“Mom, where do babies come from?” A question we parents all expect, but from a five year old? Oh I’m not ready. How to find an age-appropriate response to this question while keeping true to my goal to be honest and not overly sugar-coat the truth? Where do I even begin? Why is he asking me?

This is a question I expected to get when his age hit double-digits, not before he even got to school. My mind reeled. I was expecting questions like “why is the sky blue?” or “why don’t we have a dog?” But not this one, I was not ready.

As I raced through my bag of mental tricks to find the answer I fell back on my standard answer to buy some time – “what do you think?” He thought for a second and said “I think they come from the hospital. That’s where Lauren came from.” And he’s right, because just a few short weeks prior to this question we had brought his new baby sister home.

Big sigh. Sometimes the simple answer is the most effective. I did go on to tell him that God takes a part of a mommy and a part of a daddy and puts it together to make a baby—and I am happy to avoid the details that we hopefully don’t need to worry about for a few more years. He reminded me that sometimes it’s best to look through the clutter to the simple root of any situation.