Tyra Banks’ mom Carolyn London found a creative way to teach her daughter about the birds and the bees when she was growing up.
Appearing together on Australia’s “The Kyle & Jackie O Show” on Friday, June 20, Banks, 51, and ‘Mama Carolyn’ shared an insight into the America’s Next Top Model creator’s childhood.
Banks explained that she could ask her mom anything when she was a child — including drugs and sex — as London, 76, wanted there to be no taboos or off-limits questions.
“I would ask my mom about drugs. She would be like, Well, this one does take you up. This one takes you down sideways. This one takes you round and round,” Banks said.
The model added that she was 11 when she first asked London about sex and her mom told her, “Well, this man might say it like this. This boy gonna say it like this. He’s gonna make you feel like this. He gonna whisper in your ear and just note, this what he’s talking about.”
London said that as well as answering Bank’s questions about sex, she took her to a bookstore to buy resources that would teach her daughter about her body. Banks then interjected to share an anecdote about being taught about sex while on a train.
“She put me on a train. It was a two-hour train from Los Angeles to San Diego, like, a two-hour drive. And she gave me the birds and bees talk,” Banks shared. “I knew [the] ‘Where did I come from?’ talk, but she gave me the talk about what a guy will whisper in your ear and how your body will feel and the things that your body will be experiencing. You know… when I was still a virgin, and she put me on a train so that I couldn’t run away.”
Banks recalled her mother’s predictions proved correct as she got older and she began to explore romantic experiences.
“So, my first little make-out, serious make-out session, the boy whispered a little something, something in my ear, and I jumped off the couch, and I was like, ‘My mama said you would say that!’” Banks shared.
For her part, London revealed the reasoning behind why she was so upfront about these topics with Banks as a child.
“One of the things I did was to approach your children in a way that you want to arm them to go out into the world. So no subject is taboo. If they ask you, they deserve the truth,” she said.
Later on in the interview, London said her own experience of having children as a teenager also contributed to her decision to teach her kids about their sexuality early on. (Carolyn became a mom when she welcomed Tyra’s older brother, Devin, 57, with then-partner Donald Banks when she was 19.)
“I was a teen mom because of what I didn’t know,” London said. “It’s so important. So many parents say, ‘I don’t want them to know. I don’t want them to know.’ Then you send them out into the world ignorant, to be taken advantage of.”
