How can we reimagine sex education through a game?

This question—part personal curiosity, part cultural necessity—was the starting point for Cigüeña, a project that was born out of observing my own cracks, my questions, my silences, and those of so many women and LGBTQ+ people within our Latinx communities. Cigüeña begins as an intimate exploration: an attempt to understand why talking about sexuality is so difficult for us, so fraught with taboo, shame, or fear. And how that affects the way we raise, accompany, and protect our children.

While researching issues of gender equality, access to healthcare, and early childhood well-being, I discovered something that completely changed my perspective: sex education is not an isolated topic, it is a conversation. And conversation is culture. What we talk about and what we keep silent  determines how we experience our bodies, trust, boundaries, self-care, and relationships.

This is the context in which Cigüeña emerged: a card game about children’s sexual health, created so that adults—mothers, fathers, caregivers, educators, and professionals—can learn first, before trying to teach. Because what most of us received as “sex education” were myths, silences, inherited fears, or confusing explanations that never really answered what we needed to know.  

Cigüeña is based on a simple but powerful conviction: Children’s sex education begins in adulthood; it begins with us.

A game to talk about what matters

The game encourages adults to engage in conversation through activities such as trivia, true or false, “I was asked” and real-life stories. Each card presents situations and questions that children often experience in early childhood: from curiosity about their own bodies, differences between healthy and unhealthy play, hygiene, emotions, privacy, consent, to signs of possible abuse.

Early childhood—from 0 to 5 years old—is a key period when children form their earliest ideas about their bodies, boundaries, and self-respect. But very rarely do homes and schools have clear tools to support this process. Often, out of fear of saying something “wrong,” we say nothing. And silence does not protect, it misinforms.

Cigüeña acts as a bridge between expert knowledge and everyday life. It does not require technical language or specialized training. It only requires a willingness to learn, play, and speak honestly. Because playing lowers our defenses. Playing allows us to make mistakes without guilt. And playing brings us together.

To speak is also to protect

Children’s sexual health is often mistakenly associated only with “abuse prevention,” but it is much broader: it includes self-care, problem solving, emotional expression, recognition of sensations, hygiene, diversity, and the ability to distinguish between safe and unsafe touching.

Cigüeña helps to:

• Name body parts without shame. 

• Recognize appropriate and inappropriate games. 

• Accompany children’s natural sexual curiosity without punishment or fear.  

• Teach boundaries with affection: “your body is yours.” 

• Detect warning signs without falling into paranoia. 

• Guide conversations at home, in classrooms, and in community workshops. 

For organizations such as VIP, which supports survivors of domestic and sexual violence, these conversations are essential. Many women arrive carrying stories of silence, of not being able to talk about what they have experienced, of growing up without information that could have protected them. Supporting them today to speak with their children, nieces and nephews, or students—in a safe, clear, and calm manner—is also a way to break intergenerational cycles of violence.

Sex education for children is not a “sensitive issue.” It is a tool for safety, dignity, and prevention.

Why a game?

Because sometimes the gateway to discussing important issues is not a book or a technical talk, but a playful space where adults can breathe, laugh, be surprised, and reflect without judgment.

Through play:

• We review old beliefs,

• debunk myths,

• acknowledge our own silences,

• create a common language,

• and, most importantly, open up to conversations that we had not been able to have before.

Cigüeña works in multiple contexts: workshops with caregivers, teacher training, one-on-one sessions with mental health professionals, baby showers, community meetings, or simply among friends who want to talk about parenting with more confidence.

Learning to provide better support

Cigüeña does not claim to provide perfect answers—no adult has those—but rather to offer a roadmap: questions, scenarios, stories, and concepts that allow us to talk about childhood sexuality in an honest, respectful, culturally safe, and emotionally conscious way.

In Latinx communities where silence was the norm for generations, creating spaces for conversation is a form of justice. A form of care. A form of healing.

Childhood sex education does not begin when a child asks, “Where do babies come from?” It begins much earlier, in homes, schools, and communities that dare to speak clearly, to name things without fear, and to accompanywith love.

Cigüeña is just a tool.

Transformation occurs when that tool is used to have conversations.

And conversation—the one we didn’t have—is the gift we can give to future generations today.