I keep checking back to see if anyone has responded to this b/c I have NO idea how I'd have handled it and am curious to see what other parents suggest. Oh well ... question dodging and/or back roads it is, I guess!

Yes, it seems we're all struck dumb...I'm eager for some clever ideas, too.

At age seven, she's old enough to know some very basic facts about sexuality. There's certainly no need to get into explicit details; she ought to be able to handle the idea that people do some things because they feel good, but that she's not physically or emotionally developed enough to really explore this area yet.

I will guarantee that at that age, she's already started to get some inklings of the issues around sexuality from everyday life in our culture. It's your job as her parents to provide guidance and to give her a framework to fit these things into. If you'd like some basic help, go check out the "Guidelines For Comprehensive Sexuality Education" found at http://www.siecus.org/pubs/fact/fact0003.html -- they'll break the subject down into different areas, and give you ideas about what children at different levels of development are ready to handle, and what they need to be helped with.

Remember that you're the person they're going to get most of their information from about everything in the world. If you're going to brush this under the rug, then they're going to think that's how these issues ought to be handled, and that's going to mess them up down the road. To handle the specific issue of "What do you say about signs for 'Adult Toys and Videos' ", I'd suggest saying something like, "There are some things that people use when they're trying to make each other feel very good, like massage oils or special clothes. It's something that grownups might think about trying when they have decided that they really like someone a lot and want to add a new part to their relationship."

Don't hem and haw and make it sound like the child is dragging a huge secret out of you. Strive to keep your tone on the same level as discussing the merits of one brand of athletic shoe over another one. Don't let your child's first clue that men and women sometimes do something together that feels really, really good be a smutty allusion on a billboard in North Carolina.

Gosh, that's a tough one! My first inclination was to play the whole "Where do babies come from?" trick where you ask, "Well, what do you think is in a toy store like that?" whereby hopefully they would start thinking about stuff adults like such as computers, big cars, or maybe giant slides or something. But since children rarely follow the suggested scrips in our heads or what the experts say, I can see that progessing into the child begging to go to visit the store to see what adults play with. Or worse (and equally likely) the child bringing it up in conversation around other adults later, "We saw an adult toy store!" or "You can buy my mom's gift at the adult toy store!"

So I think I would try to bypass all that by shaking my head and saying something like, "Adult toy store? That's so crazy. Toys are for kids, right? We should stay away from that store..." Then maybe redirect and talk about kid toy stores we do like to go to, or start talking about birthdays and what their wish list might be.

Michael is right that different levels of info are appropriate at different ages. My theory is that the sooner parents begin integrating "the facts of life" into everything else they're teaching kids about morality and how their bodies work, the better equipped kids are to make good decisions when they're teens and then adults. As a wannbe Church Lady, I think it's important that parents not obscure the connection between sexual behavior and reproduction, even when addressing questions that relate to sexual response as opposed to where babies come from - I wouldn't get into issues of sexual pleasure until I made sure I had covered the bases of "You know that's for grown-ups, right?" and "You know that can lead to babies, right?" with my child. So I would probably fudge the question with younger kids a la Annelies, but with an older kid who's aware that humans reproduce sexually I might say that the "adult" store has things in it to help grown-ups prepare for mating. (My kids are big on Animal Plant, what can I say?) The older the child, the more frank I would be about my feelings about related issues, like pornography and prostitution and free speech.