Some stuff really is innate - and changes with the stage in the life cycle, I suspect.
Both my kids have lived in an environment where nudity has been treated in a matter-of-fact way. And we've camped a few summers at alternative eco-festivals where everybody's nude at some point - swimming in the river, mud bathing, body painting, just laying around in the grass etc. So my kids are used to nudity - other people's and their own.
My daughter (going on 12) and quite a reserved, self-contained girl, still has no problems changing in public, when buying clothes, at the beach, at the pool - anywhere, really. Though, interestingly, she insisted on using the women's change rooms last year, along with all the other girls when the school ran its 2-week swim intensive. I'm not sure whether it was changing in front of any boys that she was leery of or whether it was an instinctive knowledge that it just wouldn't have been considered cool by everyone else. Either way, as long as she's comfortable and has a grip on the social niceties - because she does have to live in this world, after all.
And I suspect she will become more self-conscious as she gets older (peer pressure) and her body develops more (awareness of her own sexuality, I guess).
My son, just 7, and an outrageous attention-seeker in most ways, will not change in public! He just won't. He's even going through a stage where he's shy of me (such a pity, because I love his luscious little bottom!
) but it's his body so he's entitled. But it's interesting because they live in the same house and have been exposed to the same parental philosophy.
In terms of sex education and their own sexuality - I had to train myself first. I found it quite a challenge actually, because as I said above, my mother never gave me any specifics - barely talked about sex except in oblique, romantic terms.
I started reading lots of introductory books to get a grip on the kind of language that would make sense to them - mind you, we've been using a huge range of terms to describe their anatomy from the beginning - so penis is also willy; testicles or scrotum are also balls, eggs, goolies; privates; vagina, vulva etc. (hmm. Just realised that clitoris hasn't been part of the discussions so far; will have to bring that up with my girlie at the next opportunity).
I began with the 'where do I come from' question. Interestingly, the first thing both kids wanted to know - and the girlie in particular with a degree of fear and concern - was how the vagina could possibly stretch enough to let out a baby. :mrgreen: (the answer: think of it as an elastic band which stretches out as you need it.)
Then we tackled the 'how did the baby get in there' question (pregnancy and gestation the way the textbooks tell it.)
Then the more loaded issue of the mechanics of sex and sexuality; now, with the girlie, we're talking about the emotional issues involved. We've looked at condoms and other forms of contraception but I'm letting her lead on this. She has to feel comfortable about it all and it's more important to me that she feels she can talk to me about anything rather than to make sure she has every scrap of information.
My son, at 7, has got a good grip on it all. His most recent question was how does an orgasm feel?
Well...um...hmpf!
The best I could come up with is that it's like a very, very nice sneeze, except it would be focussed around his genitals rather than his nose. I also asked him if he'd ever just played with his penis ('yes' - of course); and that would have felt nice? ('yes') Well...it's sort of like that feeling but better and better. He'd just have to wait til it happened to him and then he'd know - but it's very nice.
It bothers me that my daughter - now in her last year of primary school - hasn't had any formal sex education of any kind; not the human sexuality kind; not the fundamentals of reproduction kind; not the boys and girls and different kind; not even the relationships and society kind. In Oz the state sets a core curriculum and then the school can add what it likes to that core to round it out. While we're doing our best at home to provide her with information and a healthy attitude, I think it can't replace educated discussion with her peers in a non-confrontational atmosphere - like in a facilitated classroom discussion. I wish they'd do it. I think we have to wait til high school though - at which time the whole thing is much more charged due to raging hormones. Preferable, in my opinion, to do it earlier, while they still absorb things like sponges and before sex develops any kind of taboo aura.