary subjects, but parents who resist the temptation to dodge the issue with pink or blue ribboned storks are giving their children a head start. If you drip-feed sensitively constructed information about sex to your six-year-old now, by the time she is a gauche teenager she will have the biology under her belt, leaving her free to negotiate more complex issues such as emotions and relationships and high heels. Bet you can’t wait.

If you need any help in how best to judge what is appropriate for a child of your daughter’s age, I’d recommend: Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid They’d Ask), Three Rivers Press, £7.55, by Justin Richardson and Mark A. Schuster .

Suzi Godson is the author of The Sex Book (Cassell, £16.99) and The Body Bible (Penguin, £16.99)

Times recommends

• The grim reality of life as an air stewardess
• 50 of the world's best design blogs
• Video: Georgia Jagger on fashion and her mum's clothes